Edgefield, South Carolina Edgefield, South Carolina Location of Edgefield, South Carolina Location of Edgefield, South Carolina County Edgefield Edgefield is a town in Edgefield County, South Carolina, United States.
The populace was 4,750 at the 2010 census. It is the governmental center of county of Edgefield County. Edgefield is part of the Augusta, Georgia urbane area.
Edgefield is positioned slightly east of the center of Edgefield County at 33 47 N 81 56 W (33.7868, 81.9278). U.S.
Route 25 passes through the southwest part of the town, bypassing the center, and leads north 33 miles (53 km) to Greenwood and south 26 miles (42 km) to Augusta, Georgia.
South Carolina Highway 23 passes through the center of the town, dominant east 26 miles (42 km) to Batesburg-Leesville and west 17 miles (27 km) to Modoc on U.S.
According to the United States Enumeration Bureau, Edgefield has a total region of 4.3 square miles (11.1 km2), of which 4.2 square miles (10.8 km2) is territory and 0.1 square miles (0.3 km2), or 2.71%, is water. At that time the region which later became Edgefield County was a vast wilderness of virgin forests, occasional prairies, great cane brakes and sparkling rivers and creeks.
The initial settlement of present-day Edgefield County occurred in the quarter century between 1750 and 1775.
By this time there were many pioneer living in present-day Edgefield County and almost all of them were involved, on one side or the other, in the Revolutionary War.
When General Lighthorse Harry Lee later wrote about the Revolution in this area, he stated that "in no part of the South was the war fought with such asperity as in this quarter.
The boundaries of Edgefield County were established at that time and the Courthouse site was designated.
Although a substantial but unsuccessful accomplishment was made in the late 1780s to bring tobacco to Edgefield County as a cash crop, short staple cotton began to assume that part in the late 1790s.
African slaves were brought in to furnish the workforce for cotton cultivation, resulting in a mushrooming of the slave populace of Edgefield County.
During the first two decades of the 19th century, Edgefield County, like most of piedmont South Carolina, began to experience unprecedented prosperity.
By 1826 South Carolina architect Robert Mills could describe Edgefield Courthouse Village as "a neat little village ...
In the antebellum era, Edgefield was not the market town of the District.
The merchants of Edgefield Courthouse Village primarily filled in the needs of the planters between trips to the larger market towns.
During the first a several decades of the 19th century, Edgefield, being the courthouse village of a large and prosperous District, began to precarious its reputation as a center of law and politics.
A number of the sons of the wealthy cotton planters and other ambitious young men, after attending elite schools and universities athwart the nation, came to Edgefield to practice law and engage in politics.
These industrialized and commercial enterprises were a momentous part of the fabric of antebellum Edgefield and a number of the Edgefield lawyers and planters were involved in these endeavors.
However, the most momentous contribution of antebellum Edgefield to our nation's history was the intense sectionalism which began in the mid-1820s and evolved to 1860.
Edgefield Congressman George Mc - Duffie initiated the fight against federal tariffs which were imposed on imported goods to protect New England manufacturers.
Later, as the anti-slavery boss attained momentum and began to threaten the economic basis of the South's prosperity, most white Edgefieldians, like most white South Carolinians, embraced this sectionalism.
The 1856 caning of Senator Charles Sumner by Edgefield Congressman Preston Brooks on the floor of the United States Senate galvanized the country and set South Carolina on a course for secession and Civil War.
By the fall of 1860 when Abraham Lincoln was propel President, all but a several Edgefield people were convinced that the time had come for the South to go its own way.
Before the war was over almost every Edgefield male between the ages of 15 and 60 had been involved in some way in the war accomplishment.
Although the war never got closer than Aiken (Edgefieldians have always claimed that Sherman was afraid to come to Edgefield!), the citizens of Edgefield railroadfour of the bloodiest years of war in human history in which nearly one-third of their fighting age white males became casualties.
Butler of Edgefield, was a massive organized accomplishment on the part of the native white populace to re-secure its control of the political machinery of the state.
By the middle of 1877 the Red Shirt strategy, along with an increasing willingness on the part of the rest of the country to allow the South to go forward on its own terms, proved prosperous in bringing the control of the state back into the hands of the native white population.
In the ensuing decades the black populace of Edgefield, like that of the entire South, was thrust back into second class peoplehip by the persistent accomplishments of the native caucasians who were determined to see that the conditions of Reconstruction were never allowed to return.
During this reconstructionthe Village of Edgefield suffered a series of fires which finished practically all of the commercial region of the town except for the court home.
A town ordinance was passed in 1884 requiring that all new buildings constructed inside 500 feet of the town square be assembled of brick.
The closing evolution of barns s, such as the Charlotte, Columbia and Augusta Railroad assembled through the easterly part of the county in the late 1860s and the Augusta and Greenwood Railroad assembled through the part of the county in the 1880s, resulted in the evolution of various barns depot towns, including Ridge Spring, Ward, Johnston, Trenton, Clark's Hill, Modoc, Parksville, Plum Branch and Mc - Cormick.
These new suburbs took on a prosperity of their own and began to sap commercial activeness which might otherwise have come to Edgefield.
During this same period, the boss to bring government closer to the citizens resulted in the creation of a number of new counties, four of which took substantial portions of Edgefield.
Edgefield County, the region serviced by the Courthouse Village, was reduced in size to just over a quarter of what it had been.
In the thirty-odd year reconstructionfrom the late 1880s through the early 1920s a number of positive developments took place in Edgefield.
The barns finally reached Edgefield, the first telephone was installed, the Edgefield Mill was constructed, the first automobile came to town, electrical power was installed, water and sewage systems were built, a new hotel was constructed and the streets around the town square were paved.
Unfortunately, beginning in 1921 and 1922, the boll weevil, which had come from Central America and had been marching athwart the South since the turn of the century, finally appeared in Edgefield County, devastating the cotton crop on which the economy was almost entirely based.
The populace of Edgefield County began to diminish and continued to diminish in every census from 1920 to 1970.
A number of Edgefield families contributed multiple sons to the war accomplishment.
A well-organized accomplishment to bring new trade to Edgefield appreciateed moderate success as the Crest Manufacturing Company was brought to town in the late 1940s.
In the 1960s Edgefield added to its list of new industrialized recruits the National Cabinet Company, Star Fibers, Federal Pacific Electric, and Tranter, each bringing a substantial number of new jobs.
The late 1960s and the early 1970s brought other new developments to Edgefield: a new water line capable of supplying the county for decades to come, a new nation club, a new private school, a new county hospital, the National Wild Turkey Federation command posts and a new congressman, Butler C.
Several mansions and a plantation have been preserved from this era: Blocker House, Cedar Grove, Darby Plantation, and together with the Edgefield Historic District, Horn Creek Baptist Church, and Pottersville, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Federal Bureau of Prisons Federal Correctional Institution, Edgefield is in Edgefield County; it is partially inside the town/city limits of Edgefield, and partially in an unincorporated area. Strom Thurmond was born in Edgefield and died in Edgefield.
"Geographic Identifiers: 2010 Enumeration Summary File 1 (G001): Edgefield town, South Carolina".
Edgefield, South Carolina.
"Edgefield town, South Carolina." Town of Edgefield official website Guide to Edgefield SC: History, attractions, jobs, schools, churches, businesses, and government - SCIway.net, South Carolina Information Highway Municipalities and communities of Edgefield County, South Carolina, United States
Categories:
Towns in Edgefield County, South Carolina - Towns in South Carolina - County seats in South Carolina - Augusta, Georgia urbane area
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