We are back in North Carolina for the summer. On the long trips back and forth, I love to find interesting sites to visit along the way. It seems to make the transit a bit more worthwhile.

A quiet stop off I-95 reveals centuries of Lowcountry history

This trip, we spent the night en route in Yemassee, SC. It was just a few miles from I-95 in Beaufort County to the site of a beautiful red brick church ruin dating from the days before the Revolutionary War.

The Prince William’s Parish (Anglican) Church was built in the 1740s in the Greek Revival style as an outpost of the mother church in nearby Beaufort. Some reports say it’s the first Greek Revival building in the US; all agree it was at least one of the earliest. The land was donated by the Royal Governor of South Carolina, Col. William Bull, who owned the large adjacent plantation. It is most often referred to as “Sheldon Church,” in honor of the Bull ancestral home in England.  It was karma that, on this lovely, cool morning, we met the groundskeeper who was trimming for a scheduled graduation ceremony. As groundskeeper, he had been given a box of documents to store, including many of the church’s historic records.

The morning light filtered through the impressive moss-draped oak canopy as he enlightened us about a more accurate history than many of the reported stories. It is undisputed that the church was burned by local Loyalists during the Revolutionary War and rebuilt in the 1820s. This is Swamp Fox territory, where the famous revolutionary Marion Francis ruled, and it was believed he stored arms and ammo on the site.

Separating myth from fact at one of South Carolina’s most haunting sites

When research was done to place the site on the National Register of Historic Places, letters from Confederate soldier, Milton Leverett, a Bull family descendant, were discovered. Those letters recorded details about what happened to the church in the years during and after the Civil War. Stories of being burned by Sherman were not accurate, according to the letters. Sherman was directed to burn the South – but not the churches. The letters attributed the destruction of the church to being dismantled by local black and white families and repurposed for housing in the severely devastated region. People simply made do with what they could.

The 3.5-foot brick walls stood, overtaken by wild growth, untended for more than 150 years. Since the 1920s, the parent church, St. Helena’s in Beaufort, occasionally held an open-air service on the site and, in 1937, the Colonial Dames erected a plaque on the ruins (with incorrect info). It was otherwise overlooked and forgotten until a local resident took on the task of having it memorialized with the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. Today, an updated historic marker along Old Sheldon Church Road reflects the more accurate history.

Many of the scattered historic grave markers on the church grounds have also been restored.

Visiting the site is free and open to the public (still privately owned by the Anglican Church in Beaufort). Your GPS should get you to the spot, but don’t blink, or you might miss the historic marker and entrance. There is an area for parking across the road. You are in the Lowcountry, so bring bug spray for most times of the year.