Dorchester, South Carolina

Dorchester was a town in South Carolina. Situated on the Ashley River around 18 miles (29 km) from Charleston, it was founded in February 1696 by the followers of Reverend Joseph Lord from Dorchester, Massachusetts, who gave it the same name of the town whence they had emigrated, which was in turn named after the English town Dorchester. It was abandoned in 1751.

The town was located near the mouths of Dorchester Creek and Eagle's Creek (Named for Richard Eagle, who bought the land where a road crossed the creek around 1734), where they flowed into the Ashley. To the local Native Americans, this region, especially the land between the two mouths, was referred to as Boo-shoo-ee. It is unknown what exactly the name meant, although the -ee suffix probably referred to water, given that nearly all other names ending in -ee referred to a water feature.

In 1675, a wealthy Englishman named John Smith arrived in South Carolina with his wife Mary. (Their cemetery is located at the end of Marsh Overlook drive and Turning Tide drive in Dorchester county.) Because he was a personal friend of the influential Earl of Shaftesbury, who had requested a generous land grant for him, on November 20, 1676, he was given 1,800 acres (7 km²) of land that included the Boo-shoo-ee region and the nearby Boshoe Swamp. He therefore received the title "John Smith of Boo-shoo". When he died in December 1682, his wife remarried Arthur Middleton, and when he died two years later in 1684, Ralph Izard. Since John Smith was childless, his land grant lapsed after he died.

On October 20, 1695, Reverend Joseph Lord and two of his supporters were officially given permission by the church at Dorchester, Massachusetts to lead a congregation south into South Carolina. Two days later, on October 22, Lord held a gathering where he asked his parishioners to accompany him to the site of the future township. After receiving the endorsement of the well-liked Reverend John Danforth, six more agreed to embark, bringing the total to nine of prospective emigrants. Four of these, however, do not appear in any records as having settled in the new town, so it is possible they changed their minds or died during the trip. At least one did not make it through the journey, as one of the settlers, William Pratt, specifically stated in his diary that there were less than nine when they arrived in South Carolina.

...
Wikipedia