Casey (Caice)

This African-American community grew up around a Methodist church founded during Reconstruction by a freedman named Casey or Caice. Its earliest services were held under a tent, and a log cabin became its first permanent church. In 1868, T.W. Lewis and other trustees bought a 25-acre tract between S.C. Hwys. 176 and 52. After a frame church replaced the cabin, Rev. William Evans (1822-1887) became the first permanent ordained minister at Casey Methodist Church. The church was destroyed by arson in 1977, and only the adjacent cemetery remains. Casey School, a three-room frame school built next to the church in the 1930s, taught local children in grades 1-7 until it burned in 1966. The Goose Creek Branch of the Berkeley County Public Library was built on the site in 1991, and the Casey Fellowship Hall, across Moncks Corner Road from the church, was also a vital institution in the community for many years.

Goose Creek, South Carolina · United States