Shem Creek Mount Pleasant South Carolina

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Shem creek , South Carolina

Shem Creek has always been a workingcreek. It fed the Sewee Indians and ferriedthe father of our country safely across theharbor. It powered saw mills and rice millsand served up turtles whose meat wonacclaim at fine restaurants in the Northeast.It pumped money into

’seconomy with every net full of shrimp thatits trawlers hauled back to the docks. And itworked magic for children, opening its arms to generations of little boys and girls who paddled into the creek holes, imaginations brimming, searching for adventure and buriedtreasures.Shem Creek is still a working creek today, although much of the work has changed. Itstill feeds people, but today they’re mostly guests at the restaurants alongside the docks.Boats still come and go, but today the watercraft is more recreational than commercial.Yet despite changing tides and times, Shem Creek still provides a livelihood, a playground and a sense of place. It’s the village’s touchstone — a picture-postcard placethat still and always captures the heart and soul of Mount Pleasant.Bricks, buckets,

and fleets.The Indians are thought to have called it Shemee, possibly for a small tribe that lived onits banks. Shem Creek, whose head is near present-day Bowman Road, was commonlyknown in the 1700s by the name of the men who owned the land alongside it. It wasSullivan’s Creek (for Capt.

O’Sullivan, the patriot for whom Sullivan’s Island isnamed), Dearsley’s Creek (for George Dearsley, thought to have been one of the firstshipbuilders on the creek) and Parris Creek (after Alexander Parris, who also owned landnear Beaufort where the Parris Island U.S. Marine facilities are today).Shipbuilding made Shem Creek a working creek, but it was far from the only activitythere. Peter Villepontoux ran a lime kiln on the creek in the 1740s to supply the growingnumber of brickyards in the Lowcountry. Between 1745 and the start of the Civil War in1861, more than 50 brickyards had operations on the Wando and Cooper rivers.

" More than two decades after the war ended, themodern seafood and boat building industries onShem Creek were born... "

Ferry service made Shem Creek a hub of business as well. In 1770, EnglishmanAndrew Hibben bought a charter to run a ferry from the south side of ShemCreek to Charleston. Hibben’s Ferry was the first to connect Haddrell’s Point (thename given to the Old Village area after colonist George Haddrell) with the city of

Charleston

; other ferries had run from Hobcaw Creek. Hibben charged 33 centsfor passengers, 21 cents for horned cattle, 75 cents for two-wheeled carriagesand $1.75 for four-wheeled carriages.

In 1791, when President George Washington visited the South Carolina Lowcountry as part of his “Southern Tour,” Major Peter Bocquet provided him with a special barge thatwas refurbished and lengthened at Pritchard’s Shipyard on Hobcaw Creek. A dozencaptains — one from each of the 12 American ships anchored in Charleston Harbor at thetime — were invited to man the oars for the president’s crossing of the channel. A flotillaaccompanied the presidential barge across the harbor, with crowds cheering and bands onseveral vessels providing music for the celebration.In 1795, millwright and inventor Jonathan Lucas built a combination rice mill/saw millon Shem Creek — the first water-driven rice mill in the area. The man and his work liveon in the names of the thoroughfares along the creek — Mill Street and Lucas Street.Lucas’s mill was on the site of an earlier mill called Greenwich Mill, built by landowner Jonathan Scott. In the mid-1800s, John Hamlin’s Mount Pleasant Bucket Factory on thesouth side of the creek, in the area of present-day Live Oak Drive and Bennett Street,supplied not only buckets, but painted and unpainted pine,

cypress

, assorted lumber, andlathes as well.War on the creek The Civil War touchedShem Creek , just as it did the rest of the Charleston area. In theearly 1860s, workers at Jones Shipyard on the creek had built a steamer called ThePlanter that owner F.M. Jones intended for use by nearby plantations. The vessel wasinstead put into service as a blockade runner for the Confederacy because of its shallowdraft and speed. On May 13, 1862, while the vessel’s white officers were ashore, ThePlanter’s black quartermaster, Robert Smalls, and the rest of the all-black crew saw their opportunity and seized it. Smalls and his fellow sailors steered the ship out to meet Unionvessels at the mouth of the harbor and were later rewarded for their daring.At the time of the war, there was a grist mill on Shem Creek in the area that is now theShemwood II subdivision. The mill ground rice and corn grown on local plantations. InFebruary 1865, Mount Pleasant’s intendant (mayor), Henry Slade Tew, wrote a letter tohis daughter telling her of the ill fate that befell the mill:“I heard that orders had been given to burn the mill and contents, and about 1,200 bushelsrough rice of which near 200 was my own, and I had also the stores for the poor in it. Iregarded this as a wanton act of cruelty, as ours was an isolated community having nolocal source of supply, and all that was in the mill would not have afforded more thanwould suffice to feed them a month or two, and the destruction of the mill itself would

deprive the people of a means of havingany rice beat or corn ground, and mustcause great suffering.”Tew went to mill to try to stop the burning, appealing personally to Capt.C.P.

and his cavalry as theyapproached bearing torches. “He (Bolton)admitted the cruelty of the act, knewfrom his long service at this post that themill was the only source for the inhabitants to prepare their grain for food, but his orderscompelled him to destroy it, and fire was accordingly applied, and the devilish act, I mustcall it, accomplished.”Terrapins and trawlersMore than two decades after the war ended, the modern seafood and boat buildingindustries on Shem Creek were born. In 1890, William Hale was operating an oyster factory on the creek, and in 1895, Capt. Robert Holman Magwood bought the MountPleasant Boat Building Co., docking his boats there and also operating a turtle crawl. The“Cooter Pen” shipped live diamondback terrapins to the larger cities in the Northeast,where they appeared on the menus of the finest

hotels

.By the 1930s, though, shrimping and boat building were the major industries on thecreek. The Darby family boughtMount PleasantBoat Building in 1921 and the businessthrived, specializing in engine installation, repairs and equipment sales as well asconstruction. When the company closed in 1990, the boat building business ceased on thecreek.The shrimping industry continues at Shem Creek, although it faces pressure from cheapforeign imports, development on the creek, and the lack of ready supplies of two criticalingredients for the trawlers — ice and fuel. In the 1930s, Capt. William C. Magwoodintroduced the first powered trawler on the creek, the Skipper, and the Magwood familytoday is still a staple of the local seafood business. Also a fixture on the creek is MountPleasant Seafood, established in 1945 by W.D. Toler. His son-in-law, Rial Fitch, hasowned the business since 1975 and has had a front-row seat for the changes on the creek.“The biggest change I’ve seen is the growth and upcropping of the restaurants,” Fitchsays. “Originally there was just the Lorelei, then the Trawler, and then the others startedcoming — RB’s, The Barge. Down at the other end there’s Shem Creek Bar and Grill,and next to them — I can’t even remember all the others.“Right behind that is the change from having all-commmercial and all-working boats toso many recreational and pleasure boats,” he says. “There used to be from 100 to 120shrimp trawlers that frequented the creek at different times and unloaded betweenSimmons Seafood, Mount Pleasant Seafood, the Magwoods and all the different docks.

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