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A mill village in York. Photo from the Works Progress Administration, 1930s. Courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library.G. South Carolina Towns & Cities | History of SC Slide Collection
Almost all of the images in this collection document a particular South Carolina place at a specific time in its history. This section, organized alphabetically is not intended, therefore, as a comprehensive list of every South Carolina community. It is actually a fairly impressionistic look at the county seats and rural villages, as well as the cities, in which South Carolinians live and work. For several towns and cities (Beaufort, Camden, Charleston, Columbia, Darlington, Georgetown, Greenville, Spartanburg, and Sumter), an effort has been made to select several images that show how that place has changed over time. Other places were chosen for special features that have made that town unique; still others have been chosen because they illustrate the features that many towns in the state have shared.
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Main Street, Winnsboro, around the turn of the century. Winnsboro, the county seat of Fairfield County, was settled in 1755, incorporated in 1785, and named to honor one of its founders, Revolutionary...Photo
Honea Path mill village and reservoir, Ware Shoals, Greenwood County, 1914. Courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library.Photo
Walterboro Courthouse, designed by Robert Mills, was built of materials originally used in the Provisional Capital of South Carolina at Jacksonboro. Photographed here in 1910, a militia unit on...Photo
A new section of the Vaucluse Mill Village of the Graniteville Manufacturing Company. Photo by J.F. Sofge, Graniteville, December 19, 1947. Courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library.Photo
The second county courthouse for Union County, built in 1827, was photographed in 1904 shortly before it was torn down in 1908 to make way for a new courthouse. Formed from the old Ninety Six District...Photo
Main Street of Sumter, around 1910. The straggling village, first called Sumterville after the Revolutionary War General Thomas Sumter (see Thomas Sumter), was selected in 1798 to be the courthouse...Photo
Main Street of Summerville, July 1906. Created by early planters as a refuge from the heat and disease of coastal plantations, Summerville was one of a number of early resorts built in the belt of...Photo
The town of St. Matthews predates by more than a century and a half the 1908 formation of Calhoun County, of which it is now the county seat. Originally a trading post on the Cherokee Path, the town...Photo
Spartanburg County was created out of the old Ninety Six District in 1785, but there were settlements in the area as early as 1761, primarily of Scotch-Irish from Pennsylvania and Virginia. Known only...