Burned Twice, Still Standing: South Carolina’s Sheldon Church
Ruins are personal matters. Someday, you may see what remains of Sheldon Church in southeastern South Carolina and be unmoved. But the place, set among the Low Country’s oaks and moss, calls me to visit whenever I near.
Consider this question for starters: What building, in our entire country, might have been “the first conscious attempt in America to imitate a Greek temple?” Sheldon Church (formerly Prince William Parish Church) is your answer.
And how many buildings in our country have survived being burned both during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War? Few, we can suppose, and Sheldon Church, many still believe, is one of them.
photo by: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, SC, 7-SHELD, 1-1
The church has been abandoned for many decades and left for ruin, as seen in this HABS photograph.
Land for Sheldon Church was donated by the Bull family from the original holdings of Edmund Bellinger, who was awarded the lands in 1698 by England's Lords Proprietors. The name Sheldon Church was used in honor of the Bull family whose Carolina plantation and ancestral home in Warwickshire, England, were both called Sheldon Hall.
Overlooked in my state’s history is the pivotal role South Carolina played in the Revolutionary War. More battles were fought here—over one hundred—than in any other state. Sheldon Church, put to use as a political and military center by Continental troops, paid the price for its service when it was burned by General Augustine Prevost’s British troops in May 1779.
It was not until 1825 that the church was rebuilt from the remaining walls. On January 14, 1865, it was again burned, this time by General Sherman’s 15th Corps under General John Logan. It was never rebuilt.
[Ed. note: As it turns out, the church was not burned twice. According to W. Eric Emerson, Ph.D., Director and SHPO at South Carolina Department of Archives and History, the old marker attributing the destruction to Sherman "was replaced in 2013 with a new marker that reflects that the church was disassembled by freedmen, presumably for construction materials." Learn more about the discovery here.]
photo by: Bill Fitzpatrick
Chad Keller, professor of historic preservation at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), is documenting Sheldon Church with students as part of a new class called "Digital Technology and Historical Preservation." Students created a 3-D version of what they thought the building looked like in 1825 when the building was reconstructed the second time.
This past year, the Preservation Society of Charleston added the Old Sheldon Church Ruins to its Seven to Save list. The Society will direct a conservation study, which will involve utilizing innovative 3-D modeling techniques to digitally document the ruins. A materials and conditions assessment of the entire structure will also be undertaken. The data will then be used to develop an overall preservation plan for the property.
Sheldon Church, located in Beaufort County, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
