“A lovely Gothic Revival piece of architecture in downtown Kingstree.”
The County Record of Kingstree April 13, 1905 stated – “Fire broke out yesterday at the dwelling of W.W. Battiste, a colored carpenter living on Hampton Street. The house burned, but the firefighting efforts saved the Episcopal Chapel next door and a nearby tenant dwelling.”
305 Hampton Street
City Directories and History: The Kingstree Historic District contains forty-eight properties situated along Main Street, Academy Street, and Hampton Street in the commercial area of downtown Kingstree. The district includes the courthouse, public library, railroad station, and numerous commercial buildings. The district is a fine collection of nineteenth-century vernacular commercial architecture. Details such as arched doorways and windows, cast-iron columns and pilasters, decorative or corbelled brick work and pressed tin interior ceilings are present on most of the district’s buildings. The Williamsburg County Courthouse, built ca. 1823, and designed by Robert Mills, is a fine example of Roman Neo-Classical design with its raised first floor, pediment with lunette, and Doric columns. In 1953-54 the courthouse underwent substantial remodeling on the exterior and interior, though it still reflects much of Mill’s original design. With the exception of the courthouse, most of the buildings in the district were built between 1900 and 1920 when Kingstree enjoyed prosperity as a retail and tobacco marketing center of Williamsburg County. The majority of the buildings in the district are a visible record of this twenty-year growth and the historic fabric of the area remains substantially intact. Listed in the National Register June 28, 1982. [Courtesy of the SC Dept. of Archives and History]
View a map showing the boundaries of the Kingstree Historic District.
View the complete text of the nomination form for this National Register property. In addition, the Historic Resources of Kingstree, ca. 1823-1930 includes historical background information for this and other related National Register properties.
Thus, the great majority of the inhabitants belonged to one of these three churches. However, the French Huguenots who settled along the Santee belonged to the Church of England although they worshipped for a while in their native tongue. Probably, as early as 1730, these Huguenots had established two Chapels of Ease in the Santee country. One of these was located several miles north of Lenud’s Ferry on the road to Brittons Ferry. Another was established in “Murrays Ole Field” near Murray’s Ferry. Other Episcopalians on the Santee further west worshipped at St. Mark’s, created as a parish separate from the Prince Frederick’s in 1757.
The Williamsburg Church in Kingstree had noted extreme growth in the 1770’s due to the influx of recent arrivals from Ireland, and the church was enlarged. Due to the large number of late arrivals, this group had eventually gained control of the church. The Reverend Samuel Kennedy, a native of Ireland, had been sent to the Williamsburg Church in 1783, but his doctrinal teachings were not of the strict Scotch Calvinistic type that the descendants of the early settlers held to. These heretical views so outraged the minority, composed of the Witherspoons, Friersons, Flemings, McBrides, and others of their kin, that they decided they had rather “destroy what their fathers had built and consecrated with many prayers, rather than suffer it to be desecrated by the preachings of one who denied the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
(Information from: Names in South Carolina by C.H. Neuffer, Published by the S.C. Dept. of English, USC)
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IMAGE GALLERY via photographer Bill Segars – 2006
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