St. Paul's Episcopal Church Summerville: History & Graveyard

St. Paul’s Church in Summerville, South Carolina traces its beginning to 1829, when the Rev. Philip Gadsden of St. Paul’s Stono started holding summer services in the homes of planters’ families who had come up from the river. The present church, at 316 West Carolina Avenue on six acres between Gadsden and Waring Streets, was completed and consecrated in 1857. It is the second-oldest congregation in Summerville, the only church in town with a graveyard on its own grounds, and a contributing property in the Summerville Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 19, 1976.

Where did St. Paul’s come from?

From Old Dorchester, by way of the Stono. The Church Act of 1706 made the Church of England the colony’s official faith, and in 1717 the Assembly carved St. George’s Parish out of St. Andrew’s to serve the town of Dorchester on the Ashley. St. George’s Parish Church was finished by 1720 on lot 99 of the settlement, enlarged in 1733 and given its brick bell tower in 1751. A chapel of ease for St. Paul’s Parish on the Stono dates to 1719.

The Revolution emptied Dorchester. Most of the town burned in 1781, and by 1788 it was nearly abandoned. St. George’s fell to ruin; by 1870 only the bell tower stood, as it does now inside Colonial Dorchester State Historic Site. The families moved a few miles north onto the sandy pine ridge that became Summerville, where the air was thought healthier in the sick months. For a generation they went back to Charleston or down to the Stono for church, or did without.

1829 to 1857

In 1829 Gadsden began summer services in Summerville homes. In 1830 a church went up near the present site, serving as a chapel of ease to St. Paul’s Stono. The congregation incorporated as St. Paul’s Summerville in 1855 and, by the SC Picture Project’s account, acquired what remained of St. George’s at Dorchester, making it the legal heir of the 1717 parish. The present church was completed in 1857. After the Civil War, in 1866, St. Paul’s became an independent parish rather than a chapel of a Stono church that no longer had planters to serve.

In 1878 the church was extended twenty feet at the east end and a stained glass window installed behind the altar. The extension covered Gadsden’s grave. His family gave permission, and he lies directly under the altar now, which by any reading is where he would have wanted to be.

What happened to St. Paul’s in the 1886 earthquake?

The Charleston earthquake of August 31, 1886 had its epicenter near Middleton Place on the Ashley, a few miles from Summerville. In town the night is remembered as “Pandemonium in the Pines.” Summerville Presbyterian’s first church was wrecked and later condemned. The Old White Meeting House on Dorchester Road was reduced to its corners. St. Paul’s shifted about four inches off its foundation and otherwise held. The congregation has been worshipping in it since.

The twentieth century

Ambler Hall was built in 1924 and named for the Rev. Francis W. Ambler, rector from 1908 to 1940. A parish house went up on the other side of the church in 1974. In 1986 the rear of the church was extended again, and this time the work covered several graves in the churchyard. A memorial monument behind the church lists the people buried beneath it.

In 2012 St. Paul’s left The Episcopal Church and remains a member of the Diocese of South Carolina. People still search for it as St. Paul’s Episcopal, which is the name it carried for a century and a half.

The graveyard

Visit Summerville makes the distinction plainly: a graveyard is on church ground, a cemetery is not, and St. Paul’s has the only graveyard in town. The six acres hold burials from the nineteenth century forward, under live oaks. Catherine Porter Tupper, a parishioner, recalled her father Lockwood Tupper spending much of his time in the churchyard, planting azaleas and camellias around the graves of friends and family and tending the plots of men whose widows asked him to.

It is an active churchyard. Members are still buried here. Walk the rows, read the stones, and leave the plantings alone.

Can you visit St. Paul’s?

Address: 316 West Carolina Avenue, Summerville, SC 29483, between Gadsden Street and Waring Street in the historic district. GPS 33.013744, -80.187717. About 25 miles northwest of Charleston, 35 to 45 minutes by I-26 depending on the hour.

The grounds and graveyard are generally walkable in daylight, but they belong to the parish; if a gate is closed or a sign says otherwise, respect it. The church itself is open for services and by arrangement; check stpaulssummerville.org for times before you drive out.
There is no admission and no tour desk. This is a working parish, not a museum. Weddings and funerals happen here; if you arrive during one, come back later.
The Summerville Visitor Center at 402 North Main Street (Monday to Friday 9 to 5, Saturday 10 to 3, Sunday 1 to 4) has a walking guide to the historic district that covers the churches.
Pair it with Summerville Presbyterian at 407 South Laurel Street, the other of the town’s two oldest congregations, and with Colonial Dorchester State Historic Site about seven miles south, where the St. George’s bell tower stands.

Where this fits in the county

Summerville’s two oldest congregations are the two halves of the Dorchester story: the Congregationalists who came from Massachusetts in 1695 and the Anglicans who were sent to supervise them in 1717. Both left the river town when it died, both ended up a few blocks apart in Summerville, and both lost buildings to an earthquake whose center was in this county, not in Charleston. The county history page follows the parish from the Ashley to Carolina Avenue. The dispatch /the-tower-with-no-bell/ is about the one St. George’s left behind, and the county map marks the tower, the ruin and this church as a single line running north.

The church moved four inches in 1886 and has not moved since. The county line, surveyed and resurveyed, has never managed to stay still that long.

St. Paul’s, Summerville: The Church That Moved Four Inches