Fairfield County is part of the Old English District of South Carolina. Although the reason behind the county’s name remains uncertain, it seems to have come from Lord Cornwallis. While headquartered in the area during the Revolutionary War, Lord Cornwallis supposedly said that the region had “fair fields.” Cornwallis was not the only important war figure to have left his mark in Fairfield County. General Sherman invaded Winnsboro during the Civil War.
Historically, the county’s economy depended on the production of cotton and a special type of granite known as Winnsboro Blue Granite. Today the county remains rural with an estimated 2015 population of about 26,000 people. Fairfield County was founded within the Camden District in 1785, and Winnsboro serves as its county seat.
Welcome to Fairfield County, South Carolina. Accessed June 03, 2016. http://www.fairfieldsc.com/
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These houses were constructed by the Winnsboro Mill, now a part of the Uniroyal facility in Fairfield County, around 1929. The mill owners provided housing as a way to attract workers or operatives to...
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“M” is for Means, John Hugh [1812-1862]. Governor. After graduating from South Carolina College, Means became a successful planter in Fairfield District. After one term in the General Assembly, he...
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“W” is Winnsboro [Fairfield County, population 3,599]. Winnsboro, the seat of Fairfield County, lies in the Piedmont on a ridge between the Broad and Wateree Rivers. In 1768 John Winn began acquiring...
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Mill owners encouraged the building of churches (and thus habits of sobriety and industry among their workers) by donating lands within the mill village on which churches could be constructed. The...
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Camp Welfare, near Winnsboro, photographed by Ernest Ferguson around 1950, was "the last surviving camp ground of Arbor and Tents" for African-Americans in South Carolina. Founded shortly after 1865...
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Many of the endemic diseases that had killed children and young adults were gradually eliminated through better sanitation and medical immunization by the mid-20th century, but others remained. Here...
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An elementary school class at the Everett School in Winnsboro completes a class project in the 1950s. The Everett School was built in the Winnsboro Mills village in 1922. There had been a one-room...
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John R. Schorb (1818-1908) was an early photographer in South Carolina, practicing first as a daguerreotypist, and later using wet and dry plate photographic techniques, in Winnsboro and Yorkville...
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Laura Glenn Douglas (1886-1962), New Deal artist, was born in Winnsboro and studied at the College for Women in Columbia, and the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. She subsequently studied in...
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Project Discovery visits a restored plantation from the 1790s, built in Winnsboro, in Fairfield County.
