"B" is for Bennettsville [Marlboro County, population 9,425]. Bennettsville was established on December 14, 1819, when the General Assembly moved the new Marlboro District courthouse to a more central location. The new district seat was named for the sitting governor, Thomas Bennett. A three-acre square was selected on a bluff overlooking Crooked Creek along the coach road from Society Hill to Fayetteville. By 1824, a Robert Mills-designed courthouse was completed, and a town slowly developed around the square. During World War II German prisoners of war supplied labor for local farms. In the 1950s Crooked Creek was dammed to create Lake Wallace, an 846-acre recreational lake and waterfowl preserve. Noteworthy natives of Bennettsville include former Bank of America chairman, Hugh L. McColl, Jr., Children’s Defense Fund chair Marion Wright Edelman, and newspaper publisher William L. Kinney, Jr.
"B" is for Bennettsville
