Encyclopedia

In a photo taken from a November 1911 hunting trip, an African-American man stands up in an ox driven cart.

Stan Lewis, photographer. Gelatin silver, b&w ; 20 x 25 cm.

For most of its history, agriculture virtually defined South Carolina, and no other single force has so profoundly influenced the state’s economy, history, demographics, and politics.

Aiken owes its existence to the South Carolina Railroad, its personality to its erstwhile “winter colony” of wealthy northern sports enthusiasts, and its economic vitality and relatively cosmopolitan spirit to the U.S. government’s massive Savannah River Site nuclear weapons facility.

Bounded on the west by the Savannah River, Aiken County lies at the western end of the state’s Sandhills region, whose poor soils necessitated the development of alternatives to farming. These nonagricultural alternatives defined much of the county’s history.

The Aiken Standard traces its origins to the short lived Aiken Press, which ran from 1867 to 1868, with the noted botanist Henry William Ravenel serving as its first editor.

The house and its outbuildings are one of the most complete and best preserved urban domestic complexes of the antebellum era.

A staunch Democrat, from 1864 to 1866 Aiken represented Abbeville District in the S.C. House of Representatives. During Reconstruction, the link he had earlier made between southernism and agrarianism grew stronger.

As a Unionist, Governor Aiken opposed the radical views of Robert Barnwell Rhett and members of the so-called “Bluffton Movement,” which called for secession if Texas was not annexed to the United States as a slave state.

In 1828 Aiken and others received a charter from the General Assembly authorizing the creation of the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company (SCC&RR). Aiken, the railroad’s largest investor, was soon chosen as president of the company.

A biplane sits in a field, possibly the Georgetown Airport, which was located on Merriman Road.