In the earliest known map of modern city of Charleston—the so-called Boyd Map of 1686—the northern edge of the town terminates next to an inlet or creek where Queen Street runs today. Although the original survey of the town, the “Grand Model” from the 1670s, did lay out a street at this watery location, and homes began to appear along its banks in the 1690s, the course of modern Queen Street remained poorly defined for the first several decades of the town’s history. And while modern Queen Street stretches for approximately seven-tenths of a mile between East Bay Street and Rutledge Avenue, we must remember that from early 1704 through at least 1730 the settled portion of this street was confined to a length of only two blocks within the bounds of the town’s defensive walls.
On several occasions in the legislative records of the early 1700s, this street was referred to as simply “the north street,” or “the street at the northern end of the bay,” indicating that it effectively formed the northern limit of the town. By the 1720s, however, the term “Dock Street” was commonly used to describe this site in the extant records of Charleston. The origin of this name can be traced to the spring of 1706, when Captain Edward Loughton, a joiner or carpenter by trade, petitioned the South Carolina General Assembly for permission to submit a bill “ffor makeing a Dock out of the marsh or swamp between the said Loughton and Coll. Robt. Daniell.” Loughton’s bill “to make a Wharfe” was read three times by the legislature and ratified on 9 April 1706. At that time the title of the act was recorded in the legislative records as “An Act to enable Capt. Edward Loughton to make a public dock in Charles-Town for the lying up of boats and canoes,” but unfortunately the full text of the act has not survived.
Without the text of this 1706 act, and without illustrative maps or plats from that era, the precise location of Loughton’s dock has long since faded from memory. Extant records of the property of Loughton and his neighbor, Robert Daniel, can facilitate the formation of a good educated guess, however, and in the next installment of this thread I’ll discuss the possible location of the dock from which the name Dock Street was derived.
