ABSTRACT
CAROLINA The city of Charleston, located on the east coast of South Carolina, is particularly known in folklife for its traditions of the “Charleston single house,” ornamental ironwork, and African American basketry. As a main colonial port of entry for the Southeast from which settlers fanned west, it also has been called a primary American “cultural hearth,” around which traditions mixed and diffused into what became lowland southern regional folklife. Situated at the tip of a peninsula where the Ashley and Cooper rivers come together, Charleston is South Carolina’s oldest city, having been founded in 1670 by a group of one hundred English settlers and at least one enslaved African. It was intended as a major port city and became the southernmost point of English settlement in the American colonies during the seventeenth century. By the mid-eighteenth century, Charleston had become the largest and most prosperous American city south of Philadelphia. It developed commerce with Bermuda and the Caribbean early in its history and became the hub of a thriving shipping industry.
