Professor, author and historian Dr Walter Edgar writes on pages 48-49 of his 1998 book South Carolina: A History about the enormous influence that Barbadian settlers had on colonial Carolina, especially what is now known as the South Carolina Lowcountry:

The Goose Creek Men were an early, Barbadian-led political and social faction in Carolina. They exercised enormous influence over the colony.

The first group of colonists numbered about 130, most of them English men and women. There were a few from Barbados and one family from Nevis. Although there were only a handful of Barbadians in the first fleet, over the next two years about half to the white settlers and more than half of the enslaved blacks came from the island. Between 1670 and 1690 about 54 percent of the whites who immigrated to South Carolina came from Barbados. In addition, more came from other islands in the English West Indies. In South Carolina, regardless of the island of origin, most of these settlers were called “Barbadians”….

From well night every island in the English Caribbean came settlers bearing names such as Beadon, Colleton, Daniel, Drayton, Fenwicke, Gibbes, Godfrey, Ladson, Middleton, Moore, Schenckingh, and Yeamans of Barbados; Amory, Parris, Pickney, and Whaley of Jamaica; Lucas, Motte, and Perry of Antigua; Lowndes and Rawlins of Saint Christopher’s; LaMotte of Grenada; and Woodward of Nevis. They were almost all of English descent, but they were not just English; they were English-West Indian.

The Barbadians were seasoned by more than their exposure to and survival of diseases. Either from firsthand experience or from watching parents and relatives, they knew what was required to prosper in a colonial environment, be it political skill, economic opportunity, or plantation management. And they brought with them Barbadian cultural models. Just as their forebears had migrated to the West Indies to make their fortunes, so these settlers now viewed South Carolina as an opportunity for their generation to improve themselves socially and economically. A majority were servants, but a substantial number were merchants or the younger sons of planting families.

…Because they constituted the majority of the white population for the first two decades of settlement, the Barbadians set their cultural stamp on the South Carolina society that would evolve during the colonial period. There were other English settlers, from both Old and New England, but they either became acculturated to the South Carolina way of life or moved elsewhere.

For much more information on this subject see episode numbers 8 and 9 of our Golden Circle podcast.

Also see: Barbados, Carolina & the civilisation of the Lower South

Tags: barbadian, barbados, charleston, colonial south carolina, goose creek men, lower south civilisation

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