Calhoun County

Named in honor of John C. Calhoun, the county was created in 1908 from parts of Orangeburg and Lexington Counties.

For a little over a mile the Congaree River rolls over rapids, shoals, and interspersed islands before it enters the coastal plain. As is typical of slowly moving mature streams, it meanders through the coastal plain, changing its course frequently.

However, Marion and Lee, realizing that they had to act quickly, decided to set Mrs. Motte’s house on fire. Lee asserted in his Memoirs that upon informing Mrs. Motte of their decision she offered them bow and arrows for the task, but William Dobein James, a Marion biographer, dismisses this story, stating that the fire was started by slinging burning rosin onto the roof.

The Gressette Committee remained dormant until 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation was unconstitutional. Gressette made the committee’s position on desegregation clear when he declared, “We shall recommend to the Governor and General Assembly continued resistance by every lawful means.”

Gressette earned special notoriety for his role in the debate over school desegregation. From 1951 to 1966, Gressette chaired a special legislative committee that led legal efforts to avoid desegregation in South Carolina. His influence on this committee was so strong that it came to be called the “Gressette Committee.”

Ever conscious of racial discrimination, Kitt overcame barriers of prejudice, sometimes militantly, and championed unpopular causes for the downtrodden.

Lewisohn’s first novel, The Broken Snare, was published in 1908. Trumpeted by the naturalist writer Theodore Dreiser, it was condemned in Charleston for the author’s advocacy of “free love.”

In May 1781 patriot commanders Francis Marion and Henry Lee decided that they would have to burn the house to get the British outpost to surrender. Rebecca Motte gave her consent to the plan and even provided the arrows used to set fire to the roof.

Peterkin’s stark, poignant stories about black country folk were among the first flowerings in the movement toward ironic, realistic regional fiction later known as the Southern Renaissance

Comprising the southern and eastern portions of modern Calhoun and Orangeburg Counties, St. Matthew’s Parish was established on April 12,…

Agriculturalist, civic leader. Wannamaker was born on September 12, 1851, at Poplar Spring, Orangeburg District (now Calhoun County). He was…

The Catawba River enters central South Carolina, flows into Wateree Lake, and after passing through Wateree Dam in Kershaw County,…