Charleston’s Rich Religious Influences

In 1663, England's King Charles II would appoint Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper as the Lord Proprietor of the vast Province of Carolina in North America.

Ashley Cooper, interestingly, would never come to or visit the Carolinas, but from afar in England, he would do a masterful job of marketing the area to those seeking a fresh start in the New World.

Among the incentives was freedom of religion. Ashley Cooper's "Promises of Religious Freedom from Fundamental Orders for Carolina" in 1669, which Charleston author and historian Ruth Miller has shared with my "Beyond the Grave" students, even gave religious freedom and freedom from religious-based harrassment to African slaves and "heathens, Jues, and other disenters from the purity of Christian religion."

First, Finest and Oldest- More Charleston Historic Nuggets

The unabashed purveyor of "All Things Charleston" was back Monday in my "Beyond the Grave" classroom and I was amazed to learn so many new things in this, her fourth talk to my class.

Ruth Miller has authored several books about Charleston graveyards

Longtime Charleston historian, author and tour guide Ruth Miller seems a fount of unlimited "Holy City" knowledge.

For decades she has studied Charleston's past and has given tours in the downtown Historic District. She says her interest in the many old church graveyards came after giving a tour to a visiting group of morticians who asked to spend time looking around some of old downtown graveyards, pointing things out to Miller that she did not know.

Ashley Cooper's Immense Influence Shaped Charleston and the Carolinas

Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper 

He was a man so important in the early development of Charleston and the surrounding Carolina colony that not one but two rivers are named for him!

In England's management of the New World that would eventually become the United States, Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper (1621-1683) was appointed Lord Proprietor of the Province of Carolina by King Charles II.

With his assistant John Locke (1632-1704), Cooper went about trying to get people from Europe to move to the vast Carolina, which then stretched from Virginia to Florida.