Event Details

Twenty-five sites in Berkeley County are on the National Register of Historic Places. Just one of them is explicitly associated with the Black experience. Join CLS in welcoming a panel of preservations and visionaries to tell the inspirational story of the rehabilitation of Taveau Church, a Black Methodist sanctuary dating back to 1847 that had fallen into dilapidation, how it led them to the concept and creation of a Berkeley County Sacred Corridor, now an isolated stretch along the Cooper River where there are but three places to visit: Mepkin Abbey, Taveau Church, and Strawberry Chapel. Former Southern Region Director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, John Hildreth will moderate a conversation with Bill Fitzpatrick of Preservation South Carolina, Cynthia Gibbs of the Taveau Legacy Committee, Dr. Robert Ball of the Strawberry Chapel Vestry, and Father Joe Tedesco from Mepkin Abbey.

In the words of Bill Fitzpatrick:

About ten years ago, I decided to photograph all accessible National Register landmarks in South Carolina, one of which was Taveau Church in rural Berkeley County. On a cool February morning, I walked around the perimeter of the dilapidated building, amazed that the wooden structure had survived nearly 200 years of coastal winds, rains, and heat, and amazed again at the information I had at hand: Taveau Church was used by Black Methodists before the Civil War. After the war, faithful generations continued to use the church until it was closed by the United Methodist Conference in 1974. But despite its incredible historic value as a place “ground zero” to so much of our nation’s history, Taveau, with over a century of continuous Black worship, and built on land that was once owned by Founding Father and slave trader, Henry Laurens, was a gust of wind from being lost, a fact I remembered when I later became board chair of Preservation South Carolina.

The effort to preserve Taveau would require perseverance and faith, a belief that this sacred place, located within the Cooper River Historic District, and between two other National Register Landmarks with roots to the early 1700s, Mepkin Plantation (now Mepkin Abbey) and Strawberry Chapel, had an essential story worth telling.