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.