An itinerant Anglican minister in the northwest backcountry of pre-Revolutionary South Carolina, Charles Woodmason is remembered for the journal in which he recorded his wilderness experiences. This document, the fruit of a three-year sojourn (1766-1768), during which Woodmason ranged over some 9,000 miles, may be the fullest firsthand description of any American colonial frontier.

Little is known of Woodmason's early life. He was probably born to a gentry family about 1720 somewhere in England, possibly London. He first immigrated to South Carolina--probably in 1752--in order to set up as a merchant and planter, and he prospered for some ten years, attaining posts of civic responsibility in Charleston. During 1753-1755, he also found sufficient leisure to contribute to the Gentleman's Magazine (London) four poems (among them a verse topography of South Carolina and "A Poetical Epistle to Benjamin Franklin, Esq., of Philadelphia on his Experiments and Discoveries in Electricity") and an...