South Carolina from A to Z

“P” is for PTL Club. Based first in Charlotte, North Carolina, and then Fort Mill, South Carolina, the PTL Club (launched in 1974) was one of the most successful ventures in televangelism for much of the 1970s and 1980s. PTL stood for both “Praise the Lord” and “People that Love.” Jim Bakker and his wife Tammy Faye used the popular program as a springboard to develop a Pentecostally oriented resor...

“P” is for Provincials. When warfare broke out between the colonies and Great Britain in 1775, in addition to British soldiers and German mercenaries, British officials organized loyal Americans into conventional fighting units commonly referred to as provincials. A provincial soldier was a volunteer subject to the same control, benefits, and hardships as a British soldier. In 1780, the South Caro...

“P” is for Promised Land (Greenwood and Abbeville counties; 2020 population 555). Located just off of S.C. Highway 10 south of Greenwood, this rural African American community was created by freed slaves in the early 1870s. The South Carolina Land Commission had acquired a 2,742-acre tract and in 1869 began selling fifty-acre lots to freed African Americans. By 1872 some forty-eight families resid...

“C” is for Cooper, Anthony Ashley (1621-1683).  Lord proprietor. Born in Dorset, England, Cooper attended Exeter College, Oxford. In 1661, for his role in the restoration of the monarchy, he was elevated to the peerage and named Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1663 the king granted the joint proprietorship of Carolina to Lord Ashley and seven other English noblemen. With the aid of John Locke, Lor...

“C” is for Cooke, William Wilson (1871-1949.) Architect. Born in Greenville, Cooke attended Claflin College and later studied architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and art history at Columbia University. Between 1902 and 1907 he was a practicing architect working primarily in the Orangeburg area. In 1907 he passed the federal civil service examination and was assigned to the office...

“P” is for Prince George Winyah Parish. Comprising portions of modern Georgetown, Horry, Marion, and Dillon Counties, Prince George Winyah Parish was established in 1721 to accommodate a wave of European settlers who had taken up residence north of the Santee River following the Yamasee War. One year earlier the inhabitants of “Winyaw” a burgeoning settlement on “Sampeet Creek,” had petitioned the...

“S” is for Southern Wesleyan University. Southern Wesleyan University is a private Christian liberal arts institution. Founded in 1906 as Wesleyan Methodist Bible Institute, the university is affiliated with the Wesleyan Church, an evangelical denomination with Methodist roots in the American holiness tradition. The school was chartered as Wesleyan Methodist College in 1909 and in 1959 became Cent...

“S” is for Southern Quarterly Review . The Souther n Quarterly Review originated in New Orleans in 1842 but later moved to Charleston. It had the advantage of being not a literary magazine but rather a magazine open to any branch of knowledge. The Review was unabashedly a conservative southern magazine, advocating classicism in literature, agrarianism and slavery in economy, and Protestantism in r...

“S” is for South of the Border. Located just south of the North Carolina border near the South Carolina town of Hamer, South of the Border has long captured the attention of travelers on U.S. Highway 301 and Interstate 95. In 1950 beer distributor Alan Shafer expanded a one-room beer depot to include a twenty-four-hour diner. The opening of the South of the Border Motel in 1954 capitalized on grow...

“S” is for South Caroliniana Library. The South Caroliniana Library building was completed in 1840 as the central library building for South Carolina College (later the University of South Carolina). It was the first freestanding college library building in the United States, predating those of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. The structure—on the university’s historic horseshoe-- contains design ele...

“P” is for Prince Frederick's Parish. Established in 1734, Prince Frederick's Parish stretched like an elongated triangle from the Santee River northward “to the utmost bounds of the province,” encompassing all our part of modern Dillon, Marion, Florence, Horry, Georgetown, and Williamsburg Counties. Prior to 1730 European settlement north of the Santee was sparse. Still, in 1721 the assembly orga...

“M” is for Musgrove, Mary (ca. 1700-1765). Mediator between the Creeks and the English. Musgrove was born Coosaponakeesa in Coweta, the Creek Nation (central Georgia), the daughter of a Lower Creek woman and a Charleston trader. Her father took her to Pon Pon, South Carolina, to be baptized and educated. She returned to the Creek Nation and married Johnny Musgrove, son of a Creek woman and a plant...

“B” is for Brown, Lucy Hughes (1863-1911). Physician. Brown, a native of North Carolina, completed a medical degree at the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1894. After practicing medicine in North Carolina, she moved to Charleston and became the first Black female physician to practice in South Carolina. With several other African Americans, she contributed to the establishment of the Ca...

“B” is for Brown, James (1933-2006). Musician. Brown, likely South Carolina's most famous twentieth-century entertainer, was born near Barnwell. His career began in the 1950s in Augusta, Georgia, and grew into a music empire with a vast catalog of recordings, countless performances, and a global appeal that continued into the twenty-first century. While he was called the “Godfather of soul” his bo...

“B” is for Brown, Edgar Allan (1888-1975). Legislator. Brown was born in Aiken County. He represented Barnwell County in the South Carolina House of Representatives (1920-1926) and served as speaker (1925-1926).  In 1928 he was elected to the S. C. Senate where he remained until his retirement in 1972--serving as president pro tempore from 1942 to 1972. In September 1954 the South Carolina Democra...

“B” is for Broughton, Thomas (d. 1737). Legislator, lieutenant governor. By the mid- 1690s Broughton had settled in South Carolina, emigrating from the West Indies. He quickly became involved in the Indian trade. Broughton acquired at least four plantations, including Mulberry on the Cooper River, where he built a massive, Jacobean-style brick mansion. In 1696 he was elected to the Commons House o...

“P” is for Primus Plot (May-June 1720). The Primus Plot was South Carolina's first alleged slave conspiracy. Word of this conspiracy surfaced while the colony’s atmosphere was tense. There were rumors that Spain would invade South Carolina and, in the process, arm the colony enslaved persons against its White inhabitants. South Carolina’s enslaved Black majority had quickly grown to nearly twice t...

“P” is for Preston, William Campbell (1794-1860). U. S. Senator. Preston was an 1812 graduate of South Carolina College. After studying law in Virginia and at the University of Edinburgh, he practiced law in Virginia. In 1824 Preston moved to South Carolina and represented Richland District in the South Carolina House of Representatives (1828- 1833). In 1833 he was elected by the General Assembly...

“M” is for Myrtle Beach Pavilion. Until its closing in 2006 the Myrtle Beach Pavilion was located at 812 North Ocean Boulevard in the heart of Myrtle Beach. The Myrtle Beach Pavilion Amusement Park’s eleven acres of roller coasters, thrill rides, go-cart tracks, water rides, attractions, arcades, shops, and games were a tradition for seaside visitors for generations. The original pavilion was a wo...

“M” is for Murrells Inlet (Georgetown County; 2020 population 9,740). Murrells Inlet is located twenty-two miles up the Waccamaw Neck from Georgetown. By the 1890s, people from inland South Carolina towns began to establish a summer colony along the inlet creekfront. Since inlet seafood could not be shipped out, then people would have to go there to get it; and throughout the twentieth century the...

“M” is for Murray, George Washington (1853-1926). Congressman. Murray was born an enslaved person near Rembert in Sumter District. He attended the University of South Carolina and taught school in Sumter County. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, he acquired an influential role in Republican Party affairs. He came to be known as the “Republican Black Eagle” and served as a dele...

“B” is for Brooks, Preston Smith (1819-1857). Congressman. Born near the town of Edgefield, Brooks was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives in 1852. In May 1856 an unusually harsh speech by U.S. Senator Charles Sumner assailed South Carolina's role in American history (especially during the Revolutionary War) and attacked by name Senator Andrew P. Butler (a distant cousin of Brooks). With...

“B” is for Brodie, Laura (1908-2004). Herpetologist. Brodie was born at Rockwood Farm five miles southeast of Leesville. At an early age she developed an interest in the living things around the farm. While Brodie was at Winthrop College, her biology professor noted her interest and called her to the attention of Howard K. Gloyd, a well-known herpetologist. He helped Brodie get a position at the U...

“B” is for Brookgreen Gardens. Brookgreen Gardens was created in 1931 by the sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington and her husband, Archer M. Huntington. The sculpture garden is situated on thirty acres in the middle of 9,100 acres of the South Carolina lowcountry stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Waccamaw River. The site is best known for its beautiful display gardens and its unraveled American...

“B” is for Bristow, Gwen (1903-1980.) Novelist. Born in Marion, Bristow graduated from Judson College in Alabama. After studying journalism at Columbia University, she became a reporter for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans. There she met and married Bruce Manning. Together they collaborated on the writing of four mystery novels. By the summer of 1934 they had moved to California where Bristow beg...