Lucas Family Cemetery

Description

Twenty-one color slides of the Lucas Family Cemetery in Charleston County.

The Lucas Family Cemetery is significant as an excellent example of a plantation graveyard of a prominent local family and for its significance in gravestone art and landscape architecture. The cemetery derives its primary significance from distinctive design features and association with historic events. The walled plot with several grave markers signed by Charleston carvers is consistent with a tradition of physical organization of the family cemetery in the Lowcountry. The design quality of the wall and stones make it an important example of the type. With respect to the early plantation culture of Mount Pleasant, the Lucas Family Cemetery is a rare remnant of a significant settlement pattern. High ground along the waterfront was valued for industry and transportation, as well as being desirable for healthy residences. In 1825 the Lucas family established a burial ground beside their home, as plantation owners had done for more than a century. Eleven gravemarkers remain, dating from 1825 to 1892. Five are brick box tombs with slab or table tops. Listed in the National Register May 18, 1998. (Source: SCDAH website.)

Photographs likely taken in support of the National Register of Historic Places nomination.