Zion Chapel of Ease and the Baynard Mausoleum

• Parish: St. Luke’s, established 1767
• Mausoleum: built 1846
• Listed: National Register of Historic Places, 2017
• Admission: free, open daily

Zion Chapel of Ease is a small cemetery of just under three acres, set among live oaks at the edge of a marsh on William Hilton Parkway, easy to miss from the road. A chapel of ease is a branch church that saves a far-off congregation the trip to the parish church. This one served St. Luke’s Parish, established on May 23, 1767. A wooden chapel went up shortly after 1786 under Captain John Stoney and Isaac Fripp, was consecrated in 1833, and was gone by 1868. The Barksdale, Baynard, Chaplin, Davant, Fripp, Kirk, Mathews, Pope, Stoney and Webb families worshipped here.

The Baynard Mausoleum

The chapel is long gone, but the cemetery holds the island’s best-known tomb. William E. Baynard, a local plantation owner, built the stone mausoleum in 1846, and it is believed to be the oldest standing structure on Hilton Head. “Integrity and Uprightness” is carved on it. Many of the older gravestones are so weathered that they are hard to read; some go back to the Revolutionary War. One marks Charles Davant, a militiaman mortally wounded from ambush on October 22, 1781. The site is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Visiting Zion Cemetery

The cemetery is open daily and free to the public, with no ticket needed. It is owned and managed by the Heritage Library, which runs tours; the current calendar is on the Heritage Library’s site. Visitors say the entrance and parking are easy to miss from the parkway, so look for them as you approach, and the mausoleum’s gate is not an invitation to go inside. For another stop in the same story, read the history of Hilton Head Island, and see the Fort Howell and Fort Mitchel earthworks from the Civil War.