“S” is for St. Luke’s Parish. In 1767, the Commons House created St. Luke’s Parish by taking territory from St. Helena’s Parish. The new parish, located in modern Beaufort and Jasper Counties, included the mainland region between the New and Broad Rivers, known as the Euhaws, and Hilton Head Island. The British government disallowed the act creating the parish in 1772, but after the Revolutionary War the parish was reestablished. The cultivation of sea island cotton and rice required enslaved labor and by 1850, enslaved persons accounted for eighty-three percent of the parish population. The antebellum white residents were in the vanguard of political radicalism, and the region was a hotbed of secession sentiment in the 1850s and 1860. After the parish system was abolished in 1865, St. Luke’s Parish was incorporated into Beaufort County
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.