Ladson: A Planter Family's Long Shadow

The community of Ladson, spread across three counties just northwest of Charleston, carries the name of one of the Lowcountry's oldest elite families.

John Ladson arrived in Carolina in sixteen seventy-nine, shortly after the colony was founded. Over the following century, the Ladson family became a fixture in Charleston commerce and politics. One member served as lieutenant governor of South Carolina. Their landholdings spread across the region.

The modern community didn't take formal shape until nineteen oh five, when a railroad station was built on what had been Ladson family territory. The station gave the settlement its name, its post office, and its reason to exist. Today Ladson is an unincorporated place with no mayor and no city hall, but its name carries more than three centuries of Lowcountry history in a single word.