Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 297, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 December 1919 — HAVE REAL CHARM [ARTICLE]

HAVE REAL CHARM

Old South Carolina Churches Well Worth Visit St Andrew’s, Built In 1702, Once Nstable Aristocratic House of Worship—Goose Creek Edifice Also Interesting.

The charm to some places Is that the changes to them come slowly, and this Is the atmosphere that envelopes Charleston, S. 0., a town of quaint old streets, musty churches, lovely old trees, and hand-wrought Iron doors and gates that first opened to admit subjects of a British king. One leaves all this behind and rides out over 12 miles of the roughest of country roads under trees decorated with long ghostlike strands of Spanish moss to enter a church whose doors awing open but once a year. It is St. Andrew’s church, In St. Andrew’s par* ish, and it opens once annually because this was the condition stipulated in the original crown grant. St. Andrew’s church was built-in 1702. For a century or more it was the regular Sunday meeting place of rich and aristocratic Southerners who lived on adjoining and It is not difficult on a warm spring day to stand under the moss-hung trees near the church and visualize the past. The men and women dressed in gay silks and satins for church-going In those days, and they rode to service In grand style with a pair of handsome horses drawing a commodious- carriage, with a negro slave on the box, and the negroes riding or walking behind. St Andrew’s is not the only church that is opened but once a year. Goose Creek church, some ten miles away, and built in 1706, was also built under a crown grant with the same provision. With the growth of the city, known then as “Charleston by the Sea,” and with better roads, the attendance at the small parish churches diminished. When the last Of these plantations was reduced in grandeur and wealth by the Civil war, and the slaves were scattered all over the globe, those in whom was embodied the spirit of the past had gone to their fathers. A love of tradition, a reverence for the past that makes Charleston charming, sees to it that the order of the royal grant Is obeyed, and a rusty key is turned in a rusty lock once a year; in St. Andrew’s on Easter Sunday, and in Goose Creek the Sunday. after. And Charleston fills up its gasoline tanks on these days anil rides out; and those who haven’t automobiles or other personal means of conveyance, go out by special train, for so far has the present dared to Intrude on the past that special excursions are run by the railroad for these occasions.