City Directories and History: LIGHTWOOD-SOMMERS HOUSE
Constructed 1748-50; rebuilt 1789-96
“A wealthy merchant partner of Gabriel Manigault and co-owner of the ship Neptune built a substantial brick house on this lot after acquiring it from the Baker family of Archdale Hall Plantation in 1748. Lightwood devised the property to his illegitimate sons, Edward and John Lightwood, at his death in 1769. The younger Edward Lightwood owned McLeod Plantation on James Island. The prosperous
contractor Humphrey Sommers purchased 12 Tradd Street in 1784 and directed his executors at his death in 1788 to build “substantial brick buildings” on the property. The building’s form and its presence on this site on a 1788 map may indicate a renewal by Sommers’s executors of a structure surviving the fire of 1778. Sommers bequeathed to his daughters the adjoining structures: the stuccoed double tenements at 16-18 Tradd Street and the unpainted scored stucco facade of 2 Bedon’s Alley.”
Information from: The Buildings of Charleston – J.H. Poston for the Historic Charleston Foundation, 1997
Other sources of interest: Charleston Tax Payers of Charleston, SC in 1860-61 and the Dwelling Houses of Charleston by Alice R.H. Smith – 1917 The HCF may also have additional data at: Past Perfect and further research can be uncovered at: Charleston 1861 Census Schedule or The Charleston City Guide of 1872
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