South Carolina Historical Marker #10-06

While we were exploring Charleston, I stopped at a number of South Carolina historical markers, including: Thomas Smith [#10-03], St. Philip's Church [#10-06], The Siege of Charleston, 1780 [#10-65], The Seizure of the Planter [#10-76], Kress Building [#10-79], Jonathan Jasper Wright Law Office [#10-82] and U.S. Courthouse and Post Office/Briggs V. Elliott [#10-85].

St. Philip's Church
South Carolina Historical Marker #10-06
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This marker is located at the 146 Church Street, Charleston, South Carolina. The GPS coordinates for this location are N 32° 46.724 W 079° 55.758.

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Here in the churchyard of St. Philip's are buried/CHARLES PINCKNEY/(1757-1824)/Signer of the United States Constitution and author of the famous/"Pinckney Draught"/Governor of South Carolina/U. S. Senator and Congressman/Minister to Spain/EDWARD RUTLEDGE/(1749-1800)/Signer of the Declaration of Independence/Delegate to First and Second Continental Congresses/S. C. Legislator & Senator/Governor of South Carolina.

South Carolina Historical Marker #10-03

While we were exploring Charleston, I stopped at a number of South Carolina historical markers, including: Thomas Smith [#10-03], The Siege of Charleston, 1780 [#10-65], The Seizure of the Planter [#10-76], Kress Building [#10-79], Jonathan Jasper Wright Law Office [#10-82] and U.S. Courthouse and Post Office/Briggs V. Elliott [#10-85].

Thomas Smith
South Carolina Historical Marker #10-03
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This marker is located at the corner of East Bay Street and Longitude Lane, Charleston, South Carolina. The GPS coordinates for this location are N 32° 46.472 W 079° 55.641.

You can log your visit to this landmark at waymark.com.





Governor of Carolina, /1693-1694/Planter, Merchant, Surgeon,/arrived in Charles Town in 1684 with his first wife, Barbara Atkins, and sons, Thomas and George. A cacique by 1690, he was created Landgrave by the Lords Proprietors on May 13, 1691. He died in his 46th year on November 16, 1694. His brick town house with a wharf on Cooper River was here on the corner of East Bay & Longitude Lane.

South Carolina Historical Marker #10-79

While we were exploring Charleston, I stopped at a number of South Carolina historical markers, including: Thomas Smith [#10-03], The Siege of Charleston, 1780 [#10-65], The Seizure of the Planter [#10-76], Kress Building [#10-79], Jonathan Jasper Wright Law Office [#10-82] and U.S. Courthouse and Post Office/Briggs V. Elliott [#10-85].

Kress Building/Civil Rights Sit-Ins
South Carolina Historical Marker #10-79
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This marker is located at 281 King Street, Charleston, South Carolina. The GPS coordinates for this location are N 32° 46.968 W 079° 56.059.

You can log your visit to this landmark at waymark.com.

This three-story Art Deco building, built in 1930-31 was a 5- and 10-cent store owned by S.H. Kress & Co. until 1980. Kress, with about 400 American stores, designed its own buildings. This store features a yellow brick facade with colorful and decorative glazed terracotta details typical of Kress’s Art Deco designs. A 1941 two-story addition faces Wentworth Street. McCrory Stores bought this building in 1980, operating it under the Kress name until 1992.

On April 1, 1960, the lunch counter here and those at the Woolworth’s and W.T. Grant’s stores on King St. were the targets of the city’s first civil rights “sit-in.” Black students from Burke High School were denied service but refused to leave. Arrested for trespassing, they were later convicted and fined. This youth-led protest was the beginning of a broader civil rights movement in Charleston.

South Carolina Historical Marker #10-85

While we were exploring Charleston, I stopped at a number of South Carolina historical markers, including: Thomas Smith [#10-03], The Siege of Charleston, 1780 [#10-65], The Seizure of the Planter [#10-76], Kress Building [#10-79], Jonathan Jasper Wright Law Office [#10-82] and U.S. Courthouse and Post Office/Briggs V. Elliott [#10-85].

U.S. Courthouse and Post Office/Briggs V. Elliott
South Carolina Historical Marker #10-85
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This marker is located at 83 Broad Street, Charleston, South Carolina. The GPS coordinates for this location are N 32° 46.574 W 079° 55.864.

You can log your visit to this landmark at waymark.com.

This Renaissance Revival building, opened in 1896, is notable for its association with U.S. District Judge J. Waties Waring (1880-1968). Waring, a Charleston native who served here 1942 to 1952, issued some of the most important civil rights rulings of the era. Briggs v. Elliott, the first suit to challenge public school segregation in the U.S., was heard here before three judges on May 28-29, 1951.

Thurgood Marshall and other NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyers represented Harry and Eliza Briggs and 19 other courageous parents from Clarendon County. In a bold and vigorous dissent opposing the prevailing doctrine of separate but equal, Waring declared that segregation “must go and must go now. Segregation is per se inequality.” The U.S. Supreme Court followed his analysis as a central part of its groundbreaking decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

South Carolina Historical Marker #10-76

While we were exploring Charleston, I stopped at a number of South Carolina historical markers, including: Thomas Smith [#10-03], The Siege of Charleston, 1780 [#10-65], The Seizure of the Planter [#10-76], Kress Building [#10-79], Jonathan Jasper Wright Law Office [#10-82] and U.S. Courthouse and Post Office/Briggs V. Elliott [#10-85].

The Seizure of the Planter
South Carolina Historical Marker #10-76
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This marker is located near 40 East Bay Street, Charleston, South Carolina. The GPS coordinates for this location are N 32° 46.385 W 079° 55.637.

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Early on May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls, an enslaved harbor pilot aboard the Planter, seized the 149-ft. Confederate transport from a wharf just east of here. He and six enslaved crewmen took the vessel before dawn, when its captain, pilot, and engineer were ashore. Smalls guided the ship through the channel, past Fort Sumter, and out to sea, delivering it to the Federal fleet which was blockading the harbor.

Northern and Southern newspapers called this feat “bold” and “daring.” Smalls and his crew, a crewman on another ship, and eight other enslaved persons including Smalls’s wife, Hannah, and three children, won their freedom by it. Smalls (1839-1915) was appointed captain of the U.S.S. Planter by a U.S. Army contract in 1863. A native of Beaufort, he was later a state legislator and then a five-term U.S. Congressman.

South Carolina Historical Marker #10-65

While we were exploring Charleston, I stopped at a number of South Carolina historical markers, including: Thomas Smith [#10-03], The Siege of Charleston, 1780 [#10-65], The Seizure of the Planter [#10-76], Kress Building [#10-79], Jonathan Jasper Wright Law Office [#10-82] and U.S. Courthouse and Post Office/Briggs V. Elliott [#10-85].

The Siege of Charleston, 1780
South Carolina Historical Marker #10-65
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This marker is located on King Street, at the northwest corner of Marion Square near Hutson Street, Charleston, South Carolina. The GPS coordinates for this location are N 32° 47.207 W 079° 56.209.

You can log your visit to this landmark at waymark.com.



The British capture of Charleston in May 1780 was one of the worst American defeats of the Revolution. On March 30-31 Gen. Henry Clinton’s British, Hessian, and Loyalist force crossed the Ashley River north of Charleston. On April 1 Clinton advanced against the American lines near this site, held by Gen. Benjamin Lincoln’s Continentals and militia. The 42-day siege would be the longest of the war.

As Gen. Charles Cornwallis closed off Lincoln’s escape routes on the Cooper River, Clinton advanced his siege lines and bombarded Charleston. On May 12, 1780, in front of the American works near this spot, Lincoln surrendered the city and his force of 6,000 men, after what one British officer called “a gallant defense.” The British occupied Charleston for more than 2 1/2 years, evacuating Dec. 14, 1782.

South Carolina Historical Marker #10-82

While we were exploring Charleston, I stopped at a number of South Carolina historical markers, including: Thomas Smith [#10-03], The Siege of Charleston, 1780 [#10-65], The Seizure of the Planter [#10-76], Kress Building [#10-79], Jonathan Jasper Wright Law Office [#10-82] and U.S. Courthouse and Post Office/Briggs V. Elliott [#10-85].

Jonathan Jasper Wright Law Office
South Carolina Historical Marker #10-82
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This marker is located at 84 Queen Street, Charleston, South Carolina. The GPS coordinates for this location are N 32° 46.674 W 079° 55.953.

You can log your visit to this landmark at waymark.com.

Jonathan Jasper Wright (1840-1885), the first African American in the U.S. to sit as a justice on a state supreme court, practiced law here from 1877 until his death in 1885. Wright, a native of Pa., was educated at Lancasterian Academy in Ithaca, N.Y. He came to S.C. in 1865 as a teacher for the American Missionary Association and also worked as an attorney for the Freedmen’s Bureau.

Wright wrote that he hoped to “vindicate the cause of the downtrodden.” He was a delegate to the S.C. constitutional convention of 1868 and a state senator 1868-70. Wright, elected to the S.C. Supreme Court in 1870, resigned in 1877 due to political pressure. After he left the bench he practiced law, helped Claflin College found its Law Department, and became its Chair in Law. He died of tuberculosis in 1885.