By EVAN R. THOMPSON
HISTORIC BEAUFORT FOUNDATION

Over the last two weeks I outlined the origins of Stuart Town, the voyage to the New World of its first settlers and the establishment of its physical elements. Located on what is now Spanish Point, the short-lived Scottish settlement (1684-1686), despite the enthusiasm of its founders, could not overcome its frontier challenges.

Town founder William Dunlop outlined events that led to the end of Stuart-Town in a letter to the Lords Proprietor of Carolina in September 1686:

“Our present afflictions and misfortunes are so many and great that it would be as tedious for your lordships to hear them as it is impossible for us by words to express them. To tell your Lordships that your whole country, with the lives and estates of all the inhabitants are now exposed to utter loss and irreparable ruin will not sufficiently demonstrate our deplorable condition.

“On the 17th August last three Spanish half-galleys landed their men a little below Stuart’s Town, being guided there by some Indians and English renegades who exactly knew the place. The few inhabitants of that town having scarcely given alarm to their neighbors by firing great guns, when the Spanish came running through the woods, entered the plantations, and approached in two bodies, ere the small number of people then there could get together, so that being unable to oppose so great a force as the enemy appeared to be, they betook themselves to the woods. The Spaniards immediately possessed themselves of the town, where they continued 3 days, and having plundered the houses, destroyed the plantations, killed a great quantity of hogs and cattle, they burnt the town down to the ground and took away two men and a boy prisoners.”

It was learned that some 500 Spaniards were in two or three ships at sea, and they later plundered the house of the provincial governor at his plantation on Edisto Island. Preparations were made at Charles Town to defend against an impending attack, but the first major hurricane faced by the settlers, in late August and early September 1686, destroyed much of the area and scuttled plans by the Spanish to attack.

The hurricane wiped out the remains of the town (and might have brought the settlement to an end even if it had not been attacked). Dunlop continued:

“The whole country seems to be one entire map of devastation … in some places for three or four miles together there is scarce one great tree standing, all paths being so impassable that there is no traveling on horseback and scarce any on foot … We have too great reason to fear the near approach of famine to complete our miseries, which we pray to God in His mercy to direct from us.”

Stuart Town lasted less than two years, but its significance is not measured in the number of months and weeks that it survived. As one of the earliest attempts to settle a primarily Scottish colony in the new world, as the first attempt at a planned community in Beaufort County, as a symbol of the hope for religious liberty and freedom of conscience represented by the early colony of South Carolina, and as evidence of the hope and promise that has been afforded by this place to generations of men and women over the last four centuries, Stuart Town is significant.

The memory of Stuart Town remained strong over a century later, even among those who did not participate in the adventure, but whose ancestors were involved.

A descendant of Lord Cardross, the Earl of Buchan, wrote a letter of sympathy to Martha Washington in 1800 from his home in Scotland on the death of George Washington in December 1799. He extolled Washington’s virtues, praised America, and then claimed for himself the mantle of an American.

“Considering my uniform regard for the American States, manifested long before their forming a separate nation, I may be classed as it were among their citizens, especially as I am come of a worthy ancestor, Lord Cardross, who found refuge there in the last century, and had large property in Carolina, where Port Royal is now situated.”

Next year (in November) will mark the 325th anniversary of the founding of Stuart Town. Perhaps we can work toward the erection of a permanent historical marker along Ribaut Road, adjacent to Spanish Point, commemorating the town and its fate. State highway markers cost approximately $2,000, and the funds would need to be raised for the effort. Perhaps it could be installed along Ribaut Road near the traffic light at Spanish Point.

Evan R. Thompson is the executive director of the Historic Beaufort Foundation. He can be reached at ethompson@historicbeaufort.org