Charleston, South Carolina: Charles Town Until 1783

For more than a century, Charleston, South Carolina, was called Charles Town, after King Charles II of England. The spelling you see on maps today arrived in 1783, when the state legislature turned the town into a city and gave it a new legal name.

A king’s name on the Ashley River

Henry Gannett’s 1905 place-name book for the U.S. Geological Survey puts it simply: the city “was originally called Charles Town, in honor of Charles II of England.” That’s the same king who granted the province of Carolina to eight of his supporters in 1663, which is a story of its own (see how South Carolina got its name).

The first colonists landed in April 1670 on the first high point on the west bank of a river that the explorer Robert Sandford had already named the Ashley, Edward McCrady writes in his 1897 history of the colony. They called that spot Albemarle Point. On November 1, 1670, Lord Ashley, one of the Proprietors, wrote that the town “as now planted out is to be called Charles Town.” McCrady adds that the name doesn’t seem to have been adopted until September 1, 1671.

It wasn’t even the first Charles Town in Carolina. In 1911, the historian Alexander S. Salley Jr. noted that settlers from Barbados had started a colony on the Charles River, today’s Cape Fear in North Carolina, in May 1664, and it “was called Charles Town.” That one had been abandoned before the Ashley River colony got going, Salley adds, and the name got used again.

The name moved with the people

The first site had a problem. Arthur Mazyck, librarian of the Charleston Library Society, explained in his 1875 guide to the city that it was “inconvenient for shipping,” so people began building closer to the sea, on Oyster Point, where the Ashley and Cooper rivers meet. By 1677 there were enough houses there to need a name, and it got “the rather humble title of Oyster Point Town.”

The Lords Proprietors made it official. On December 17, 1679, they wrote to the governor that “Oyster Point is the place we do appoint for the port town of which you are to take notice and call it Charles Town,” McCrady quotes. The government moved in the spring of 1680. For a while some people said New Charles Town, and from 1682 it was simply Charles Town, or Charlestown. By Mazyck’s day there was “scarcely a trace remaining” of the first town, and the creek just below it was called Old Town Creek.

From Charles Town to Charleston

McCrady sums up the spelling in a footnote. Under the Proprietors it was written Charles Town, under the royal government Charlestown, and “since the incorporation of the city, after the Revolution (1783), it has been written Charleston.”

You can watch the switch happen inside the law itself. The act of August 13, 1783, “An Act to incorporate Charleston,” opens by talking about “the extent and population of Charlestown.” A few lines later it declares that the town “shall hereafter be called and known by the name of the City of Charleston.” So the legislature didn’t drop the king. It just ran his name into one word.

Sources & further reading

• Edward McCrady, The History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, 1670–1719 (1897). The April landing on the west bank of the river Sandford had named the Ashley, and “The point on which they settled they named Albemarle Point” (p. 126); Lord Ashley’s letter of November 1, 1670, “the town as now planted out is to be called Charles Town,” the name adopted about September 1, 1671, and the footnote on the spellings Charles Town, Charlestown and Charleston (p. 145); the Proprietors’ letter of December 17, 1679, the move of 1680, New Charles Town and the name from 1682 (p. 182).
• Arthur Mazyck, Guide to Charleston Illustrated (1875). The first site “inconvenient for shipping,” Oyster Point Town in 1677, New Charles Town in 1680, “scarcely a trace remaining” and Old Town Creek (pp. 8–9).
• The Statutes at Large of South Carolina, vol. 7. Act No. 1191 of August 13, 1783, with “the extent and population of Charlestown” and “the City of Charleston” (p. 97).
• Alexander S. Salley Jr., ed., Narratives of Early Carolina (1911). The 1664 settlement on the Charles (Cape Fear) River that “was called Charles Town” (p. 77), abandoned before the Ashley River settlement (p. 362).
• Robert Mills, Statistics of South Carolina (1826). Oyster Point Town in 1677, New Charlestown in 1680 and Charlestown in 1682 (p. 390).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905). “Originally called Charles Town, in honor of Charles II of England” (p. 76).
• GNIS feature 1221516 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for Charleston: county and coordinates.