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Rev. Charles Woodmason, -
baptized in 1720 at Holy Trinity Church, Gosport, was evidently a native. The son on Benjamin Woodmason, a ship's carpenter, and his second wife, Susanna Pittard. (A Devon native, he settled in Gosport after marrying first to a local girl.) He was active in this church and was involved in the moving of the Handel organ to Holy Trinity from Canongate. Active in local literary circles, he published a hymnal which saw two editions for this church. Around 1752, he settled in the colony of South Carolina where he initially prospered as a planter. (Both his wife and son remained in Gosport.) He wrote a book on the production of indigo and published several poems in The
Gentleman's Magazine, including one lauding Benjamin Franklin's electricity experiment. After several business-related disasters, he served in various positions for the local Royal government. He received the ire of the locals by his support of the Stamp Act. Shortly afterward, he returned to England and was ordained in 1766 by the Bishop of London. He was assigned to the frontier back-country of South Carolina. His diary and sermon extracts from his years in upper South Carolina (including Cherokee County, SC) were published in 1953 and constitute a most complete, if highly biased, account of the primitive conditions on the frontier. He was the spokesman for the Regulator movement (which demanded the authorities provide them with courts and protect their legal and property rights) and wrote their manifesto. This was the first major vigilante movement in United States history. Over a half-century after its initial publication, The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution,
edited by the late Richard James Hooker remains in print(In tone, his writing has been compared to that of Jonathan Swift and Laurence Sterne.) He left South Carolina around 1772 for a parish in
Virginia. Upon arrival, the vestry refused him because of his English birth. A Loyalist to the Crown, he returned to England in 1774. He died in March 1789. His only child to survive to adulthood,
James Woodmason, became a prosperous London printer. In 1782, James suffered a disastrous fire which killed all seven of his children. (They are memorialized in St. Peter upon Cornhill church, London by
a Francesco Bartolozzi plaque which pictures each child.) James Woodmason removed to Ireland where he died in 1831. A great-grandson, Charles Woodmason, along with his family were early
converts to the Oxford movement and later followed their friend, John Henry Newman, into the Roman Catholic Church. Joseph R. ("Joey") Gainey, Museum Curator Cherokee County History and Arts Museum, South Carolina, USA
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