proceeded to set up a proprietary government. English settlers from Virginia had already established themselves on the north of it, at Albemarle, at the mouth of the Chowan River in North Carolina, and in 1670 the earliest settlement of the southern part of this territory was effected on the banks of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, under William Sale, to be moved in 1680 to the site of what is now the city of Charleston, South Carolina. There, with such inviting climate and fertile soil, newcomers were easily lured.
Governed though they were under one proprietary government, the two colonies remained separate and distinct, and grew in spite of difficulties between the people and proprietors, bent on serving selfish ends. The colony to the south, although much augmented in its population, was much retarded in its growth, due to dissatisfaction felt by the people with the governors sent them by the proprietors and the attempted enforcement of the laws of trade. Happily, in 1729, the two colonies were constituted each a royal colony—North and South Carolina. Complete separation was then established.
The population of this southernmost colony, South Carolina, soon assimilating itself, was composed of Englishmen of standing, English, Scotch and Irish dissenters, Dutch, Huguenots, Swiss, Quakers and Belgians. Too remote from the more northerly centers of population, she worked out her own fate largely alone, and cultivated her interest in England and the West Indies with the same interest if not more, than did those at Williamsburg or Annapolis, and maintained close relationship with the West Indies from whom so much of her population was derived.
Commerce, it has been said, was of noble origin in South Carolina. Despite the threat of pirates and the constant fear of Indians and Spanish and French to contend with on her borders, the colony on the Ashley prospered as the West Indian planters from early days cast their lot more and more within it, and the migration of French Huguenots, a steady and valuable one, continued. Due to the presence of many negroes, the plantations established within themselves such a highly organized plan as to create a system baronial in its sweep of power and influence. Plantation owners were often merchants and traders as well, and after the proprietary lord had been ordered to move his "Towne of Tradd" from Albemarle Point to the opposite peninsula, settlement throve and commerce walked with a high head through the winding streets of old Charles Town, building itself up into a rich city, with money enough not only to import luxuries but to attract high-class craftsmen as well.
A little more than one hundred years after the founding of the colony of North Carolina, her population numbered three hundred thousand people. They were English, Scotch, Swiss, Irish, and Moravians, and the mixing of these races has had a tendency to influence the design of furniture which they produced outside the larger settlements. In Mecklenburg County, and in and around New Bern and Edenton, as well as Raleigh, there is much extant of a highly picturesque past, showing remains of elegance in architecture and woodwork of unsurpassed artistry reflected in the
