Discover Goose Creek: House of God

The following is a passage from The Goose Creek Bridge, Gateway to Sacred Places by Michael Heitzler. 

Reverend Francis LeJau, Doctor of Divinity and Rector of the St. James, Goose Creek Church, greeted each parishioner at the front door of his new house of worship on Sunday morning, April 17, 1715. He eagerly prepared the first Easter celebration in the newest and finest country chapel in Carolina and he barely contained his excitement. The church was unfinished, and although the priest believed, “A trifle would do it…” the artisans did not complete their work for five more years. Nonetheless, masons laid most of the bricks, the shingled roof was tight, the flag stone floor was set, and the tall windows and doors admitted mild breezes with scents of spring. Standing against the thick budding forest his “House of God” presented an elegant appearance befitting the new-world aristocracy emerging with it from the Goose Creek wilderness. Thus, as the missionary priest beheld his new sanctuary within sight of the, “quite open[e]d and ruin[e]d” log and chinked structure that it replaced, there were many reasons for the fifty-year-old missionary to celebrate. However, he nervously tensed his aging frame beneath his chasuble each time horsemen galloped across the nearby Goose Creek Bridge shouting reports of barbarity erupting on the southern frontier. Packhorse traders and militia leaders branded the two-day-old conflagration the “Yamassee War” in reference to the tribe that committed the initial assault, but most native clans impulsively joined as the violence spread widely and intensified.

Want to learn more about Goose Creek? The book is available for sale on the St. James, Goose Creek Chapel of Ease website.