Page "Charleston, South Carolina" Paragraph 11

The settlement was often subject to attack from sea and from land.

Periodic assaults from Spain and France, who still contested England's claims to the region, were combined with resistance from Native Americans, as well as pirate raids.

While the earliest settlers primarily came from England, colonial Charleston was also home to a mixture of ethnic and religious groups.

French, Scottish, Irish, and Germans migrated to the developing seacoast town, representing numerous Protestant denominations, as well as Roman Catholicism and Judaism.

Sephardic Jews migrated to the city in such numbers that Charleston eventually was home to, by the beginning of the 19th century and until about 1830, the largest and wealthiest Jewish community in North America.

Africans were brought to Charleston on the Middle Passage, first as servants, then as slaves, especially Wolof, Yoruba, Fulani, Igbo, Malinke, and other peoples of the Windward Coast.

The port of Charleston was the main dropping point for Africans captured and transported to the United States for sale as slaves.