Church Photo in Lieu of Attendance - All Saints

All Saints, Pawley's Island, SC  

I had a few spots marked to visit on yesterday's day trip to Pawley's Island and this beautiful church was a highlight. We explored the historic cemetery and peeked in the windows and then walked across the street to the other chapels.

The land of All Saints Church goes "way back" in the recorded history of this Low Country region. In the early 1700's, our property was owned by Percival Pawley and his wife Ann, who transferred the title to their son, Thomas George Pawley, and William Poole as trustees for "the people of the Waccamaw Neck" in order to build an Anglican church on the site. Our "old church" adjoining the cemetery is actually the fourth church building on that site. The first was built in the 1730's, the second in 1816, the third in 1843, and the present church in 1916. Access by the early parishioners to these early churches was gained in two ways—by land and by sea! On the south side of the All Saints property is a wetland drainage basin, which forms the small creek which crosses Kings River Rd. This creek winds behind the Rectory, behind the cemetery and Old Church, where it becomes a larger body of navigable water known to this day as "Chapel Creek". Chapel Creek runs out to the Waccamaw River. Many of today's residents of the Waverly neighborhood have boats behind their homes in canals which run into Chapel Creek. "Back in the Day" owners of Waccamaw or Pee Dee River Plantations might have been sailed or rowed to church in high style, navigating up Chapel Creek to a landing at the back of the Old Church.