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“L” is for Londonborough Township.

“L” is for Londonborough Township. At times referred to as Belfast and Londonderry, the 22,000-acre Londonborough Township was laid out on Hard Labor Creek in 1762. Originally planned to provide a buffer between the Cherokees and lowcountry plantations, it was primarily populated by poor Palatine Protestants, previously living in England. Sponsored by London philanthropists, granted land, and provisioned by the colonial government, these Germans began to arrive in 1764. Despite direct assistance from the colony’s government, the township never prospered. Reports described it as “desperately poor.” During the American Revolution, a number of settlers sided with the British—and apparently left the area at its conclusion. By the time of the 1790 census, most of the original families were no longer listed, and the entire Londonborough community disappeared in the first decades of the nineteenth century.

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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.