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Please add profiles of those who were born, lived or died in Abbeville, South Carolina.
Abbeville County, located on the Savannah River in Northwestern South Carolina was first settled by people of mostly Scots-Irish descent around 1756. A small group of French Huguenot refugees also settled at New Bordeaux in Southwest Abbeville County. Dr. John de la Howe, of Huguenot descent and native of Abbeville, France was given the honor of naming the new county in 1785. The City of Abbeville, the county seat, has a population of 6,000 with a county population of 25,000.
Famed states' rights advocate and Vice President John C. Calhoun first practiced law in Abbeville, and he was born on a farm in Abbeville County near what is now the town of Mt. Carmel.
Abbeville has the unique distinction of being both the birthplace and the deathbed of the Confederacy. On November 22, 1860, a meeting was held at Abbeville, at a site since dubbed "Secession Hill", to launch South Carolina's secession from the Union; one month later, the state of South Carolina became the first state to secede.
At the end of the Civil War, with the Confederacy in shambles, Confederate President Jefferson Davis fled Richmond, Virginia, and headed south, stopping for a night in Abbeville at the home of his friend Armistead Burt. It was on May 2, 1865, in the front parlor of what is now known as the Burt-Stark Mansion that Jefferson Davis officially acknowledged the dissolution of the Confederate government, in the last official cabinet meeting.
The Abbeville County Courthouse, Abbeville Historic District, Abbeville Opera House, Armistead Burt House, Patrick Calhoun Family Cemetery, Cedar Springs Historic District, Harbison College President's Home, Trinity Episcopal Church and Cemetery and Upper Long Cane Cemetery are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Adjacent Counties
Other Towns & Communities
- Antreville
- Calhoun Falls
- Donalds
- Due West
- Honea Path (part)
- Lake Secession
- Lowndesville
- Ware Shoals (part)
Cemeteries
Links
Sumter National Forest (part)
