Gibbes Wharf on the Cooper River:
Gibbes Wharf was named for its builder, William Gibbes (1722-1789), an attorney, planter, and factor. He and Robert Mackenzie, Edward Blake, and George Kincaid developed the land at the south end of Legare Street. They built retaining walls, filled the marsh at the head of Conseillere’s Creek, and combined the “made land” with several Town Lots and water lots that extended out to the channel of the Ashley River. In September, 1772, the partners divided the property among themselves by conveying the entire tract to Samuel Legare, then purchasing it back from him in separate transactions.
William Gibbes bought a parcel fronting 273’ along South Bay, its rear boundary “a new street called Gibbes Street.” On the north side of South Bay, he constructed a residence, today’s 64 South Battery; on the south side was a commercial wharf complex with a long pier extending from a quay scattered with sheds and storehouses. The wharf was in service by September 1773, and in March 1774 it had been completed to a length of 300’. Gibbes soon installed a scale-house at the head of the wharf, for “convenient weighing of rice that may be sold on landing and to be immediately shipped.”
During the American Revolution, commercial shipping in and out of Charleston Harbor continued until the British siege of the city began in early 1780. The defenders threw up new defensive works all along the waterfronts, including a battery at the head of Gibbes Wharf. After the surrender of Charleston in May 1780, William Gibbes was exiled to St. Augustine. His wife was evicted from their home, which the British used as an army hospital until the winter of 1782. The occupying army also commandeered Gibbes’s schooner and its enslaved pilot, Toney, and demolished two warehouses associated with the wharf, using the material for their own projects.
With the British evacuation in December, 1782, William Gibbes regained possession of his property. He resumed his commercial trade as a factor, so rebuilding the wharf complex was essential. He solicited for builders and material: 30,000’ of palmetto logs, 30,000’ of pine or cypress timber, 22 feet long, and 20,000 feet of pine or cypress planks the same length. By August 1783 he had “several convenient and safe stores for the reception of rice, indigo, etc.”
In an advertisement published in January 1786, William Gibbes promoted the “safety and conveniency of his wharf … which will prevent the southward boats in particular from the risk and trouble of going round White Point, as well as save them the loss of two tides.”
A few months later, the value of the wharf was increased by City Council’s passage of “An Ordinance to prevent the landing of Naval Stores on any of the Wharves in Charleston except such as are therein mentioned.” Because of their combustibility, naval stores (principally tar and turpentine) were to be unloaded and stored at the three wharves furthest from the center of town – those of Gibbes and Blake on South Bay, and Gadsden’s on the Cooper River above Laurens Street.
William Gibbes died in February 1789. Two years later, in February 1791, his widow, Mary (Cook) Gibbes, and their son William Hasell Gibbes advertised the sale of the wharf and residence. The properties were not sold, and the wharf deteriorated during the ensuing months. In February 1793, when Mrs. Gibbes again offered to sell the house and wharf, she described the “wharf and land whereon the bridge lately stood.” Nearly two years later, in November 1794, Mrs. Sarah Smith bought the dwelling house and grounds at the north side of South Bay.
In early 1796, William Gibbes’s executors again attempted to sell his wharf “together with the low water land whereon the bridge formerly stood. The premises have been lately improved though not finished, and if attended to would yield a handsome profit … there is a bathing house, out of repair, which might be converted into a scale house.” Finally, in 1798 they sold the property to Christopher Williman. About a year later, in March 1799, Williman also bought sixteen acres of low-water lots (below the high tide line) from Gibbes’s estate. Christopher Williman was a planter and investor. Gibbes Wharf was one of many downtown properties he accumulated; he was not actively involved in its management. The wharf was operated by Peter Smith, who lived in the Gibbes house purchased by his mother in 1794.
A factor, Peter Smith traded in naval stores and building materials. Gibbes Wharf was the hub of his business; by 1806 it was generally called Smith’s Wharf. Upon Smith’s retirement in 1823, Capt. George A. Norman continued the business as a factor of wood, lumber, bricks, and lime. From that time, a succession of businesses occupied the wharf, most of them as factors of lumber and naval stores.
Gibbes House
In 1794, William Gibbes’s widow and son sold the Gibbes mansion house to Mrs. Sarah (Moore) Smith, the widow of Thomas Smith. She shared the residence with her son Peter Smith and his wife Mary Middleton, and they remained after her death in 1799. The house remained in Sarah Smith’s estate until after Peter Smith’s death. In 1826, Smith’s nephew Thomas Smith Grimké bought the house from the estate of Grimké’s grandmother, Sarah Smith.Thomas Smith Grimké (1786-1834), left the Gibbes house to his wife, Sarah Drayton Grimké; in turn she left it to her sons Theodore Drayton Grimké and John Grimké Drayton. In 1885 they sold the property to J. B. E. Sloan, who made 64 South Battery his home. Sloan’s executors sold it to Cornelia Roebling in 1928.
From Charleston Footprints: "Charleston’s historic East Bay Street was once lined with more than two dozen large wharves, where tall-masted sailing ships once loaded large cargoes of rice and cotton. The very first wharves where made by tying together palmetto logs, floating them off the bank and sinking them in the mud at low tide, then bridging the distance with stones, tree limbs and even animal carcasses. Not surprisingly, the first such docks were called “bridges”, and in colonial-era maps, there are numerous bridges protruding out into the Cooper River."
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