City Directories and History: Bailey’s Store has significance as one of the last, if not the last, surviving commercial buildings on Edisto Island from the nineteenth century. (Locals called it the deSto on Stdore Creek.) It is thought that this building was built before 1825 on Edingsville Beach, a popular antebellum seaside resort off Edisto Island, and moved to its present location ca. 1870, in reaction to that beach’s abandonment during the Civil War. Thus, it is one of very few pre-war relics from Edingsville, for all remaining structures were swept into the ocean in the hurricane of 1893. The building was moved in two parts to Store Creek, and placed together again, to be used in connection with a gin house already on that location. Bailey’s Store is a two-story, weatherboard clad, rectangular, side gabled roof building which at one time faced 180 degrees in the opposite direction, but when Highway 174 was moved in about 1940 was turned around. For many years the Edisto Island Post Office was located in a one-story shed roof addition on the south elevation, which has recently been removed. A hipped roof covering extends from the western elevation, suspended over the front door. The fenestration of the façade is asymmetrical and is composed of three bays on the first story and five bays on the second story. There is also a one-story, hipped roof addition at the rear. Listed in the National Register November 28, 1986. [ Courtesy of the S.C. Dept. of Archives and History]
Edingsville Beach Island, like Pawleys, Debidue, Sullivans and Morris Islands before, was a more healthful place of escape from the Malaria which used to be such a scourge to the low country planters. Here they found an island with no fresh water but with a good breeze which blew away the Miasmas. The traditional date for the founding of the village of Edingsville is 1824, and the name apparently derives from the owner at that time. A map of Edingsville, dated 1866, shows fifty-one lots—five of which had no houses—with the names of the owners attached: Whaley, Bailey, Jenkins, Baynard, LaRoche, Sea- brook, to name only a few. There is even the notation that the house belonging to the estate of W. Murray had burned. When these planters moved they took their churches with them, for there were two churches on the island, the Presbyterian and probably the Episcopal. 46 The drinking water for this village came from either shallow wells or was supplied by rain water caught in barrels. The hurricane of 1874 destroyed all but three houses of this settlement. Apparently, the sand dunes had been leveled which took away the protection from the waves and wind. In 1885 another hurricane drove the remaining families out. A few years later the two surviving houses on the back beach were tom down and sold, leaving the island to a ghostly garden party and the ghost of a woman in white who wades further and further out into the water until she disappears.
(Information from: Names in South Carolina by C.H. Neuffer, Published by the S.C. Dept. of English, USC)
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