RAMBLES IN THE PEE DEE BASIN SOUTH CAROLINA By HARVEY TOLIVER COOK VOL. I. COLUMBIA, S. C. THE STATE COMPANY 1926 Hist: South Wahr 12-30-76 14180 PREFACE The first inhabitants of the eastern part of South Carolina were choice emigrants from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France. South Carolina was called the Home of the Huguenots and it was even more appropriately the home of the Scotch, who formed the larger part of the population in the distant sections of the state. It was also the home of a Welsh colony in Cheraws District. The intervening spaces between Georgetown and the colony at Williamsburg and at Long Bluff were filled up with the English, predominant in number and in language. The great Pee Dee River was the central way of access to these parts of the state, where there were no powerful Indian tribes to molest the planter and the farmer. For forty or fifty years the upper parts were neither in nor out of the government's control. After 1768, it had sufficient representation to make it feel that it was a small part of the government. This continued till 1776, when the exigency of the times broadened the narrow basis of the government and it so continued until 1790, when the State Constitution was formed. Among the writers outside of the Pee Dee Basin who referred to this section in their larger works were Wood Furman and Benedict in their histories of the churches, (1811-15), Dalcho's History of the Church in South Carolina (1822) Howe's Presbyterian Church in South Carolina (1870). The Journal of Bishop Asbury, 1785-1815, as well as Carroll's Collections, Drayton's Memoirs, Gibbes' Documentary History, McCrady's volumes up to 1783, The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine and others, are among the essential authorities on our early history. |