492 King Street

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The structure at 492 King Street (ca. 1888) is located on the corner of King Street and Mary Street. Notably, the building looks over the site where Reverend John Bailey Adger first met his future wife, Elizabeth Keith Shrewsbury. The meeting took place in the Spring of 1831, when Reverend J. B. Adger, then in the second year of his studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, returned to Charleston for a month of Spring Break. As described in My Life and Times:

I was returning from a prayer-meeting with my mother [Sarah Elizabeth Ellison Adger] and sister Margaret [Milligan Adger Smythe]. At the corner of Mary and King streets my sister observed the above named young lady, with whom she had recently become very intimately acquainted, on the other side of King street, engaged in the duty of tract distribution. She called to her to come over. It required some little urging to get her consent, but she came.

My sister said to me, "Now you shall see blushes," and I saw them. I was introduced to her, and with me it was love at first sight. My sister persuaded her to go up home with us to take tea, and then accompany us to another religious service. I walked with the blooming stranger, and my first impressions were deepened. I visited her several times, and every Sunday took pains to slip into the infant school-room, where she taught some fifty little pupils. I stood at the door behind her back, and was charmed with her methods of interesting and instructing those little ones.

My sister very soon charged me with being fascinated. I told her I certainly was, "and now," said I, "as you sympathize strongly with me in being attracted to a foreign missionary life, you must see if, when I return to the Seminary, you cannot interest your friend's mind in the same subject, and, as you are occasionally exchanging notes with one another, you must sometimes send me one of her notes for my inspection." The following spring I returned again to Charleston, and after two or three interviews with the lady who on my previous visit had so deeply interested me, my mind was made up, that she was the one I wished to marry. But I did not then immediately propose to her.

The fact that Elizabeth Keith Shrewsbury was distributing her religious tracts in Charleston, where literacy was forbidden to nearly half the population, must have created some real tensions. Attempting to reconcile religious conviction to an immoral social system must have been enough to send anyone to Armenia.
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Philip Simmons and Pearl Fryar Garden

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The Philip Simmons and Pearl Fryar Garden is located at the rear of St. John's Reformed Episcopal Church (ca. 1850)

"This project represents an artistic collaboration between Charleston's master blacksmith, Philip Simmons, and Pearl Fryar, a self-taught topiary artist from Bishopville, South Carolina."

We do not think that Reverend John Bailey Adger, who organized the construction of the building, was an avid gardener. In My Life and Times he does mention the garden of his aunt, Agnes Adger Law. A wealthy woman who held seven human beings in chattel slavery in 1860, she funded the building of "Law Hall" at the Presbyterian Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina. The seminary was built on the grounds of the Ainsley Hall mansion, known today the Robert Mills House in honor of its architect. (Ainsley Hall was a family connection of Reverend J. B. Adger's sister-in-law Margaret Hall Moffett, the wife of William Adger)

Agnes Adger Law wandered the streets of Columbia the night that Sherman's troops burned it to the ground, and Reverend J. B. Adger noted that:

"Where my aunt passed the next day and night she could not herself tell, and it was only on the second or the third day that some friends found her wandering through her old ruined garden, and she was, by them, removed to rooms in the Seminary building, which had been vacated."

Left destitute, she died shortly thereafter.

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St. John's Reformed Episopal Church

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At the encouragement of Reverend John Bailey Adger, the Charleston Presbytery built the church that today serves its congregation at 93 Anson Street as St. John's Reformed Episcopal Church (ca. 1850). Reverend J. B. Adger had served as a Presbyterian missionary to Armenia until his wife, Elizabeth Keith Shrewsbury, received slaves in an inheritance. The Presbyterians did not allow slaveowners to serve as missionaries, and the Adgers never returned to Armenia. Instead Reverend J. B. Adger decided to establish a church to serve the slaves of Charleston. His project met with mixed reviews from Charleston's white population. The slaves of Charleston were not consulted.

The church was dedicated on Sunday, May 26, 1850. As Reverend J. B. Adger notes in My Life and Times, "the congregation that assembled to take part in the dedication of the house to the worship of God by negroes, was composed exclusively of white people." It is not clear what non-white people thought of this arrangement.

In 1850, six people were held in slavery by the Reverend J. B. Adger while he served as minister of the church.

The church was located just two doors down from the house occupied by Major William Jacint Laval and his wife Sarah Caroline Ward. In the best Charleston tradition, the neighbors were also cousins. Doubly so, in fact. Reverend J. B. Adger was the son of Major Laval's aunt Ann Jacks' stepdaughter's nephew, and he was also the brother-in-law of Sarah Caroline Ward's cousin's son-in-law.

Small world.

St. Stephen's Church

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St. Stephen's Episcopal Church (ca. 1835) was organized as a "free church", one in which parishioners were not charged rent for their pews. Before the current church was built at 67 Anson Street, it had been housed some four blocks south on Guignard Street (the Guignard Street building was burned in the fire of 1835).

Just around the corner from St. Stephen's current location is the house on George Street where Daniel Cobia (1811-1837) lived and which, upon his death, became the property of Major William Laval. Daniel Cobia, born in Charleston, returned to the city in 1833 after completing his seminary training in New York and "immediately took charge of St. Stephen's Chapel, where the seats were free, and the congregation small and made up of the humbler classes."

Today St. Stephen's is noted less for the humbler classes it attracts than for being the least likely congregation in the State of South Carolina to leave the Episcopal Church in opposition to the ordination of gay priests.

Robert Roulain House

According to Jonathan Poston's invaluable book The Buildings of Charleston, a brickmason built the Robert Roulain House (ca. 1816) on a lot carved out of the Daniel Legare property (79 Anson Street). In the 1816 Charleston Directory, the Robert Roulain residence was listed as 42 George Street. Its current address is 9 George Street. As we have noted before, the Charleston street numbering system was fluid until after the great earthquake of 1886.

It became the home of Daniel Cobia in 1834, and in the 1835/1836 Charleston Directory the house address was listed as 8 George Street. Cobia suffered from "copious bleeding of the lungs" and died in 1837. At that time the house became the property of Major William Jacint Laval (b. 1788), the state treasurer and the nephew of Ann Withers Wilson Jacks (1771-1850).

In the 1819 Charleston Directory, Louis Laval, the brother of Major Laval and Leonora Laval Martin (b. 1806), had a residence at 1 George Street. Louis Laval disappears from the record thereafter, but Major Laval is listed at "George Street" in the Charleston City Directory for 1841, and in the Directory of 1852 he is listed at "1 George Street".

We believe that "1 George Street" was located on the Southwest corner of George and Anson streets. The house that is currently known as "4 George Street", the James W. Brown House, is located at the Northwest corner of George and Anson streets. In the Directory of 1852, the James Brown residence is listed as "2 George Street". The implication is that "1 George Street" was located directly across the street, and that Major Laval lived in a house that was destroyed or moved sometime before the construction of the Gaillard Auditorium.

In any case, in 1855 Major Laval was living at 47 Anson Street, the property listed as the home of his sister Leonora Laval Martin in the Directory of 1852.

Joseph Legare House

The Joseph Legare House (ca. 1800) at 75 Anson Street is known for the sweep of its outside staircase and, of course, for serving as the residence of Stockard Channing during the time she was married to her third husband, David Rawle. Anson Street itself is noted for being the final address of Ann Withers Wilson Jacks (1771-1850), the widow of James Jacks (abt. 1745-1822). According to the records of the Charleston Death Card File housed at the Charleston County Public Libary, Ann Jacks died of Old Age at her residence at 56 Anson Street on June 20th, 1850 and was buried in the Methodist Protestant churchyard at 43 Wentworth Street:

Although street numbers in Charleston were not regularized until after the earthquake of 1886, and street numbers before that date do not match the numbers used today, we can piece together the location of Ann Jacks' residence by using the Directory of the City of Charleston published in 1851. According to that directory, the Elizabeth Chazal House (now numbered as 66 Anson Street) was at 48 Anson. We believe that 56 Anson would have been located four houses up the street, at the location currently occupied by 74 Anson Street. Just as at the Elias Vanderhorst House, the home occupied by Ann Jacks no longer exists. The lot on which it stood is now occupied by the Michael Foucout House (ca. 1812) which was moved to its current location in 1967.

Ann Jacks may have moved from Wraggborough to Ansonborough in order to be closer to her remaining family. Her niece, Leonora Laval Martin (wife of James Martin, factor and merchant), lived across the street at 47 Anson Street. Her nephew, Major William Jacint Laval, state treasurer, lived a few houses down the street, at the corner of George and Anson Streets. Both were mentioned in her will, along with William's daughter, Ann Olivia Laval (b. 1836). Other people mentioned in her will included the two human beings she had enslaved and held in bondage, Phoebe and Charles. Ann Olivia, age 14, was given Phoebe - and a silver sugar dish and milk pot. Leonora was given Charles - and a watch:

STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA. CHARLESTON DISTRICT. In the Name of God Amen.

I Ann Jacks of the City of Charleston and State aforesaid widow being of sound mind & memory do make and declare this my last will and testament as follows.

FIRST My Will and desire is that all my just debts and funeral expenses be paid out of any monies which I may have or which may be due and owing to me at the time of my demise.

ITEM I direct my Executor to sell and dispose of all My household and Kitchen furniture beds bedding &etc and to transmit the nett proceeds to my Nephew Jacint Laval if living at the time that a legal settlement can be made and if not living at that time then my desire is that the money be retained by my Executor for the benefit of the Children of my late niece Mrs Ann S[m]ith to be appropriated as he (my Executor) may deem most advantageous for their interest.

ITEM I give my silver spoons (six large & eleven small) to my niece Mifs M R Withers.

ITEM I give my silver sugar dish & milk pot to my grand niece Ann Olivia Laval.

ITEM I give my negro wench slave Pheobe to my said grand niece Ann Olivia Laval.

ITEM I give my negro man slave Charles to my niece Mrs Leonora Martin.

LASTLY I hereby nominate and appoint my Nephew William Laval to be my Executor to this my last Will and testament.

IN Witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and Seal at Charleston this Sixth day of March in the year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and fifty.

ITEM I give my watch to Mrs James Martin.

Signed sealed and acknowledged Ann Jacks (Seal)

St. Andrew's Hall

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St. Andrew's Hall served as the home of the St. Andrew's Society in Charleston. Founded by Scottish immigrants, the organization included James Jacks among its members. He was born in Scotland, and even as a merchant in Charleston he regularly returned to his native land. He was a member of the St. Andrew's Society at various times, and clearly was a member in good standing at the time of his death. The newspaper announcement of his funeral (published December 31, 1822) noted that the Members of the St. Andrew's Society were invited to attend:

St. Andrew's Hall, the site of the South Carolina ratification of the Confederate Constitution in April, 1861, was burned to the ground in the purifying flames of war less than a year later, in December, 1861. The iron fence, today entwined with roses, was the only part of the building to survive.

Elias Vanderhorst House

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The Elias Vanderhorst House at 28 Chapel Street, built ca. 1832, is primarily notable for its location - the lot had previously been occupied by the home of Charleston jeweler and watchmaker James Jacks (abt. 1745-1822). The James Jacks House was, of course, destroyed to make way for the Elias Vanderhorst House, but a description of the site still exists. In March of 1821, as he prepared to leave for England, James Jacks placed an advertisement in the Charleston City Gazette And Daily Advertiser (March 3, 1821):

ALSO TO RENT

From the 1st of June until the middle of November, his DWELLING HOUSE, in Wraggborough, adjoining Col. Vanderhorst's new House. On the premises are a Kitchen, Carriage House and Stables, a Well of excellent water, a larger Garden, with a variety of choice Fruit Trees; it is very retired, and is considered as pleasant and healthy as Sullivan's Island, and would be a desirable summer residence for a genteel family. - For particulars, enquire of JAMES JACKS, 105, Broad-street.

James Jacks died just over a year and a half later, in December of 1822.