Almost all of the images in this collection document a particular South Carolina place at a specific time in its history. This section, organized alphabetically is not intended, therefore, as a comprehensive list of every South Carolina community. It is actually a fairly impressionistic look at the county seats and rural villages, as well as the cities, in which South Carolinians live and work. For several towns and cities (Beaufort, Camden, Charleston, Columbia, Darlington, Georgetown, Greenville, Spartanburg, and Sumter), an effort has been made to select several images that show how that place has changed over time. Other places were chosen for special features that have made that town unique; still others have been chosen because they illustrate the features that many towns in the state have shared.
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Honea Path mill village and reservoir, Ware Shoals, Greenwood County, 1914. Courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library.
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Aerial view of the Lancaster Mill of Springs Industries, in Lancaster, August 1946. The community of Lancaster is the county seat of Lancaster County, named for the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, home of...
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Piedmont, whose Main Street and YMCA are pictured here in a 1909 postcard view, was an important mill town in the early 20th century textile industry in Anderson County. Courtesy of the Howard G...
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In 1842, a branch of the South Carolina Railroad, which had originally been built between Charleston and Hamburg (near Augusta), was constructed to connect Charleston to Columbia. The point of...
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Chester, seat of Chester County, is one of three South Carolina towns named by settlers after their Pennsylvania homes when they migrated here in 1755 (the other two are York and Lancaster). The...
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Looking north on Main Street at Third Avenue in Conway, around 1930. Courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library.
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The town of Florence, whose Main Street is pictured here in a 1910 postcard view, grew out of the development of the Wilmington and Manchester Railroad. When the owner of the largest store in nearby...
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Main Street, Society Hill, before paving, around 1910. Society Hill was the core of the Welsh Neck settlement along the Great Pee Dee River granted to Welsh Baptists from Delaware in 1736. The name...
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Main Street of Summerville, July 1906. Created by early planters as a refuge from the heat and disease of coastal plantations, Summerville was one of a number of early resorts built in the belt of...
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Main Street of Sumter, around 1910. The straggling village, first called Sumterville after the Revolutionary War General Thomas Sumter (see Thomas Sumter), was selected in 1798 to be the courthouse...
