Unitarian graveyard grounds maintain a wild botanical design

This graveyard looks abandoned, but the wild state of the grounds is a deliberate design choice dating to 1837. Caroline Howard Gilman, a writer and editor who was married to the church pastor Samuel Gilman, established the space as a garden cemetery. She followed an English and European tradition that viewed graveyards as places for the living to walk and sit, rather than strictly as burial sites. Today, the church maintains the property as both a burial ground and a habitat for local plants, keeping only the paths clear of the surrounding shrubs and vines.

The church building itself stands at 6 Archdale Street and dates back to 1772. It is the second-oldest church building in Charleston. Between 1852 and 1854, the architect Francis D. Lee transformed the original colonial structure into the Gothic Revival style seen today. He added the tower, the pointed windows, the stucco, and the arched entrance. Inside, Lee modeled the ceiling after the chapel of Henry VII at Westminster Abbey, using plaster to replicate the intricate stone fan vaulting found in the London original.

Charleston's account is that Annabel Lee, the final complete poem by Edgar Allan Poe, was written for a young woman named Anna Ravenel. Her father forbade the match and used his influence to have the young soldier posted away. She fell ill and died before he could return to her, and she lies in this yard in a grave that has never been identified.

Samuel Gilman served as pastor here for nearly forty years and played the primary role in establishing Unitarianism in the antebellum South. While he is remembered in religious history for that work, he achieved a different kind of fame in 1836. For the two-hundredth anniversary of Harvard University, he wrote the words to Fair Harvard, which remains the school's anthem.