The first Baptist churches on St. Helena Island

A recent inquiry about the first Baptist Church on St. Helena Island led to the following account, which may not be entirely correct and needs to be brought up to date.

The first Baptist Church on St. Helena Island was built circa 1812. It consisted of "a small wooden building" that was replaced on the same lot of land in 1855 with the two-story Brick Church in use today by its African-American congregation. Built before the Civil War, in ante-bellum times, whites sat in the downstairs pews while blacks occupied the gallery.

Land for both of the above structures had been donated by John Fripp, being part of his Corner Plantation. Ante-bellum grave markers in the Brick Churchyard bear the names of some of the best-known founding families of the church and of the plantations of St. Helena Island: Fripp, Pope, Pritchard, McTureau, Perry, Reynold, Chaplin and Sandiford.

In a March 23, 1993 article on Brick Church history, I ended with "the date of the early wooden church (ca. 1812) was derived from the first and oldest burials in the Brick Churchyard."

An earlier church on St. Helena?

There probably was an earlier Baptist church on St. Helena Island. Joe M. King's History of South Carolina Baptists, mentioned a Baptist revival under Joseph Cook's ministry, circa 1789. In a letter to London, the Rev. Cook wrote in September, 1790, "My sphere of action is great, having two congregations to regard at a considerable distance from each other, exclusive of this where I reside." At the time, he was ministering at Euhaw, near Stoney Creek, while Beaufort's first Baptist church dates to 1804.

Joe M. King noted in his History, "that one of the distant congregations was that on St. Helena Island; the other probably a Negro congregation at Savannah. Cook died on September 26, 1790."

There was mention later in the book that "the duties of the Euhaw pastorate were arduous, as there were members on St. Helena, Port Royal, and the Ladies Islands. One of the members who would have assisted most ably in the works, Deacon Charles Bealer, died March 13, 1792." We need more research and information on both of those persons and their spheres of activity.

In 1804, the Euhaw congregation split into two groups, and the property on Port Royal and St. Helena Islands was renounced in favor of "the church about to be constituted in Beaufort."

St. Helenaville Baptist Chapel

The small village of St. Helenaville, on the island of the same name, was described by Harriet Ware, a Northern missionary, in a May 3, 1862 letter: "I could see St. Helena village across the creek, a deserted village of a dozen or more mansions with their house-servants' cabins behind them, and two churches in a large pine wood." One of the two churches was an Episcopal chapel, of which was written that "a new chapel at Helenaville was built and consecrated July 20, 1859, by Bishop Davis, called St. Helenaville Chapel ..." The other was a Baptist chapel.

There was a friendly competition among the Episcopal and Baptist planters on St. Helena Island, when it came to their respective churches ... In St. Helenaville, the Baptists felt that they too should have a chapel. In her 1983 book, Sea Island Diary, Edith M. Dabbs wrote that John Edgar Fripp "called a meeting of the Gentlemen for the purpose of locating and speaking definitely about the church we wish to build in the neighborhood (St. Helenaville) -- concluded to put it by Hazell's gate and send our carpenters at it Monday. They who intend doing the hauling will do so when their crops are planted. I can spare one team."

Civil War changes

In November, 1861, following the battle of Port Royal Sound, the white planters followed military orders of the Confederate Army and evacuated St. Helena Island, leaving most of their African slaves on the plantations. They were soon replaced by Northern missionaries and plantation supervisors. For them, St. Helenaville and its beach facing St. Helena Sound, with its cooling breezes, was a favorite retreat. In 1864, Laura Towne, of Penn School, and Ellen Murray, her companion, lived at St. Helenaville, in one of the "mansions," sometimes attending church where "there was no white minister and two elders preached."

The other white Baptist Church, generally known as "Brick Church," was soon taken over for services for Island African Americans. It also served as a school for black children and special services. After the end of the war in 1865, its African Americans, now freedmen, continued to hold services in Brick Church under their own pastors and elders.

"Brick Church was habitually overflowing with Baptist worshippers on Sundays," wrote Dabbs, in her book Sea Island Diary: A History of St. Helena Island.

Surviving white members of the St. Helena Baptist Church (Brick Church) met at Beaufort on March 28, 1884. Holding that church "for a long time past and still is in a decaying and unprotected state and it is expedient and necessary that immediate steps should be taken for its preservation and protection," Lewis R. Sams, M.D., the only surviving officer of the St. Helena Baptist Church and living in Texas, conveyed the property to the Baptist Church of Beaufort "for the sum of five dollars."

For a nominal sum, Brick Church was then leased to its African-American congregation. Not until July 1973, was Brick Church finally deeded by the Baptist Church of Beaufort, for $1, "to the Brick Baptist Church of St. Helena."