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The Carolina Antiquary

Local history of the Carolinas, the backcountry & the southern frontier

The age of contact to the close of the nineteenth century

Between the tidewater and the mountains lies a country older than its records. Long before the ships, the Mississippian nations raised earthen mounds along these rivers; then came the Spanish, the French, the English, the enslaved, and the fugitive — each leaving marks on the land and one another.

The Carolina Antiquary is a slow undertaking: a rolling record of that history, published a piece at a time. Our ground runs from the South Carolina Lowcountry through the North Carolina Piedmont, into upper Georgia and across the Blue Ridge into western Tennessee — with the Carolinas at its heart. New dispatches are added as they are written. The almanac below keeps the calendar of days worth remembering.

Published in parts

Dispatches

Essays on the people, trades, and turns of Carolina history — added as the ink dries.

No. I  ·  The Lowcountry  ·  1740s

The Indigo Bloom

How a teenaged planter's daughter and a blue dye gilded the South Carolina Lowcountry.

In the 1740s, while managing her family's plantations near Charles Town, Eliza Lucas experimented with indigo — a crop few believed could pay in Carolina. Her success turned a difficult dye into one of the colony's great export staples, second only to rice, and reshaped the fortunes and the labor of the Lowcountry for a generation. This first dispatch follows the plant from seed to vat to the deep blue that colored an empire's cloth.

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No. II  ·  Seewee Bay  ·  1670

Landfall at Seewee Bay

The storm-battered voyage that planted the first lasting English settlement in the Carolinas.

Three ships left London in 1669; a hurricane at Barbados left one. In March 1670 the survivor, the Carolina, anchored in Seewee Bay, and within weeks the settlers laid out Charles Town on the Ashley. This dispatch retraces the crossing, the first uneasy dealings with the Seewee people, and the founding of a port that would become the wealthiest city in British North America.

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No. III  ·  The Backcountry  ·  1780

The Overmountain Men

How militia from beyond the Blue Ridge marched east and broke the Loyalist tide at Kings Mountain.

In the autumn of 1780, frontiersmen from the far side of the mountains — the watersheds of what is now western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee — gathered at Sycamore Shoals and marched to meet a Loyalist force on the Carolina border. Their victory at Kings Mountain on the seventh of October turned the Southern campaign of the Revolution. This dispatch follows them from muster to musket.

Read the dispatch →

Forthcoming

Days worth remembering

The Almanac

A perpetual calendar of notable days in the history of the Carolinas and the frontier. Turn to any date.

By the Day

  1. Jan 171781Battle of Cowpens — Daniel Morgan routs Tarleton in the SC upcountry.
  2. Mar 151670The ship Carolina reaches Seewee Bay; the first English settlers land.
  3. May 161771Battle of Alamance ends the Regulator uprising in the NC backcountry.
  4. May 201775Mecklenburg County adopts its resolves at Charlotte (the disputed "Meck Dec").
  5. May 231788South Carolina ratifies the U.S. Constitution — the eighth state.
  6. Jun 281776The palmetto-log fort on Sullivan's Island repels the British fleet at Charles Town.
  7. Aug 181587Virginia Dare is born on Roanoke Island; the colony later vanishes.
  8. Sep 51713The Great Hurricane of 1713 strikes Charles Town.
  9. Sep 91739The Stono Rebellion — the largest slave uprising in the colonies to that time.
  10. Oct 71780Battle of Kings Mountain on the NC–SC border turns the Southern campaign.
  11. Nov 21669The first Carolina-bound colonists reach Barbados; a hurricane wrecks one ship.
  12. Dec 101718The pirate Stede Bonnet is hanged at White Point, Charles Town.
  13. Dec 201860South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the Union.

By the Year

  1. c. 1400sMississippian mound-building nations flourish along the region's rivers.
  2. 1521Francisco Gordillo makes one of the earliest Spanish contacts on the SC coast.
  3. 1526Ayllón's short-lived colony, among the first European attempts on the coast.
  4. 1562Jean Ribault founds Charlesfort on Parris Island; it does not last.
  5. 1566–68Juan Pardo's expeditions push into the western NC and TN mountains.
  6. 1663Charles II grants Carolina to the eight Lords Proprietors.
  7. 1670Charles Town is founded on the Ashley River.
  8. 1711–15The Tuscarora War convulses eastern North Carolina.
  9. 1715–17The Yamasee War nearly destroys the young SC colony.
  10. 1729Carolina becomes two royal colonies, North and South.
  11. 1740sEliza Lucas pioneers indigo as a Lowcountry cash crop.
  12. 1786Columbia is laid out as South Carolina's new inland capital.
The undertaking

About

The Carolina Antiquary is a small, unhurried project devoted to the local history of the Carolinas and their frontier — the Lowcountry and the Piedmont, upper Georgia and the overmountain country of western Tennessee — from the eve of European contact through the nineteenth century.

It publishes in parts. Dispatches are researched and posted as they are finished, rather than on any fixed schedule, and the almanac grows alongside them. The aim is not to be comprehensive but to be careful: to tell true, particular stories of a particular ground.

Staff — To be determined.