Charleston Neck 1750 - 1783

From CCPL:

The neck was the rural, wooded area north of the original settlement

Plantations on either side.

Boundary:

the historic definitions of Charleston Neck:

First, in the 1670s and beyond, early European settlers described the entire peninsula as a “neck of land” between the Ashley and Cooper Rivers; included Charleston itself

Second, following the establishment of “new Charles Town” in 1680, everything north of the town boundary (Beaufain/Hasell Streets) to the northern limit of the parish of St. Philip was called “Charles Town Neck.”

Third, the creation of Boundary (Calhoun) Street in 1769–1770 marked a new, unofficial boundary between the Charles Town and the Neck, and it became the official line of demarcation on the incorporation of the city in 1783.

Fourth, the City of Charleston’s 1850 annexation campaign reduced the definition of the Neck to encompass all of the land between Mount Pleasant Street and the northern boundary of St. Philip’s Parish.

The neck legally extended to the northern boundary of  the Parish of St. Phillip.  In the revised “Church Act” of 1706, the provincial legislature again named John Bird’s plantation on the Cooper River and Christopher Smith’s plantation on the Ashley River as the northernmost landmarks within the parish of St. Philip

According to a tax assessor’s notice published in the spring of 1815, the parish of St. Philip extended northward up to and including a wayside tavern known as “the Six-Mile House.” At that time, the Six Mile House was run by the notorious couple, John and Lavinia Fisher, who were hanged in 1820 for robbing a number of their houseguests. A few years later, in 1825, Robert Mills published his Atlas of South Carolina, which included a detailed map of the parishes contained within Charleston District. On that map, just north of the Six-Mile House and a major fork in the road, you’ll see the parish boundary indicated by a dashed line drawn across the neck. [marked with red arrows on the above map]

Road North from Charleston:

For the first century of Charleston’s existence, there was just one road leading from urban Charles Town northward into the countryside. Traditionally called the Broad Path, the broad road, the high road, or the high way, this main road was really the northward extension of King Street, which led north out of Charles Town and traced a meandering route as it followed the path of high land along the length of the flat, marshy Neck. At the northern limit of the parish of St. Philip, where it met the southwestern point of the parish of St. James, Goose Creek, and the easternmost point of the parish of St. Andrew, the Broad Path forked. To the left, the road continued westward into St. Andrew’s Parish, towards the town of Dorchester. The other fork was really just the continuation of the Broad Path, leading in a northwesterly direction towards Goose Creek. That ancient intersection, marking the northern edge of the parish of St. Philip, also marks the end of the Neck. 

Where is that today? Believe it or not, it’s hiding in plain sight among the suburban sprawl of North Charleston, at the intersection of Dorchester Road and Meeting Street Road (formerly the Broad Path until it was renamed in 1786). So, the modern North Charleston neighborhoods of Cherokee and Charleston Heights, the Cooper River Memorial Library, and the southeastern part of the old U.S. Navy base are all located just within the parish of St. Philip, while the neighborhoods of Whipper Barony and Park Circle, and the northwestern part of the old Navy base, are just within the parish of St. James, Goose Creek.

In the 1720s, the boundary between Charles Town and the Neck was technically what you and I would recognize as Beaufain and Hasell Streets, but, in reality, there were hardly any houses north of Queen Street. After South Carolina became a Royal colony in 1730, however, the inhabitants of Charles Town experienced an unprecedented degree of stability and prosperity that triggered a period of rapid growth. By 1736, the town had definitely expanded and the streetscapes were definitely becoming denser. Around that time, the surveyor general finally marked the town boundary with a stone, and advertisements in the newspapers of Charles Town began making a clearer distinction between the new urban street called King Street and the rural Broad Path or high way on the Neck

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Definition Three: The Neck above Boundary Street

The next big change in the identity of Charleston Neck occurred several years before the American Revolution, as a result of the first wave of suburban development on the peninsula. To grasp the chain of evidence for this story, we have to back up August 1721, when the South Carolina General Assembly ratified a highway act that created a board of “Commissioners of High Roads” in each parish in the colony.[12] In the parish of St. Philip, the only “high road” was the northward extension of King Street, the Broad Path that led from the town, up the Neck, and into the other parishes. The Commissioners of the High Roads for the parish of St. Philip had very little jurisdiction over the streets of urban Charles Town, which experienced a significant construction boom in the 1730s and 1740s. As the town grew denser, developers for the first time began to look northward—beyond the town line—for new real estate. The residential subdivision of George Anson’s pasture land, called Ansonborough, began in 1745 with a grid of new streets and dozens of new suburban lots for sale on the east side of the Broad Path. As the town grew denser and the population increased in the 1740s, residents began clamoring for better public services in unincorporated Charles Town. The streets had become crowded and filthy, filled with animals, wheel ruts, and potholes. Something had to be done, but there was no form of town government to answer the call.

In May 1750, the South Carolina General Assembly ratified an act that created a new board of commissioners to superintend the streets of urban Charles Town. In a roundabout way, this act paved the way for the physical expansion of the unincorporated town’s civic boundary, and simultaneously laid the groundwork for the future incorporation of Charleston. It’s a fascinating document that has never been published, but we’ll save the details for a latter program. Meanwhile, back to the Neck story. The act of 1750 empowered the new street commissioners to raise a new and additional tax—essentially a “town tax”—on all urban properties in Charles Town that abutted a public street, for the purpose of creating and maintaining the urban streets. As old streets were extended and new streets created after 1750, the owners of properties abutting the new streets became liable to pay the additional “town tax.”[13] As a result of this process, the physical boundaries of urban Charles Town expanded, to the north and to the west, in a series of dramatic episodes.

In 1767, the residents of the suburb of Ansonborough successfully petitioned the provincial legislature to extend Meeting Street northward, from Cumberland Street (created in 1747) to George Street (created in 1745).[14] Two years later, in 1769, those same suburban residents petitioned the legislature to create a new cross street on the northern edge of Ansonborough, stretching from the Broad Path eastward to the Cooper River.[15] The creation of this new street, called Boundary Street at the time, represented the first unofficial but very practical step of annexing part of the Neck into the town. In the autumn of 1769, however, Boundary Street only existed to the east of the Broad Path, or King Street. That anomaly changed in the spring of 1770, when the South Carolina legislature ratified an act to lay out and adopt several new streets to the northwest of Charles Town, in a new neighborhood called Coming’s Point or Harleston.[16] The northernmost line of that new suburb was a path called Manigault Street, which stretched from the intersection of Boundary Street and the Broad Path westward to the Ashley River. At some unknown point during the American Revolution, the name “Manigault Street” disappeared, and the entire path across the Neck, between the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, became known as Boundary Street.

As its name implies, the creation of Boundary Street (now called Calhoun Street) was a redefinition of the division between the town and the Neck. For all practical purposes, the legislative acts of 1769 and 1770 represent the annexation of the southernmost part of the Neck into the higher tax bracket of urban Charles Town. The town remained an unincorporated entity until 1783, however, so there was no municipal charter to amend and no increase of corporate responsibilities. Only the Commissioners of Streets, created in 1750, noticed an expansion of their responsibilities and their tax base. In short, the perceived geographic scope of the Neck definitely shrank during the wave of prosperity and expansion in the years just before the American Revolution, but the legal definition of the Neck did not officially change until after the war.

The statute confirming the incorporation of the City of Charleston, ratified by the South Carolina General Assembly in August 1783, formally and legally recognized Boundary Street as the city’s northern limit.[17] From that moment onward, the advent of municipal government in Charleston gradually sharpened the economic and cultural distinctions between the city and the Neck. In the ensuing decades, the relationship between the urban, highly-regulated, dense population of the city and the highly-unregulated, sparse population of the Neck began to deteriorate. Born as siblings sharing a narrow tongue of land, the city and the Neck developed a kind of unhealthy, cantankerous rivalry in the early nineteenth century that lasted well into the late twentieth century.