St. Thomas and St. Dennis Church, 1507 Cainhoy Road, Wando, Berkeley County, SC

2011 Charles E. Peterson Prize, Entry
Significance: The present St. Thomas and St. Denis Parish Church was built in 1819. The original church was constructed in 1708 and stood until it burned in a forest fire in 1815. The colonial church resulted from the Church Act of 1706, when the Province of Carolina established the Anglican Church as the state church and partitioned the colony into ten parishes. St. Thomas and St. Denis were originally separate parishes. St. Denis, comprised of French-speaking Huguenots, was to be a temporary subparish of St. Thomas. St. Denis Parish, which was located in Orange Quarter, was to be disestablished when the French-speaking generation had passed. The Huguenots of Orange Quarter supported the Anglican Church Act in order to receive public funds for their minister while still being able to conduct their services in French, using a French translation of the Book of Common Prayer.
Upon the death of Reverend John James Tissot in 1768, the French-speaking minister of St. Denis Church, the colonial assembly passed an act disestablishing the church and parish on April 12 of the same year. The title of St. Denis was attached to St. Thomas Church in 1784 by an act of the South Carolina state legislature...
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N1783
Survey number: HABS SC-29
Building/structure dates: 1819 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: ca. 1850 Subsequent Work