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History

South Carolina from A to Z

"B" is for Bennettsville

By Walter Edgar

Published April 11, 2017 at 5:17 AM EDT

"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.

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Walter Edgar

Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.

See stories by Walter Edgar