Edisto Island Baptist Church

Edisto Island Baptist Church is a South Carolina historical marker in Edisto Island, Charleston County, dedicated 2025.

Charleston County · dedicated 2025 · 1644 S.C. Hwy. 174, Edisto Island, Edisto Island

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Front: This wood frame church was built in 1818 as Edisto Island Baptist Church. The church was founded primarily through the efforts of Hephzibah Jenkins Townsend (1780-1847), a white woman who sought to revive Baptist worship on Edisto Island after years of dormancy. In the antebellum era most who worshipped here were enslaved African Americans who worked on local plantations. Reverse: In 1860, Edisto Island Baptist Church had more than 450 Black members and a white minister. The congregation was part of the Charleston Association. After abolition, local freedpeople reorganized the church under Black leadership. It had more than 1,000 members after the Civil War. The original square-shaped section rests on a tabby foundation and was likely expanded around that time.

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under a mile from where William Gabby lived in the 1760s

what this marker records spans 1777 to 1789, overlapping William Gabby's years here

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Marker data: South Carolina Historical Marker Program, SC Department of Archives and History
Sponsored by New First Missionary Baptist Church

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Edisto Island Baptist Church50 ft

Places within about 300 feet of this marker that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A nearby listing is not always the marker's own subject.