British & Confederate Monuments At Old St. David's Episcopal Church in Cheraw, South Carolina

Historic Old St. David's Church in Cheraw, South Carolina.

Historic Old St. David's Episcopal Church in Cheraw, South Carolina, was established in 1768 by the South Carolina General Assembly and completed in 1774. Named for Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, it was the last Episcopal parish to be formally established in British Colonial South Carolina under King George III.

At over 230 years old, this church is one of the oldest structures in South Carolina. The church has been renovated over the years, with the steeple added in 1826 and the cross on top added in 1883. The building today serves as the most popular historic landmark in the town of Cheraw. It was added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 1971.

There are many old graves here, some of which bear the inscriptions of families that settled in and around Cheraw from Britain and Ireland. One can find many graves that list counties in Wales, Ireland and Scotland in particular among the birthplaces.

During both the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and the War Between The States (1861-1865) Old St. David's Church opened its doors and served as a hospital for soldiers from both sides of these conflicts. The church is a popular spot on any Revolutionary War and Civil War pilgrimage through the State, as the church's graveyard is the final resting place of soldiers who have fought in all major American wars. 

A historical marker tells the story of the
71st Frazer Highlanders in Cheraw during
the Southern Campaign of the American
Revolutionary War in 1780 - 1781.

With a few notable exceptions, it is very rare to find the graves of British and Loyalist soldiers who died in South Carolina during the Southern Campaign of the American Revolutionary War (1780-1781). This is largely due to the fact that most of those killed in battle were usually buried in mass graves that were crudely marked with wooden headstones, if at all.

During the American Revolutionary War, Cheraw was at the center of a wide area of civil unrest and considered strategically important by both sides. St. David's was used by the South Carolina militia as quarters on several occasions during the spring of 1780, before the British moved in later that year and established a post there. The area was occupied by members of the British 71st Regiment of Foot who also used the church as quarters and a hospital.

The 71st Regiment (also known as The Fraser Highlanders) were recruited in Scotland in 1775 at Inverness, Stirling and Glasgow by Lieutenant General Simon Fraser who was the chieftain of the Clan Fraser of Lovat.

When war erupted with the American Colonies, Britain's recruiting efforts became crucial to her ability to wage the war and the Scottish flocked to the cause. In 1778, two-thirds of the nearly 15,000 men British men who enlisted into King George III's army during this time were from Scotland.  

These Scots served with distinction in both the Northern and Southern Campaigns in every major battle of the American Revolutionary War, from the Battle of Long Island (Brooklyn Heights) in 1776 to the Siege of Yorktown in 1781.

The 71st Regiment (also known as The Fraser Highlanders) served under British General Lord Charles Cornwallis during the Carolina's Campaign. Command by Lieutenant Colonel Duncan MacPherson this regiment served with distinction in every major engagement in the South Carolina in 1780 from the second Siege of Charleston and Battle of Camden, to the Battle of Cowpens in January 1781.

The first detachment of the 71st Highlanders under the command of Major Archibald McArthur arrived at Cheraw (then known as Cheraw Hills) on Friday, June 9, 1780 and secured the place as an outpost where local Loyalists would come to reaffirm their allegiance to the British Crown.

The Scottish men camped in the open fields near the Pee Dee River, a place notorious for malaria carrying mosquitoes. A number of these men became sick from malaria -- as well as possibly from small pox.

Old St. David's Church was used as a hospital for these men, a number of whom died from these diseases. The soldiers were buried in an unmarked mass grave at the front of the church in burial shrouds often times with some of their personal possessions. The officers who died were buried in graves covered by brick mounds known as cairns -- a Scottish tradition for honoring the dead.

The 71st remained quartered near Cheraw Hills until Sunday, July 23, 1780 when they received orders to withdraw back to Camden in anticipation of General Horatio Gates' disastrous campaign which culminated in the Battle of Camden on Wednesday, August 16, 1780, which the 71st Highlanders took active part in.

Those Highlanders too week to make the march were left behind at Old St. David's Church and later taken prisoner by Patriot militia forces commanded by Captain Tristram Thomas. These men were transferred to North Carolina where they would later be exchanged for Patriot and Continental POWs.

On Sunday, November 13, 2011, the people of Cheraw placed two granite markers at the burial sites in respectful memory of these foreign-born enemy soldiers laid to rest at Old St. David's Churchyard. The larger marker rests at the head of one of the unknown British officers and a smaller one sits on the site of the mass grave of the common soldiers buried beside the church itself.

Marker next to Old St. David's Church where soldiers of the
71st who died of disease while stationed nearby are buried.
The exact number buried in the mass grave are unknown.

Grave of an unknown officer of the 71st Highlanders buried
beneath a traditional cairn of bricks and rocks.
As was British tradition, officers were buried separately from
common soldiers.

The marker includes a carving of the Bonnet Badge worn by members
of the 71st Highlanders on their hats.
The inscriptions include the motto of the 71st Highlanders:
Quicquid aut facere aut pati (Whatever is to be done or endured)
and the motto of Scotland and of the Order of the Thistle:
nemo me inpune lacessit (No one assails me with impunity).

"When duty calls me, I must go, to stand and face another foe,

But part of me will always stay, o'er the hills and far away....
If I should fall to rise no more, as many comrades did before,
Ask the pipes and drums to play, o'er the hills and far away."

~From a Traditional British Melody

Erected in 1867, the St. David's monument is the oldest
Confederate monument built in the American Southland.

Erected on Friday, July 26, 1867, the Confederate monument in Old St. David's churchyard is probably the oldest monument to the Confederate soldier in the American Southland. 

 

The town of Cheraw played a leading role in South Carolina's secession from the Union in 1860 and the town became a haven for refugees and a storage place for valuables and military stores during the War Between The States.

For three days (March 2 - 5) in  1865, Cheraw became the unwilling host to Union General William T. Sherman's Yankee invaders.

Sherman's 60,000 men set up camp in and around town. Sherman’s army and its associated “bummers” (irregular troops and/or civilians who tagged along with Sherman’s columns, lured by the prospects of looting, etc.) emptied it of everything from foodstuffs to art works.

Despite the long path of destruction carved out across South Carolina by the Yankees, Cheraw was not set ablaze the way some other South Carolina towns had been. "Uncle Billy's Boys" surprisingly destroyed very little of the town -- save for causing an (sort of) accidental explosion that damaged much of the town's business district. 

The Confederate defenders of the town had been forced to leave a significant stock of munitions behind (about 3,600 barrels of gunpowder, more than 25,000 shells and bullets of assorted sizes) and had tried to hide them in a ravine near the river. A Union solider discovering this stockpile decided to drop a match into the pile, igniting a huge explosion that killed four of Sherman’s men and leveled several of the public and commercial buildings in the old downtown area, including damaging the church.

The people of Cheraw exacted some payback a couple years later, when the local Ladies Memorial Association in town erected a monument in the cemetery at a Old St. David’s Church, as a tribute to the fallen Confederate dead. Cheraw was the first town under the Federal occupation (Reconstruction Era) to raise such a memorial.

The Confederate monument is a solemn and simple memorial in the hoary graveyard outside Old St. David’s Church, depicts a large oak tree, partially uprooted, with the caption: "Fallen but not dead." The memorial also bears an anchor with the single word beneath: Hope.

The inscription on the memorial reads: "To the memory of our heroic dead who fell at Cheraw during the war 1861-1865.  Loved and honored though unknown. Stranger, bold champion of the South, revere and view these tombs with love; Brave heroes slumber here, Loved, and Honored, though unknown."

The cemetery is filled with the graves of Confederate veterans and Confederate battle flags still fly on the cemetery grounds placed their by the descendants of these men. The Union soldiers that were buried there (including the four men killed in the explosion and others who perished from disease) were all later moved by the U.S. military to the Florence National Cemetery in the years after the war.

Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,
  Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause;
Though yet no marble column craves
  The pilgrim here to pause.

In seeds of laurel in the earth
  The blossom of your fame is blown,
And somewhere, waiting for its birth,
  The shaft is in the stone!

Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years
  Which keep in trust your storied tombs,
Behold! your sisters bring their tears,
  And these memorial blooms.

Small tributes! but your shades will smile
  More proudly on these wreaths to-day,
Than when some cannon-moulded pile
  Shall overlook this bay.

Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!
  There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies,
  By mourning beauty crowned!

~Henry Timrod
Ode Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead at Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston, South Carolina on Saturday, June 16, 1866.

Special thanks to the Historical Society of Chesterfield County, the Cheraw Historical Society and the people of the town of Cheraw for their input in helping to make this article possible.
To learn more about the town and its outstanding history, please check out the following link: https://www.cheraw.com/government/historic_preservation.php