Background
Samuel Cardy was born in United States.
Samuel Cardy was born in United States.
At Charleston, the first permanent church of the Colony was St. Philip’s erected in 1712 (destroyed by fire in 1837), and forty years later the parish church of St. Michael was built. When the cornerstone of this edifice was laid at the original site, location not known, the local newspaper recorded that the plans were furnished by Mr, Gibson, and Mr. Samuel Cardy, the ingenious architect, undertook and completed the building. From the phrasing of the sentence, it would seem that Cardy was the contractor and not the architect, if the word furnished is taken to mean ”made” and not ”paid for.” This however is apparently disproved by the inscription on a lead plate found on the site of the first lighthouse marking the harbor entrance at Charleston, commemorating its erection in 1767, on which Cardy's name is designated "Architect" with another name given as “Engr."
The venerable church of St. Michael’s, a brick and stucco structure with tower, designed in the Classic Revival, still stands today in Charleston.