Mepkin Abbey facts for kids

Mepkin Abbey is a Trappist monastery in Berkeley County, South Carolina. The abbey is located near Moncks Corner, at the junction of the two forks of the Cooper River northwest of Charleston, and is located in the Diocese of Charleston.

History

The area has been known as Mepkin for centuries, and was originally the estate of several historic families. The first record of the name was a 1681 grant to the sons of Sir John Coleton, one of the Lords Proprietary of South Carolina. In 1762 one of his descendants sold the land to Henry Laurens of Charleston. Laurens built his home there, and it was known as the Mepkin Plantation.

Charles Fraser, Mepkin, the Seat of Henry Laurens, Esq., May 1803

After a few generations, the Laurens family sold the property, and it passed through several hands. In 1936 the well-known publisher Henry R. Luce bought the property. The plantation, which was created from several smaller plantations, contained over 7200 acres when Luce bought the property for a reported $150,000. When the Luces bought the plantation, Laurnes' house was already gone; the then-current house had been built in 1906. New York architect Edward Durell Stone traveled to Mepkin in 1936 to design a new house for the Luces. His wife, Clare Boothe Luce, commissioned and built an extensive landscape garden there known as the Mepkin Garden. In 1949 the Luces donated a large part of the property, including the garden, to the Trappist Order's Gethsemani Abbey.

After the historic house of Henry Laurens was gone, this house was built in 1906 and remained until being itself replaced in the 1930s by Henry Luce.

Twenty-nine monks of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists) came from Gethsemani, Kentucky, to found the new Mepkin Abbey. With a few limitations, the Abbey and the Mepkin Gardens are open to the public on a daily basis. The monastery grounds include a graveyard containing the ashes of Henry Laurens, as well as the graves of John Laurens, Clare Boothe Luce, and Henry Luce. Its gardens are now known as the Mepkin Abbey Botanical Garden.

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  Mepkin Abbey entrance

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  Mepkin Abbey

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  Mepkin Abbey

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  Mepkin Abbey

Leaders of Mepkin Abbey

Abbots/Superiors