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"S" is for Strawberry Chapel

South Carolina From A to Z
SC Public Radio

"S" is for Strawberry Chapel (Berkeley County). James Child, founder of Childsbury Town on the Cooper River in St. John’s Berkeley Parish, bequeathed an acre and a half for a chapel. The building was completed by 1725, when the Commons House passed an act establishing a parochial chapel of ease at the site. Chapels of ease made services more accessible to those who lived a distance from the parish church. The plan of the chapel is typical of Anglican churches in colonial South Carolina: rectangular with entrances on the north, south, and west sides and a jerkin-head roof. Bull’s-eye windows ornament both gable ends, while single windows flank the doorways and the altar. Although no longer in regular use, services were still held at Strawberry Chapel several times per year into the twenty-first century.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.