arleston colonists were English and Irish, sent out under
Colonel Sayle, in 1669, by the Lords Proprietors, to whom Charles II had
granted a tract of land in the New World, embracing the present States
of Georgia and North and South Carolina. These colonists touched at Port
Royal--where the Marine Barracks now are (and ought not to be)--but
settled on the west side of the Ashley River, across from where
Charleston stands. It was not until 1680 that they transferred their
settlement to the present site of the city, naming the place Charles
Town in honor of the King. In 1671 the colony contained 263 men able to
bear arms, 69 women and 59 children. In 1674, when New York was taken by
the English from the Dutch, a number of the latter moved down to the
Carolina colony. French Protestants had, at that time, already begun to
arrive, and more came after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in
1685. In 1680 Germans came. By 1684 there were four Huguenot settlements
in Carolina. In 1696 a Quaker was governor for a short time, and in the
same year a body of New Englanders arrived from Dorchester,
Massachusetts, establishing a town which they called Dorchester, near
the present town of Summerville, a few miles from Charleston. At that
time a number of Scottish immigrants had already arrived, though more
came in 1715 and 1745, after the defeat of the Highlanders. From 1730 to
1750 new colonists came from Switzerland, Holland and Germany. As early
as 1740 there were several Jewish families in Charleston, and some of
the oldest and most respected Jewish families in the United States still
reside there. Also, when the English drove the Acadians from Canada in
1755, twelve hundred of them immigrated to Carolina. By 1790, then, the
city had a population of a little more than 15,000, which was about half
the number of inhabitants then contained in the city of New York. In the
case of Charleston, however, more than one half her people, at that
time, were negroes, slavery having been introduced by Sir John Yeamans,
an early British governor. By 1850 the city had about 20,000 white
citizens and 23,000 blacks, and by 1880 some 7,500 more, of which
additional number two thirds were negroes. The present population is
estimated at 65,000, which makes Charleston a place of about the size of
Rockford, Illinois, Sioux City, Iowa, or Covington, Kentucky; but as, in
the case of Charleston, more than half this number is colored,
Charleston is, if the