Abbeville County

Although removed from the fighting during the Civil War, Abbeville nevertheless played a noteworthy role in the conflict.

Robert Mills called Abbeville “the original seat of learning in the upper country,” and it quickly distinguished itself as the mother of some very famous Carolinians.

A staunch Democrat, from 1864 to 1866 Aiken represented Abbeville District in the S.C. House of Representatives. During Reconstruction, the link he had earlier made between southernism and agrarianism grew stronger.

Bass gained his greatest professional fame as one of the nation’s leading scholars of the American Revolution in South Carolina.

The genesis of Boonesborough Township lay in the 1761 petition of John Pouag, the Reverend John Baxter, John Greg, John Rae, and David Rae for a grant of forty thousand acres to be reserved for the settlement of Irish immigrants. Pouag and Greg were merchants of Charleston and London, respectively, while Baxter had brought settlers from Belfast to Williamsburg Township.

Bristow’s natural storytelling ability, neatly devised and detailed plots, sharply drawn characters, telling eye for landscape and its detail, use of common sense, gift for dramatic effect, and emotional sincerity were the characteristics of her work that critics and reviewers singled out for praise. Margaret Wallace spoke of her “solid and versatile talent as a novelist.” The critic Susan Quinn Berneis claimed that Bristow’s greatest skill was reserved for “the unfolding of American history as displayed around the lives of the people who created it.” And Eugene Armfield remarked that she belonged “among those Southern novelists who [were] trying to interpret the South and its past in critical terms.”

During his career Calhoun evolved from “War Hawk” nationalist to independent nullifier to strategist for a unified regional (southern) defense of slavery.

Cheves declined an offer to join President James Madison’s cabinet as secretary of the treasury, and he retired from Congress in 1815. In 1819 President James Monroe appointed Cheves president of the Second National Bank of the United States.

Admitted to the bar in 1783, Colhoun opened a practice in Charleston. On October 8, 1786, Colhoun cemented his ties to the lowcountry elite by marrying Floride Bonneau, heiress to an extensive plantation in St. John’s Berkeley Parish.

His catholicity was expressed in his concern for the unity of the church and in his commitment to the Bible as the church’s book. He insisted that the Bible is both human and divine: its form is human, and its content is divine.

From its founding, the college played an important role in nurturing the social and cultural cohesion of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.

The formation of the seminary by the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Synod reflected the church’s Scottish heritage and insistence on an educated ministry.

Gary served as a bill clerk in the state legislature for nine years before being elected by Abbeville County to the S.C. House of Representatives in 1890. He remained there until 1900 and served as Speaker of the House from 1896 to 1900.

Gary capitalized on the reputation he earned in war. Active in Democratic Party politics, in 1876 he was the most uncompromising and outspoken leader of the “Straight-out” faction of the South Carolina Democratic Party, stressing white supremacy and solidarity while vigorously opposing any cooperation with Republicans or black Carolinians.

The success of the Anderson and Abbeville spurs inspired the creation of other short routes that extended the reach of the Greenville and Columbia in the upstate. In 1854 the Laurens Railroad completed a thirty-two mile line from Laurens to Newberry.

In 1876 Haskell helped organize the aggressive Red Shirt campaign that brought a narrow victory for Wade Hampton in the race for governor; he was also a prominent business leader in the state for several decades.

From 1934 to 1936 Hemphill was headquartered in Columbia, where he supervised several New Deal projects, among them the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), in which he produced measured drawings of Robert Mills’s Ainsley Hall House.

As the town entered the twenty-first century, the Chiquola Mill continued as Honea Path’s largest employer. However, the town had diversified its economy somewhat.

On June 6, 1944, Howie, a staff officer with the 116th, landed at Omaha Beach in the third wave of assault troops. Having survived the carnage of the invasion’s bloodiest beach, he and the men of the 116th spent the remainder of June and much of July fighting through Normandy’s hedgerow country in brutal close combat.

In 1963 she became the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Georgia. It was the first of many firsts for one of the nation’s groundbreaking minority journalists.