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HISTORY
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The search
for a beautiful climate for his English-born wife brought Charles
Baring, a member of the Baring banking family of England, to
Flat Rock to escape the heat of the South Carolina low country.
In 1827, the Barings’ home, Mountain Lodge, was developed
on the order of an English country estate. In 1829, Judge Mitchell
King, also of Charleston, discovered the benefits of mountain
air and arranged for his summer home, Argyle, to be built. Following
the example of these two men, other coastland families seeking
respite from the oppressive low country heat and malaria flocked
to the area in such numbers that Flat Rock became known as “Little
Charleston of the Mountains”.
With the development of Mountain Lodge, Charles and Susan Baring
built a private chapel on the grounds, a practice then prevalent
among families of the English gentry. The small wooden structure
burned and in 1833, work began on a church built of brick made
largely by local brick makers.
In 1836, twenty members of the summer colony formed themselves
into a congregation and the Barings deeded the church to the
Bishop of North Carolina. It is noteworthy that before Lincoln’s
Emancipation Proclamation, servants and white families worshipped
side by side in the church pews. A plot was made available by
Charles Baring for the graves of servants and later freedmen
in the church burial ground.
So rapid was the growth of Flat Rock community in those early
days that the length of the church was doubled in 1852. It is
said that the winter social calendars of Charleston were planned
during the annual summer enclave. Sometimes St. John in the
Wilderness vestry meetings were held in Charleston where the
vestrymen lived.
Over the decades, the church has continued to be a focal point
in the community. Prior to 1958, it was open only during the
summer because virtually no congregation remained year-round.
Since then, with a full-time rector, the number of communicants
has increased from fifty-three to about four hundred.
St. John's churchyard is of historical significance, there being
graves of men whose names appear in the records of South Carolina's
past, and some of them in those of the nation as well.
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