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America’s First Museum: The Charleston Museum

By Carl P. Borick, Director

he museum that would eventually evolve into The Charleston book, from 1798, still in the collections of the Charleston Library
Museum was founded in 1773 by members of the Charlestown Society, includes a wasp nest from Suriname, an ostrich egg, a
TLibrary Society, now the Charleston Library Society. Predating “Cherokee diamond,” and a “beautiful species of spider” captured by
even our nation’s founding, it is considered the first museum created in Charlestonian Thomas Branford Smith on his piazza. Two objects
North America. listed in the book are still extant in the Museum’s collections and
Lieutenant Governor William Bull, President of the represent its oldest acquired objects. They are a grass helmet
Charlestown Library Society, formed a special committee from the Sandwich Islands, now Hawaii, and a basket for
to investigate the collection of materials concerning harvesting cassava roots brought from what is now
the natural history of the province. Although Bull Suriname. The helmet, known as a mahiole,
would remain loyal to the Crown during the originally had a crest of brightly-colored bird
Revolution, other men who would lead the feathers. Sarah Platt, a PhD candidate at Syracuse
colony into rebellion against the mother country University, who has done extensive research in the
were the same men who joined in the creation of Museum’s collections, has theorized that the
the Museum. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and helmet may have even come from Captain James
Thomas Heyward, Jr., in particular, who had Cook’s expedition to the Sandwich Islands in 1778. Both
studied law in London and were familiar with the the mahiole and basket are on exhibit in the Museum’s
British Museum, were likely inspired by this Early Days gallery, which pays tribute to the Museum’s
“British” idea. Heyward would go on to sign the past cosmopolitan collecting focus.
Declaration of Independence, while Pinckney The Library Society turned the Museum over to the
would sign the United States Constitution. Literary and Philosophical Society of South Carolina in
Clearly men of influence, these gentlemen were very 1815. Later, the Medical College of South Carolina
interested in learning, discovery, and their South Carolina oversaw it. In 1852, the College of Charleston combined
roots. Accordingly, they wished to collect “the various fossils, the original collections with additional materials to present
minerals and ores, the different soils, earths, clays, marls, the Museum on their campus. While it was housed at the
stones, sands, shells, and the productions of this province.” College of Charleston, Louis Agassiz, one of the most
The Society “fitted up a museum for the reception and well-known naturalists of the period and founder of the
preservation” of these specimens. The first object they Grass helmet from the Sandwich Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, declared
ordered for the Museum, however, was an orrery, Islands, now Hawaii, donated in the Museum “has nothing to compete with it in the
1798, making it one of the oldest
developed by David Rittenhouse of Philadelphia, a acquired objects in The Charleston whole Union,” with the exception of the Academy of
device which demonstrated the motions and positions Museum’s collections. Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.
of the planets in the solar system. We will never know Throughout much of the nineteenth century, the
whether this was received as the early collections were Museum acquired primarily natural history materials,
destroyed in the Fire of 1778. but Gabriel Manigault, who was appointed curator in 1873, was
The Museum resumed collecting in the 1790s, bringing in objects interested in other disciplines as well. Although he referred to it as a
from the local area and around the world. The earliest known accession “museum of birds and animals,” he purchased a mummy for $250 in

32 Journal of Antiques and Collectibles