Government and Law

The Bamberg area was originally populated by the Edisto tribe of the Muskhogean Indians. German, Swiss, Scots-Irish, English, and Huguenot settlers began arriving during the mid-eighteenth century. Early in the twenty-first century, despite a declining agricultural economy, Bamberg County remained a heavy producer of corn, soy-beans, wheat, cotton, and sorghum.

As the largest private bank in antebellum South Carolina, the Bank of Charleston soon became regional in interest, opening agencies in the coastal cities of Apalachicola, Florida; Mobile, Alabama; and New Orleans. By 1860 the bank was one of the strongest financial institutions in the Southeast, with a reputation that carried across the Atlantic to the commercial centers of Western Europe.

The main branch of the BSSC was located in Charleston (the financial center of the state), and the new bank catered to both commercial and agricultural interests, offering planters relatively easy terms of repayment and low rates of interest. The bank was run by a president and twelve directors elected annually by the General Assembly.

Initially settled by the English in 1627, Barbados had become an exceedingly wealthy, sugar-dominated economy by the time of South Carolina’s settlement in 1670. Sir John Colleton, who probably led the effort to gain the Carolina charter for eight English noblemen, had become a Barbadian planter after the defeat of the royalist cause in the Puritan Revolution.

Perhaps Barnwell’s most enduring feature is the 1858 freestanding vertical sundial located in front of the courthouse. It was given to the town by Joseph Duncan Allen, a wealthy planter, politician, and soldier. In 1907 a portion of the five acres given by Benjamin Odom, later containing the Confederate Monument, was named Calhoun Park honoring Clinton Calhoun, longtime mayor of Barnwell.

For its first 150 years, the Barnwell economy had an agricultural base, but in 1950 the U.S. Government announced plans for the Savannah River Site, a massive nuclear weapons facility that would be located in Aiken and Barnwell Counties. This had a profound effect on Barnwell’s geography and economy.

In 1711 Barnwell was chosen to lead a South Carolina expedition against an uprising of the Tuscarora Indians in eastern North Carolina.

In 1826 he was elected to the state General Assembly, where he represented Prince William’s Parish for a single term in the House of Representatives.

Baruch entered public life in 1916. His interest in preparing America for entry into World War I led President Woodrow Wilson to appoint Baruch to the Business Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense. After WWI, he became an elder statesman of the party. Although he had advised Republican presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, Democrats still knew the value of his support. Franklin Roosevelt relied on him for advice on policy during the Depression—despite Baruch’s occasional criticism of the New Deal—and turned to him to help guide both economic mobilization and demobilization for World War II.

One of his first actions as mayor was the appointment of a study group to investigate the improvement of air service for the area. As a result, the Richland-Lexington Airport District began operating the Columbia Metropolitan Airport in 1962.

In the fall of 1991, Beasley switched to the Republican Party because he felt that “the Democratic Party was moving so far to the left” and “that Republican philosophy and Republican policies were more in line with what is good for America over the long term.”

In the antebellum era, Beaufort became a summer retreat for rich Sea Island cotton planters and even richer mainland rice planters, who maintained a wealthy and cultivated society in the town.

The first half of the twentieth century was a time of hardship in Beaufort, which by then had declined into one of the poorest places in America.

Named for the beech trees growing in the wetlands of the nearby Savannah River swamp and possibly a dead river island, Beech Island began in the 1680s as Savano Town, an important Indian trading center.

Benjamin successfully won a special election to become mayor of Columbia in 2010, becoming the first African American ever to hold that position.

It was Bennett’s response to the Vesey crisis for which he is best remembered. In a message to the General Assembly on November 22, 1822, the governor chastised Charleston authorities for the mass execution of alleged conspirators.

Established on December 14, 1819, when the General Assembly moved the Marlboro District courthouse to a more central location, by the 1970s the S.C. Highway 9 bypass served travelers passing through Bennettsville on their way to the Grand Strand. Noteworthy natives of Bennettsville include former Bank of America chairman Hugh L. McColl, Jr., Children’s Defense Fund chair Marian Wright Edelman, and former congressman John L. Napier.

Initially a center of the colony’s thriving Indian trade, the Berkeley County region grew to economic prominence as one of the premier agricultural centers of colonial America. By the end of the twentieth century, Berkeley County had evolved from its agricultural past into a mecca for manufacturing.

An expert fundraiser and eloquent speaker among the wealthy northerners who visited Daytona Beach, Bethune developed her small school into a major institution.

Black business districts appeared in South Carolina and other southern states after the public segregation of the races became legal in the 1890s. New laws forced many businesses either to provide separate facilities for black customers or to deny service to African American patrons altogether. Black entrepreneurs stepped in to establish operations in which African Americans could be served with courtesy and dignity.