The Old Sheldon Church Ruins, located in northern Beaufort County in the Sheldon area, are the charred remains of Sheldon Church.
Known also as the Sheldon Church or Old Sheldon Church, the building was originally known as Prince William’s Parish Church. The church was built as a chapel of ease in the English Georgian style, using the Roman Tuscan or Doric order, between 1745 and 1753.
The British burned Prince William’s in 1779 during the Revolutionary War. Rebuilt in 1826, it burned again in 1865 during the Civil War by the Federal Army under General William T Sherman:
The official South Carolina report on the “Destruction of Churches and Church Property,” after the Civil War, described Sheldon’s second burning:
“All that was combustible was consumed …, its massive walls survive the last as they did the former conflagration,” Bishop Thomas wrote, “Exactly as it happened a hundred years before in 1779, when General Prevost, marching from Savannah into South Carolina burned the Church, so now in February 1865, General Sherman marching from Georgia into South Carolina, burned it a second time.”
However, an alternative view has more recently come to light.
In a letter dated February 3, 1866, Milton Leverett wrote that “Sheldon Church not burn’t. Just torn up in the inside, but can be repaired.” In this view, the inside of the church was apparently gutted. These gutted remains were used to rebuild homes burnt by Sherman’s army.
Today, the ruins lie among majestic oaks and scattered graves.
Inside the ruins of the church lie the remains of Governor William Bull. Bull “greatly assisted General Oglethorpe in establishing the physical layout of Savannah, Georgia. Bull surveyed the land in 1733 to form the basic grid pattern of the streets and squares.”
The ruins proved to be a popular site in the Lowcountry for photographers and wedding ceremonies in contemporary times. As of 2015, the Old Sheldon Ruins closed for hosting wedding ceremonies. However, since 1925, an annual service has been held on the second Sunday after Easter. Clergy from the Parish Church of St. Helena in Beaufort lead the service.
Source: Wikipedia.org.
