Built: 1st lighthouse 1767 / 2nd lighthouse 1837

Type: 1st lighthouse Brick Tower / 2nd lighthouse Tower

Height: 1st lighthouse 43 feet / 2nd lighthouse 102 feet

Status: Non-Active

Location: Middle Bay Island

Deactivated: 1st tower Destroyed / 2nd tower Destroyed 1861

Lens: 1st Tower 1812 Lamp Reflector System / 2nd tower 1858 First Order

Keepers:

Notes: In the 1700s there were three islands that stretched for four miles between Folly Island and Sullivan's Island. They were named Middle Bay Island, Morrison Island, and Cummings Point. The first Charleston lighthouse was built on Middle Bay Island in 1767.  The tower rose forty-three feet and served well, until it was darkened for a period during the Revolutionary War. After the war, one of the first acts of the new Congress was to establish the Lighthouse Service, which took control of all existing navigational aids. The South Carolina Legislature thus transferred the Charleston Lighthouse along with 565 acres on Middle Bay Island to the federal government. Various improvements were subsequently made to increase the range of the light. During 1801 and 1802, the tower was heightened, and in 1812 an Aragand lamp-reflector system was installed.
In the early 1800s the channel leading to Charleston began to shift causing a change in the tidal currents. Sand began to build up between the islands and this resulted in the three islands merging into a single island. Since Morrison Island was the central of the three earlier islands, the now single island was called Morrison Island.  Later the name was shortened to Morris Island.
In the 1830s, the Lighthouse Service built a new, 102-foot tower to replace the 1767 tower. A hurricane, which struck the lighthouse in 1854, destroyed the keeper's dwelling and damaged the tower. When the lighthouse was repaired, it also received a First-order Fresnel lens. The tower had survived the battle with the hurricane, but it would not see the end of the War Between the States, which would soon erupt nearby. 
When South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union in December of 1860, it took control of all the lights on its coastline and towed the Rattlesnake Shoal Lightship into Charleston Harbor. The lens was removed from the Morris Island Lighthouse, and the tower was converted into an observation post. Just a few months later, in April of 1861, shots were fired at Fort Sumter, located just north of the lighthouse at the entrance to the harbor, and the war was underway. The Confederates were able to hold onto Charleston for most of the war, but during the course of the conflict, much of the city was burned or blown up, and the Morris Island Lighthouse was destroyed.