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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The Town Hall in Cheraw, built in 1858 and photographed here in 1890, is still used as a meeting place for the Masons (who helped pay for it) and for city offices. County seat of Chesterfield County...
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The town of St. Matthews predates by more than a century and a half the 1908 formation of Calhoun County, of which it is now the county seat. Originally a trading post on the Cherokee Path, the town...
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Walterboro Courthouse, designed by Robert Mills, was built of materials originally used in the Provisional Capital of South Carolina at Jacksonboro. Photographed here in 1910, a militia unit on...
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A hunting party in at Aiken, around 1910. The dry, pleasant climate attracted winter visitors to Aiken as early as the 1850s, but its real expansion as a winter resort took place after the Civil War...
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"An Exact Prospect of Charles Town, the Metropolis of the Province of South Carolina," was engraved for the London Magazine in 1762, based on a painting of the bustling colonial commercial city in...
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Anderson public square in the 1930s. From the files of the Works Progress Administration Writer's Program. Photo by Lewis D. Moorhead. Courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library.
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Camden's Main Street, around 1910. Courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library.
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This view of the Darlington town square gives a good view of the fourth courthouse, built in 1903. Darlington was an important cotton market, and farmers are gathered on the courthouse square around...
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This aerial view of downtown Sumter, taken around 1930, shows clearly the City Hall and the skyscraper Dixie Life building, built in 1911. Courtesy of the Sumter County Museum Archives.
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The Fairfield County Courthouse, built in 1823 from a design by Robert Mills, still stands, and was recently restored. Fairfield became a county in 1785. Courtesy of the Fairfield County Museum.
