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History...
Berkeley County was named for two of the Lords Proprietors of Carolina, Lord John
Berkeley (d. 1678) and Sir William Berkeley (d. 1677). The county was
originally
named in 1682, and at one time it included the parishes of St. John Berkeley, St.
James Goose Creek, St. James Santee, St. Stephen, and St. Thomas and St. Denis.
In 1769 this area became part of Charleston District, and it did not become a
separate county again until 1882. The county seat was Mount Pleasant from 1882
until 1895, when it was moved to Moncks Corner. This area was settled in the
late seventeenth century by English and French Huguenot planters and their
African slaves. Many of the old rice plantations are now covered by the waters
of Lake Moultrie, which was built in the 1940s as part of the Santee-Cooper
hydroelectric project. Two famous Revolutionary War generals were residents of
the area: William Moultrie (1730-1805) and
Francis Marion (1732-1795), known
as the Swamp Fox. Henry Laurens (1724-1792), president of the Continental Congress,
resided at Mepkin Plantation, which many years later was purchased by publisher
Henry Luce (1898-1967). Luce and his wife, writer and diplomat Clare Boothe Luce
(1903-1987), are buried at Mepkin, which is now a Trappist monastery.
(SOURCE: South Carolina State Library).
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