Governor West was a grave and sober-minded
man, and can but have been amused at the magnificent
directions which Lord Ashley sent for the building of
the chief town of a province which had at that time only
twelve hundred inhabitants. It should, His Lordship said,
have at least sixscore squares each of three hundred feet
and " it is necessary that you lay out the great Port Town
into regular streets, for be the buildings never soe meane
and thin at first, yet as the town increases in riches and
people, the voyde spaces will be filled up and the buildings
will grow more beautyfull. Your great street cannot be
less than one hundred or six score broad, your lesser streets
none under 60, your alleys 8 or ten feet. APallisado round
the Towne with a small ditch is a sufficient Fortification
against the Indians. There is a necessity that you leave
a Common round the Towne soe that noe Enclosure may
come nearer than the 3rd part of a mile to the Pallisado,"
etc.
For the carrying out of these directions West had the
assistance of his committee of Council. Surveyor-general
Culpepper had already drawn a plan and Stephen Bull
(afterward surveyor-general) took an active part.
Stephen Bull was, next to West and Woodward, the most
important of all the emigrants who came with Governor
Sayle. He came bringing many servants, and at once took
up a large body of land on Ashley River and named it
Ashley Hall." He was Lord Ashley's deputy, a member of Council, master of ordnance, and held a dozen other
important offices. Of most consequence to the colony
was the fact that as an explorer among the Indians he became
so friendly with them that they chose him for their
Cassique, and he thus was enabled to make an advantageous
treaty with them in 1696. A small one-storv
brick house built by him at Ashley Hall is still standing,
the oldest on the river. The estate remained in the
possession of the family for over two hundred years, and
in all those years there was hardly a time in which one of
the name did not go out to take part in the government
of South Carolina.
The committee does not seem to have attempted to execute
Lord Ashley's plan in full. Everything, however,
is comparative, and the wide streets of that day are the
narrow ones of this. Not even the most devoted Charlestonian
would now call Tradd, Elliott, and Church streets
" broad," but Mr. Thomas Ashe, clerk of the ship Richmond,
writing in 1682 says,
" The town is regularly laid out into broad and capacious streets"!
It really was a narrow parallelogram about four squares
long by three wide. The first street fronted on the Cooper
River, extending on the south from a creek (Vander
Horst's), which ran where Water Street is now, to another
on the north over which the City Market now stands.
On the west the present Meeting Street was bounded
by a wall in which wTas a half moon, with a gate and drawbridge
giving access to the country without. The wall
also extended along the three sides of water front, and had
bastions and small forts at the corners. Of course all
this was not constructed at once, but it was as described
in a very few years. From the river front projected
wharves, and soon " sixteen merchant vessels sometimes
rode at once in the harbour." There was a place reserved,
Ashe says, for a church and a Town Hall and a parade
ground for the militia. The streets running north and
south were Bay Street, Church, and Meeting; east and west
were Tradd, so named in honour of the first male white
child born in the town, Elliott, Broad, and Dock, now
Queen. The early maps show these only extending from
the Bay to Meeting Street, but in 1700 they are said to
reach from river to river. Some persons lived outside of
the walls on little farms, and the Council ordered that the
peninsula should be cleared of all trees and bushes that
might conceal a lurking enemy. There was a court of
guard, and watch was kept, both there and upon Sullivan's
Island, for "Topsayle Vessels" and other suspicious
craft.
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