Pineville Chapel - Berkeley County, S.C.

1030 Matilda Circle

City Directories and History: This chapel was organized in 1794 and beautifully constructed in 1810, as a simple meeting style house of worship.

Pineville (Pineville Community) is located about six miles west of the Town of St. Stephen, beginning at the junction of State Highways 6 and 45, and ending roughly two miles to the west. It is not a town in the real sense of the word, for it has only a few scattered stores along State Highway 45. The rest of it is composed of houses and a few churches. Pineville was not always this way. This is the result of the Civil War. In 1794 Captain John Palmer, Peter Gaillard, Major Samuel Porcher, and their families, together with three other persons and their families founded the town. In 1805 a grammar school was built here, which was called the Pineville Academy, with a full time school master. The academy was two stories high with four columns across the front and measured approximately forty by sixty feet. (The ruins are in the late Mr. W. P. Gourdine’s pasture. The columns were pulled down by his father many years ago.) An Episcopal chapel had been built here prior to 1794 as a Chapel of Ease to the Episcopal Church in St. Stephen. With the building of the academy, church life here really began. A Mr. Baker from New Hampshire, the head of the academy, conducted lay services in the old chapel which was to the northwest of Pineville. When a new chapel was built closer to town, or in town, in 1810, the old chapel was taken down, carted into town and reassembled as the Pineville Public Library. A Jockey Club was established here and was one of the highlights of the social season. The race track, called the St. Stephen’s Race Course and located a half mile from town, was built in 1794. It lasted until 1836. In 1819 Pineville had 26 houses and a fluctuating population of from 160 to 182 people. In 1860 it is said to have had 90 houses.

There seem to be no records of taverns in the town itself, although there must have been some. T h e r e Highway 6 crosses Crawl Branch, and another at Will Town Plantation. Both Gen. Francis Marion and the Botanist Thomas Walter lie buried near here, as does Hezekiah Maham of Ft. Watson fame. In 1865 one of the Union Armies came through Pineville. All that remain of the old Pineville are seven houses, which are still standing. Pineville was so named for the pine trees which grow in the area.

(Information from: Names in South Carolina by C.H. Neuffer, Published by the S.C. Dept. of English, USC)

Pineville Chapel

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