“Fort Moultrie”
City Directories and History: The 1882 ad appeared for the company in the City Directory.
The Yorkville Enquirer reported on May 12, 1881 sited the report in the Augusta Daily News – “A NY investor has subscribed $130,000. for improving Sullivan’s Island and a large hotel will be built there.”
The Rock Hill Herald reported on Sept. 1, 1881 – “Large quantities of stone for the jetties in Charleston have been received from the S.C. Penitentiary quarries near Columbia.”
The Rock Hill Herald reported on Sept. 3, 1885 – “A tornado struck Charleston on Aug. 25th doing great damage. The new Ashley River Bridge, under construction was swept away. On Sullivan’s Island a number of houses were destroyed and the new Brighton Hotel Casino fell to the ground. Water came over the battery and damaged the wall and pavements. The roof of the courthouse was lost. Ships at the waterfront on the Cooper River were damaged. The hospital was blown down and a number of churches were damaged and unroofed.”
Sullivans Island, Charleston County, is one of two islands which help to form Charleston Harbor (the other being Morris Island; see below). It takes its name from Captain Florence O’Sullivan, a rather colorful soldier of fortune, who first comes on to the pages of history in 1668. In that year he filed a petition, stating that he and a Captain Stapleton, under a commission from Lord Willoughby, had each raised a company of foot soldiers at their own expense in the Barbadoes for an expedition to St. Christophers in the Caribbean. On the way there they captured two French ships at Todos Santos, near Guadaloupe. A hurricane drove them ashore with their prizes. They held out for eleven days against the forces of the Governor of Guadaloupe, but had to surrender when their ammunition gave out. They were imprisoned for eleven months on that island then sent to France, where they had to ransom themselves for 200 Livres.
In 1516 Captain O’Sullivan next shows up with twelve servants in the Ship Carolina, when it was riding in the Downs of the Port of London. He was appointed Deputy and Surveyor General of South Carolina in 1669, but proved incompetent: people complained that he overcharged them for laying out the lots and that the lots were smaller than they should have been. He was dismissed as Deputy and forced to share his Surveyor Generalship, with only one-fourth the fees going to O’Sullivan. Later he was dismissed entirely. One person complained to the Lords Proprietors, “. . . yet justice to the Country prompts me not to forget the trouble Capt. Sullivan hath his country into by his ignorance whose ill fate is to profess much, to perform nothing …”O’Sullivan seems to have married the widow of Michael Moran and left as his own legatee his step-daughter, Katherine. He was chosen to Parliament in 1672. He was an officer of the Militia 1672-1676 with the Muster House being his own home. He was arrested in the Culpepper Riots, yet was appointed Commissioner of Public Accounts, 1682-1683. It would seem from the above and other accounts of Early Charles Towne that the only thing which kept Capt. Florence in any position was his military ability, for the colony needed military men in its early years.
While Sullivan’s Island bears his name, he does not seem to have ever owned it. His plantation of 2400 acres was on the mainland and would cover most of the area of the present town of Mt. Pleasant. The island was named for him because he had charge of the signal gun there which was to have been fired at the approach of enemy ships. At the time of the combined French and Spanish invasion of 1706, signal fires were lit on the island as an alarum—one fire for each ship. The idea of a signal gun possibly was abandoned due to its cost.
In June of 1776 the American Revolution came to South Carolina when a fleet of fifty British ship appeared off Charleston bar. As part of the harbor defenses a palmetto fort had been erected on Sullivans Island. This fort, commonly called Fort Moultrie after its commanding officer, survived the British attack of 28 June. Later, another fort was erected here in 1812. This one though was of brick and is the present Fort Moultrie. Here Oceola, the Seminole Indian Chief, was imprisoned for many years. The town of Sullivans Island began as a summer resort for the Charlestonians who wished to escape the summer heat. It was called Moultrieville, evidently from the nearby fort. As with many such places, it gradually became a year-round resort and is so today.
(Information from: Names in South Carolina by C.H. Neuffer, Published by the S.C. Dept. of English, USC)
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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
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