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Spaniards had been in South Carolina off and on since perhaps 1514, and certainly by 1521. Even in the 1660s Spaniards occasionally came up the coast to trade and visit Santa Helena on Parris Island, which had largely been abandoned to Indians. As late as 1663, however, the English had not explored even the coast of the future Palmetto State. That would change after the granting of the Carolina Proprietary in March 1663. In 1663 and 1666, two expeditions from Barbados, then perhaps the wealthiest corner of the nascent English empire, would explore coastal South Carolina, and set the stage for the first surviving English settlement on that coast, the town of Charleston in 1670. This is the story of those two expeditions, the first by William Hilton, after whom Hilton Head was quickly named, and the second by Robert Sandford, who named the Ashley River.
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Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website)
Edward McCrady, The History of South Carolina Under the Proprietary Government 1670-1719
L. H. Roper, Conceiving Carolina: Proprietors, Planters, and Plots 1662-1729
Alexander S. Salley, Jr., Narratives of Early Carolina 1650-1708 (Includes narratives of William Heaton and Robert Sandford)
