THE BAPTIST HISTORY COLLECTION
STATE HISTORIES
SOUTH CAROLINA BAPTISTS
1670-1805
by Leah Townsend, Ph.D.

“THE CHARLESTON CHURCH AND ITS BRANCHES
After long acceptance of 1682 or 1683 as the year in which Rev. William
Screven came to South Carolina, it now appears certain that he was still in
Kittery (then under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, now Maine) in January,
1696; and as the first record of his presence in South Carolina is a warrant for
one thousand acres of land dated December 7, 1696, he must have arrived in
South Carolina sometime in that year. f13 Mr. Screven is claimed to have come
to Kittery from Somerton, in Somersetshire, England, where some one of his
name (though not himself) subscribed a Baptist confession of faith in 1656. In
Maine his activity among his Baptist brethren brought him into disfavor with
the authorities. He was summoned for “blasphemous speeches about the holy
ordinance of baptism” and imprisoned for refusing to pay the fine imposed;
and finally, after having been licensed to preach by the First Baptist Church in
Boston on January 11, 1682, he was ordered to leave Maine. He seems,
however, to have remained for more than fourteen years before coming to
Carolina. During those years he was active in the life of Kittery and in the
Baptist cause, having collected a congregation which was organized as a
church on September 25, 1682. f14
The three probable reasons for Mr. Screven’s selection of South Carolina for
his final settlement were that toleration existed there; that the family of his
wife, Bridget Cutt (or Cutts), had lived for sometime in Barbados, and may
have received first-hand reports of the advantages of the settlement of 1670 on
the Ashley River, f15 and coming himself from Somersetshire, Mr. Screven may
have been in communication with the party brought over by Blake. Either
through previous acquaintance or by accident, Rev. William Screven appeared
in this province about the time that Joseph Blake again became governor. He
secured a second warrant, for fifteen hundred acres of land, in December,
1696, indicating that he had brought in a considerable number of people. In the
same month “Thomas Bulling had a warrt for five hundred acres of Land Lying
at Sumer towne, on the West Side of Stewart’s line,” and Robert Wetherick
had one hundred acres at “Sumerton;” he is described in the records of the
Court of Ordinary in 1700 as “late of New England, then of Sommerton in ye
County aforesaid [Berkeley].” f16 Again by purchase in 1698 and by grant in
1700 William Screven secured eleven hundred four acres on the west side of
Pooshee or Biggin Swamp near Wampee, more than forty miles fromCharleston.
This plantation he may have named Somerton, and it has since
1725 borne the title, but it is more probable that the whole community about
him was known to its members by that name; there was never a town in the
South Carolina sense. The neighboring grants were held by Permanow (or
Permanus) Screven, a son of Rev. William Screven, and by Elizabeth and
Robert Wetherick, Champernoun Elliott, and Humphrey Axtell, all Baptists
and all except the last in some way connected with Rev. William Screven.”

Henry A. M. Smith, “Some Forgotten Towns in Lower South Carolina,” in
SCHGM, XIV (1913), 135-6; there is an indication in Henry A. M. Smith,
“The Upper Ashley: And the Mutations of Families,” in SCHGM, XX
(1919), 162, of a connection between Daniel Axtell the Landgrave and
Daniel Axtell of New England; Humphrey Axtell was a near neighbor of
Rev. William Screven In Carolina; Howard, Cutts Genealogy, p. 16, and
Burrage, “Added Facts,” in Coll. Maine Hist, Soc., 1894, pp. 277-8, differ
in the relationships of these neighbors.

The three probable reasons for Mr. Screven’s selection of South Carolina for
his final settlement were that toleration existed there; that the family of his
wife, Bridget Cutt (or Cutts), had lived for sometime in Barbados, and may
have received first-hand reports of the advantages of the settlement of 1670 on
the Ashley River,” f15
Champernoun Elliott

Olofsen Surname Origin, Meaning & Last Name History (forebears.io)

Namensverbreitungskarte – Verein für Computergenealogie (genealogy.net)