Founded in 1773, the Charleston Museum is the oldest museum in the United States — it predates the republic. The collections cover the natural history and cultural history of the South Carolina Lowcountry: fossils, Native American artefacts, colonial silverware and ceramics, and extensive documentation of plantation life and the Gullah-Geechee culture of the Sea Islands.
The museum is particularly strong on the material culture of enslaved people and the social history of colonial Charleston. Adjacent to the museum, two historic houses — the Joseph Manigault House (1803) and the Heyward-Washington House (1772) — are operated as house museums covering different chapters of antebellum domestic life. Combination tickets are available.