Sullivan's Island: Property of the Crown and State, 1663–1953

Sullivan’s Island holds a unique place in the history of South Carolina. Reserved in the late seventeenth century as a maritime lookout, quarantine station, and military post, this attractive barrier island remained in the public domain for nearly three centuries. Private residences began appearing on Sullivan’s Island in 1791, but their owners enjoyed little more than squatter’s rights for the next 162 years. The island’s colonial legacy, mis-remembered by later generations, precluded the possibility of private ownership until a 1953 law altered the legal landscape.

Twenty-first-century visitors to Sullivan’s Island see a long, thin stretch of oceanfront terrain encompassing between 2.5 and 3.5 square miles of prize real estate (depending on the extent of marshland included in the calculation). While the physical size of the island has accreted slowly over the past few centuries, the extent and value of its human occupation has increased exponentially in recent generations. Newcomers might wonder how such an attractive seaside oasis remained relatively undeveloped and thinly populated until the late twentieth century. The answer to this question is embedded in the island’s distant past, scattered among archival sources inaccessible to casual historians. In short, the grand residences and sophisticated amenities now appearing on Sullivan’s Island would have been unthinkable one or two centuries ago because no wise investor would sink such large sums of money into property they did not and could not legally own.

Most of the grand narrative of the recorded history of Sullivan’s Island, from the late seventeenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, occurred within the context of its unique legal status. Rather than enumerating a list of notable events that occurred on this particular patch of seaside real estate in the distant past, let’s spend a few minutes considering why the island’s history unfolded in the manner that it did.

The English Crown claimed ownership of most of the Atlantic Coastline of North America at the turn of the sixteenth century, citing discoveries made by John and Sebastian Cabot. As I described in Episode No. 215, this English claim clashed with that of the Spanish Crown to all of North America from the Florida Keys northward to what is now Cape Henry, Virginia. King Charles I of England ignored this territorial dispute in 1629 when he granted all the land between Spanish Florida and the English colony of Virginia to Sir Robert Heath under the denomination “Carolana.” Heath was expected to sponsor a campaign of settlement, but his non-performance effectively voided the grant. In the spring of 1663, King Charles II awarded the same territory to a group of eight shareholders known as the Lords Proprietors of Carolina. The royal grant of 1663 conveyed the land of Carolina “in free and common soccage” and empowered the Proprietors to subdivide, grant, and sell Carolina lands to future settlers “in fee simple.”[1] These antiquated terms, derived from the Medieval concept of a feudal “fief,” denote a type of legal “freehold” that empowers a tenant to possess real property (i.e., land) in perpetuity and to convey or transfer that perpetual freehold to their heirs or to other parties at their discretion.

The settlement of modern South Carolina commenced in 1670, and the nascent provincial government based at Charles Towne on the Ashley River began granting parcels of land shortly thereafter.  The size of the grants varied according to a number of conditions, but ranged from half-acre town lots in the colonial capital to baronies of twelve thousand contiguous acres. In all cases, however, these Proprietary grants empowered the recipients to hold their respective lands in fee simple.[2]

During the last quarter of the seventeenth century and the early years of the eighteenth century, the Lords Proprietors in England and their deputies in South Carolina issued hundreds of grants for many thousands of acres of land within the boundaries of modern Charleston County, including property on the various barrier islands fronting the Atlantic Ocean. Ownership of the island we call Sullivan’s remained in the hands of the Proprietors, however, and was apparently reserved for public use at an early date. The extant records of early South Carolina contain no statements articulating or explaining this reservation, but it was probably motivated by the island’s strategic geographic situation. The long, narrow land mass, resembling the letter “J” in shape, forms the northeastern edge of the entrance to Charleston Harbor, and its southwestern beach faces the natural shipping channel I described in Episode No. 235. During the age of sail and colonization, Sullivan’s Island offered a logical base for efforts to control ingress to the principal port and colonial capital of South Carolina.

The earliest surviving record of public activity on Sullivan’s Island dates from 1674, when the Grand Council of Carolina resolved to mount a “great gun” or cannon at “some conven[ien]t place” near the mouth of Charleston Harbor, “to be fired upon the appearance of any shipp or shipps.”[3] The duty of firing the gun was entrusted to militia captain Florence O’Sullivan, although he was probably not solely responsible for that labor. As I described in Episode No. 252, the Grand Council’s order of May 1674 almost certainly resulted in the placement of a signal cannon on the barrier island that soon became known as Sullivan’s Island, and engendered the long-standing but inaccurate belief that O’Sullivan once owned the island that bears his surname.

The next extant evidence of island’s public role appeared in 1685, when the provincial government of South Carolina ordered the construction of “one tight small house upon Sullivand’s [sic] Island” for the accommodation of watchmen who would serve as lookouts “against any hostile invasions” from their Spanish neighbors in Florida.[4] The watch house and lookout station remained in place well into the eighteenth century, augmented by subsequent legislative acts “to make Sullivan’s Island more remarkable to mariners” sailing along the coastline devoid of distinctive natural landmarks.[5]

The island became part of the colony’s multifaceted quarantine protocol in 1707, when the provincial government ordered the construction of a “pest house” or lazaretto for the reception of incoming ship passengers afflicted by infectious diseases. That small structure was destroyed in the memorable hurricane of 1713, however, and not rebuilt during the ensuing civil strife that gripped South Carolina during the Yemasee War of 1715–17 and the dysfunctional provincial government that followed the Revolution of 1719. The colony languished in administrative purgatory for much of the 1720s until the Lords Proprietors of Carolina agreed to surrender their charter in 1729. The legal reversion of the property to the British Crown was confirmed by an Act of Parliament that May, and ownership of the remaining public land officially changed hands later that summer.[6]

Under Crown administration, the provincial government of South Carolina continued to use Sullivan’s Island for public purposes. As I described in Episode No. 153 about quarantine protocol in Charleston Harbor, a new pest house was built on the island in 1745, but was destroyed by the powerful hurricane of September 1752. A third pest house built in 1755 was burned in December 1775 by South Carolina troops to deter the British Navy from using the site for refreshment. Immediately after the destruction of the third pest house, the nascent State of South Carolina commissioned the construction of a defensive fort on Sullivan’s Island. The creation of Fort Sullivan, renamed Fort Moultrie later in 1776, marked the beginning of a new chapter in the island’s long public career.

The peace treaty that ended the American Revolution, signed in Paris in September 1783, formally dissolved the British Crown’s claim to any lands then forming part of the United States. Ownership of Sullivan’s Island devolved from the British Crown to the State of South Carolina, which ordered the construction of a fourth pest house on the island in 1784. That same year, the South Carolina General Assembly ratified a law to oversee the granting of vacant lands across the state to private citizens.[7] Several individuals began surveying lands on Sullivan’s Island and in 1786 applied to Governor William Moultrie for grants in fee simple. At the same time, a number of Charlestonians petitioned the governor concerning the potential danger of granting valuable natural resources like marshlands and oyster banks on Sullivan’s Island to private parties who would monopolize access thereto. Moultrie sided with the petitioners because “the island was appropriated to public purposes,” and referred the matter to the state legislature in February 1787. His successor, Thomas Pinckney, held the same view one month later. Governor Pinckney informed the state legislature that “the same reasons which operated with the late governor, would likewise induce me to withold [sic] a grant of land under similar circumstances.”[8] In response to these executive statements, the South Carolina General Assembly ratified a law in March 1787 to nullify any grants of land on Sullivan’s Island made since 1784, and to prevent the future granting of land on the island.[9] The act of 1787 did not impose any new restrictions on Sullivan’s Island, but simply reinforced and perpetuated its long-standing public role.

The first step towards the modern character of Sullivan’s Island occurred in January 1791, when the affluent members of the South Carolina House of Representatives considered the possibility of residing seasonally on the state-owned barrier island. Their discussion of the matter was not motivated by a petition submitted by private citizens, but apparently stemmed from the personal ambitions of the legislators responsible for the stewardship of this public property. On January 31st, the House adopted a resolution that the state Senate confirmed four days later. Because this legislative decree formed the legal foundation of all residences on the island for the next 162 years, its brief text merits a full reading:

“Resolved, That such of the citizens of this state as may think it beneficial to their health to reside on Sullivan’s Island during the summer season have liberty to build on the said island a dwelling and out houses for their accommodations, and the person or persons so building shall have the exclusive right to the same and one half acre of land adjoining thereto (as long as he, she or they may require for the purposes aforesaid) provided the person or persons building as aforesaid pay to the treasurers one penny annually (if required) for the use of the said lands; delivering up the same when demanded by the governor or commander [in] chief for the time being; he, she or they having the liberty of removing the buildings which they may erect.”[10]

Having secured permission from the state government, a number of wealthy South Carolinians began erecting simple cottages on Sullivan’s Island in the spring of 1791. From a legal perspective, these seasonal structures were the personal property of the respective builders, who, like squatters tolerated by a generous landlord, held their half-acre lots merely by right of possession. In effect, each tenant held an informal sort of leasehold at the will of the state, which was liable to be terminated at any moment by decree of the governor. Unlike their neighbors on the mainland and adjacent islands who held their freehold property in fee simple, however, the privileged citizens who summered on Sullivan’s Island paid no property taxes on their ocean-front cottages during the early decades of their tenure.[11]

Most, if not all of the earliest cottages were located on the western end of Sullivan’s Island, in close proximity to the pest house of 1784 and Fort Moultrie. Uncomfortable with the occasional presence of quarantined patients in their exclusive neighborhood, the summer residents began petitioning the state legislature in 1793 to remove the pest house or lazaretto from the island. The state agreed to the change as long as the petitioners could secure an alternative location and if the petitioners paid for the construction of a new lazaretto on such site. After the citizen-squatters agreed to these requirements, the South Carolina General Assembly adopted a resolution in December 1795 to close and remove the lazaretto from Sullivan’s Island.[12]

The closure of the fourth pest house in early 1796 did not mark the end of the island’s public career. The state government continued to maintain and expand Fort Moultrie, which provided vital coastal defense during an era of great tension between the United States, Britain, and France around the turn of the nineteenth century. To sustain this military post more effectively, the State of South Carolina ceded to the United States government all of the land comprising Fort Moultrie and its adjacent dependencies in 1805. The state made several additional oceanfront cessions to the U.S. Government during the ensuing century, resulting in a patchwork military footprint on Sullivan’s Island totaling nearly 300 acres.[13]

Meanwhile, the seasonal civilian settlement on the western end of Sullivan’s Island grew steadily after its commencement in 1791. Complaints about a lack of civic administration on the island induced the state government to ratify a law in 1798 appointing a board of commissioners to manage the community then known as “Moultrie-Ville.”[14] When that measure proved insufficient, the state granted a town charter to the village of Moultrieville in 1817.[15] Residents of the island town contributed directly to the creation of streets, roads, and other public amenities, but they continued to avoid property taxes until the close of 1855. The annual state taxes levied in December of that year assessed the proprietors of lots on Sullivan’s Island in the same manner as other South Carolinians who held property in fee simple.[16] This change was a surprise to the Charlestonians accustomed to spending their summers on Sullivan’s Island, and their collective response underscored the ephemeral nature of their tenure.[17]

Under the leadership of Edmund Ravenel, the intendant (mayor) of Moultrieville, the part-time residents of Sullivan’s Island petitioned the state legislature for tax relief in the autumn of 1856. “As there is no fee simple in lots on the said island,” explained Mr. Ravenel, the residents of Moultrieville “hold and enjoy the said lots only permissively under the license of a joint resolution of the Senate and House of Representatives passed in the year seventeen hundred and ninety one. . . . The titles to these island lots depend, therefore, more upon possession than anything else.” If the state insisted on taxing public land held “only at will,” the petitioners asked the legislature to “amend the existing laws on this subject as to give the occupiers of lots on Sullivan’s Island fee simple to the same.”[18] Although the South Carolina House of Representatives briefly considered a bill “to authorize grants of lands to owners and occupants of Sullivan’s Island” that December, the measure evaporated when the legislature adjourned at the end of 1856.[19]

The continued imposition of property taxes on Sullivan’s Island in 1857 inspired Intendant Ravenel and his constituents to submit another petition to the General Assembly during its customary autumnal session. “The tenure by which the said houses [within Moultrieville] are held are so uncertain,” said the revised petition, “that no remedy for any ouster known to the law can be resorted to by the owners[;] in consequence whereof your petitioners are subjected to many inconveniences while their property has acquired considerable value from the fact that in times of sickness in the City of Charleston, and during the heats of summer, Sullivan’s Island is commonly sought by the inhabitants of that city as a refuge from disease and an agreeable resort from the confined atmosphere of the said city.” Ravenel and his fellow petitioners asked the legislature for permission “to take out grants for their respective lots on Sullivan’s Island in fee absolute or conditional, as in your wisdom shall be deemed most consistent with the public good.”[20]

In early December 1857, both houses of the state legislature referred the matter to a committee that rejected both the prayer of the petition and the bill drafted in 1856 to grant titles to lots on Sullivan’s Island.[21] After a robust debate of the subject, legislators asked the committee to suggest an alternative remedy for the property conundrum. Days later, the committee opined “that a less estate than fee simple will relieve the petitioners from most of the inconveniences to which they are now subject and will perhaps be more consonant with the policy initiated by the resolution of 1791.”[22] The resulting compromise, reached just before the Christmas holiday, formed the basis of a statute “to declare the tenure of lots on Sullivan’s Island.” Rather than granting titles in fee simple, the new law declared that the “owners of lots on Sullivan’s island, whereon dwelling houses have been erected . . . under the license granted” by the legislature in 1791, “shall enjoy, the same rights, titles and interests, as tenants from year to year,” and be subject to the same conditions imposed in 1791. As a small concession to the islanders, however, the act of 1857 confirmed that the “titles” held by the islanders were legally “assignable, transferable, transmissible and distributable” as other forms of finite leaseholds known as “estates for years” or “tenants for years.”[23] 

The state’s possession of Sullivan’s Island and the ephemeral titles held by the residents of Moultrieville continued with little change for nearly a century after the tax debacle of the 1850s. Despite this continuity, two important changes around the turn of the twentieth century influenced the later resolution of this long narrative. First, in 1883, the State of South Carolina granted a sizeable tract near the center of Sullivan’s Island, with a durable legal title in fee simple, to citizens planning to erect a large hotel for tourists. The New Brighton Hotel, later called the Atlantic Beach Hotel, opened in June 1884 and played an important role in developing the commercial potential of the exclusive summer resort in the late nineteenth century.[24] Second, the state legislature repealed the town charter of Moultrieville in 1906 and created a board of commissioners to administer the new “Township of Sullivan’s Island.” This revised political arrangement did not alter the state’s eminent domain over the island, but it did empower the new board of commissioners to issue licenses in accordance with the state law of 1857; that is, to grant informal licenses empowering residents to occupy half-acre lots from “year to year” as “tenants for years.”[25]

Following a significant fire in January 1925 that destroyed the Atlantic Beach Hotel, its owners subdivided the extensive property into numerous lots and began selling them for prospective residential development. Fortified by ownership in fee simple, the purchasers of these lots began constructing larger and grander homes than the modest cottages built on state-owned land elsewhere the island. The disparity of this legal landscape inspired residents to organize the Sullivan’s Island Improvement Association, a group advocating for such civic amenities as sidewalks, water and sewerage facilities, and the possibility of gaining fee simple title for the rest of the island’s acreage. Many islanders sought to beautify their cottages and obtain home improvement loans, but the nature of their tenure discouraged banks from extending credit to them. After delays related to the Great Depression, the Improvement Association became a viable political machine in the summer of 1938.[26] By the following spring, they had convinced their state legislators to press their case at the State House in Columbia.[27]

Charleston County’s legislative delegation introduced a bill in the spring of 1939 to grant titles in fee simple on Sullivan’s Island, but dissention among the islanders inspired radical changes to the bill during in the final weeks of the session. Some residents desired nothing less than a fee simple title to their lots, while others wanted to retain the old lease-holding tradition to prevent further subdivision and over-development on the island.[28] The act ratified in June 1939 provided an unpopular compromise: It created a committee to draft recommendations to the General Assembly of 1940 regarding “the fee simple question” on the island. In the interim, the 1939 law endowed current lot holders with de facto licenses to occupy their half-acre properties for a period of fifty years.[29]

The subsequent report of the Sullivan’s Island Committee on Legislation and Protests, ordered in June 1939 and submitted to the state legislature in February 1940, noted a great difference of opinion among the islanders regarding the advantages and disadvantages of fee simple titles. Nevertheless, the committee concluded “that the majority opinion is favorable to a form of tenure which will preserve the advantages of the present lease hold arrangement and at the same time give practically all the of the advantages of fee simple ownership.” Their official recommendation to the legislature consisted of a single proposed amendment: that the fifty-year licenses created by the state act of 1939 be “automatically extended another fifty years wherever there is any sale or devolution of title.”[30]

The question of land tenure on Sullivan’s Island was pushed to the background by the outbreak of World War II. In the aftermath of that global conflict, the United States government began reducing the footprint of its military bases across the nation. Fort Moultrie and the other miliary reservations on Sullivan’s Island were declared surplus by the U.S. War Department in the summer of 1947 and honorably discharged from service after sunset on August 15th.[31] Two years later, on the 28th of December 1949, the United States War Assets Administration sold the former military property to the Sullivan’s Island Township Commission.[32]

For the first time in more than two and a half centuries, there was no compelling reason—military or civilian—for the State of South Carolina to exercise eminent domain over the remaining acreage on Sullivan’s Island. Nevertheless, the fear of future over-development inspired a general reluctance among island residents to acquire fee simple titles to their respective properties. Sentiments began to change when those holding fifty-year licenses from the state discovered that the ephemeral nature of their tenure rendered them ineligible for post-war, low-interest building loans offered by the Federal Housing Authority (FHA). Charleston County’s legislative delegation pursued a legal remedy to this conundrum in Columbia, and a state law ratified in 1951 empowered the Township Commission of Sullivan’s Island henceforth to issue leases for seventy-five years.[33]

Despite this change of terminology and duration, the FHA and the Veterans Administration continued to deny construction loans to lease-holding islanders. In early 1953, residents again asked their state legislators to craft a law granting nothing less than fee simple title to hundreds of occupied lots on Sullivan’s Island.[34] A bill submitted to the South Carolina General Assembly that spring worked its way through the legislative process and became law on the 14th of May. Henceforth, residents seeking a durable and perpetual title to their land could simply file an application and pay the necessary legal fees to the county register of deeds, but the conversion from leasehold to freehold was not mandatory.[35]

Without fanfare or ceremony, the state law of 1953 removed the vestiges of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century reservations on Sullivan’s Island that were poorly remembered by successive generations of inhabitants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The enduring existence of eminent domain, exercised by the English Crown, the Lords Proprietors of Carolina, the British Crown, and the State of South Carolina, restricted the residential and commercial development of the island for nearly three centuries. Although the details of its legal status might seem tedious and esoteric to a casual reader, they form the contextual framework for the larger narrative of the island’s history. Nature might have endowed Sullivan’s Island with uncommon beauty, but a long chain of political decisions tempered human development of the landscape and shaped the island’s unique story.

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