St. Helena Parish Chapel of Ease Ruins St. Helena Island, South Carolina
National Register of Historic Places Data
St. Helena Parish Chapel of Ease Ruins has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places with the following information, which has been imported from the National Register database and/or the Nomination Form . Please note that not all available data may be shown here, minor errors and/or formatting may have occurred during transcription, and some information may have become outdated since listing.
- National Register ID
- 88001777
- Date Listed
- October 6, 1988
- Name
- St. Helena Parish Chapel of Ease Ruins
- Other Names
- St. Helena Island Parish Church Ruins
- Part of
- Historic Resources of St. Helena Island c. 1740-c. 1935 MPS (Multiple Property Submission)
- Address
- SC Sec. Rd. 45, near jct. with SC Sec. Rd. 37
- City/Town
- Frogmore
- County
- Beaufort
- State
- South Carolina
- Category
- site
- Level of Sig.
- national
- Years of Sig.
- c. 1740; 1812; 1886
- Areas of Sig.
- ART; ARCHITECTURE; RELIGION
Description
Text courtesy of the National Register of Historic Places, a program of the National Parks Service. Minor transcription errors or changes in formatting may have occurred; please see the Nomination Form PDF for official text. Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.
This ruin conforms to the general description of the property type "Structures Associated with Religious Life", subtype "Chapels of Ease," and "Tabby Construction." Much of its historic fabric, including the church walls and much of its plaster, remains.
Statement of Significance
Text courtesy of the National Register of Historic Places, a program of the National Parks Service. Minor transcription errors or changes in formatting may have occurred; please see the Nomination Form PDF for official text. Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.
This ruin is significant as a relatively intact example of mid-eighteenth century tabby construction and for its association with the St. Helena Parish, both as a secondary and primary place of worship for inhabitants of the parish.
It was built c. 1740 as a chapel of ease, to serve planters in St. Helena Parish who lived at great distances from the parish church in Beaufort and could not regularly attend services there. By 1812 the population of St. Helena Island had increased to the extent that the chapel of ease was designated a parish church. A chapel of ease for the new St. Helena Island Parish Church was established at the planters' summer village at St. Helenaville.
The parish church on the island was virtually abandoned when the planters evacuated St. Helena in the fall of 1861. During the Federal occupation of St. Helena, however, the church was used frequently by several of the Northerners who had come to the island to help educate and train the freedmen. Since the the whites held meetings and social gatherings here and the freedmen attended Brick Church, near the center of the island, the freedmen referred to this church during the Civil War as "White Church." It was also used as a sanctuary by Methodist freedmen as early as 1868, but was burned by a forest fire in February 1886 and was never repaired.(1)
A small cemetery adjacent to the church ruin contributes to the historic character of the property.
Although the St. Helena Parish Chapel of Ease/St. Helena Parish Church ruin is a religious property, it is eligible for the National Register under Criteria Consideration A on the basis of its architecture and its historical significance under the themes of Social History and Religion. The cemetery is eligible for the National Register under Criteria Consideration D on the basis of its exceptional gravestone art.
