138 Fun Facts About South Carolina

What is the capital of South Carolina?

Columbia has been the capital since the legislature first met there in 1790; it was laid out as a planned city near the state's geographic centre to balance Lowcountry and Upstate interests.

South Carolina is named in honour of which English king, who granted the land as Carolana in 1629?

Charles I granted the land to his attorney general Sir Robert Heath in 1629 as Carolana, from Carolus, the Latin for Charles; his son Charles II kept the name when he granted it afresh to his own supporters in 1663.

South Carolina became the eighth state in 1788 by ratifying which document?

The US Constitution: South Carolina's convention approved it on May 23, 1788, and New Hampshire's vote a month later, the ninth, was the one that brought it into force.

Which Civil War distinction belongs to South Carolina?

First state to vote to secede: its convention approved the break 169 to 0 in Charleston on December 20, 1860, and six more Deep South states had followed by the time Lincoln took office in March.

Which Charleston Harbor stronghold was shelled by Confederate batteries on April 12, 1861, opening the Civil War?

Fort Sumter, on an artificial island at the harbour mouth, endured a 34-hour bombardment with no combat deaths; Private Daniel Hough became the war's first fatality when a cannon misfired during the surrender salute.

Which Union officer commanded the federal garrison in Charleston Harbor that surrendered in April 1861?

Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort after a 34-hour bombardment; P. G. T. Beauregard, once his artillery student at West Point, commanded the Confederate guns.

Which drink, produced commercially on Wadmalaw Island near Charleston, is South Carolina's official hospitality beverage?

Tea was named the state hospitality beverage in 1995 because South Carolina was the first place in the country to grow it; the Wadmalaw plants descend from those early plantings.

Why did palmetto logs serve so well in the Sullivan's Island fort attacked in June 1776?

The spongy wood absorbed cannonballs instead of splintering, so Colonel William Moultrie's half-built fort beat off nine British warships on June 28, 1776, and the tree became the state's emblem.

Besides the palmetto tree, what other white symbol appears on South Carolina's blue flag?

A crescent: Colonel William Moultrie copied the silver emblem his troops wore on their caps when he made a plain blue signal flag early in the Revolution, and the palmetto was added in 1861.

Which South Carolina hero of the Revolutionary War earned the nickname 'the Gamecock' for his fierce fighting?

Thomas Sumter's raids on British outposts after Charleston fell in 1780 gave beleaguered patriots new heart and earned him the name; he outlived every other general of the war, dying at 97.

Which American general beat Tarleton at Cowpens in 1781 with a textbook double envelopment?

Daniel Morgan had his militia fire two volleys and fall back, then closed Continentals and cavalry around Tarleton's pursuing men on January 17, 1781, capturing most of the British force.

What is the highest point in South Carolina?

Sassafras Mountain, about 3,560 feet high on the North Carolina line, is granite that was squeezed into banded gneiss when colliding continents pushed up the Appalachians.

How many counties does South Carolina have?

South Carolina has 46 counties, a number unchanged since 1919, when Allendale became the last county created.

What is South Carolina's official state bird?

The Carolina wren took the title in 1948, when the legislature repealed its own 1939 choice of the mockingbird in favour of a year-round resident with Carolina in its name.

What is South Carolina's official state dance?

The shag, not the Charleston, has been the state dance since 1984: by its pioneers' account, white jitterbug dancers on the coast slowed their steps in the 1940s to the rhythm and blues played in Black clubs.

What is South Carolina's official state snack?

Boiled peanuts became the state snack in 2006; the habit began in the 1800s as a way to use up surplus peanuts after the harvest, simmered in salted water and shared at late-summer gatherings.

What is Charleston's best-known nickname?

The Holy City is usually explained by the church steeples that crowd the low skyline and by the colony's early religious tolerance, though the nickname's origin is debated and it may date only from the 20th century.

Which feat did the H. L. Hunley achieve before any other vessel, in 1864?

The Hunley was the first to sink an enemy warship as a submarine, sending the USS Housatonic down off Charleston, then vanished with all eight crew; the wreck was found in 1995 and raised in 2000.

What drove the H. L. Hunley through the water?

A hand-cranked propeller: seven men sat in the cramped midsection turning a single crank while the captain steered from the bow, driving the boat at about four knots at best.

Which two rivers meet at the state capital to form the Congaree?

The Broad and the Saluda meet over rapids that blocked river boats, so the state dug a canal around them, finished in 1824, which was later turned to generating power.

Which Army post near the state capital is the US Army's largest basic combat training installation?

Fort Jackson was built in 1917 for the First World War and shut down in 1922, then revived for the Second; it now trains roughly half of all soldiers entering the Army each year.

Congaree National Park protects the largest remaining tract of what kind of forest in the United States?

Old-growth bottomland hardwood forest survives at Congaree because local campaigners fought for it when the owners resumed logging around 1970; Congress protected the tract in 1976 and made it a national park in 2003.

Which insects draw so many spring visitors to Congaree National Park that viewing nights are rationed by lottery?

Synchronous fireflies flash in unison for about two weeks between mid-May and mid-June as they search for mates; only three firefly species in North America do it.

Which attraction south of Murrells Inlet did sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington and her husband create in the early 1930s?

Brookgreen Gardens was laid out by the Huntingtons on four former plantations to show her sculpture outdoors; hundreds of American figurative works now stand on a 9,100-acre property that doubles as a wildlife preserve.

Which resort island hosts the PGA Tour's Heritage tournament at Harbour Town?

Hilton Head Island had no bridge to the mainland until 1956; Charles Fraser's Sea Pines resort then set the pattern for its growth, and the Heritage has been played there since 1969.

Which coastal plant do Gullah artisans around Mount Pleasant coil into the Lowcountry's best-known baskets?

Sweetgrass is coiled and stitched with strips of palm leaf in a technique carried from West Africa, where the same wide trays were used to toss threshed grain and winnow away the husks.

What is Gullah, apart from the name of a people?

A creole language: long dismissed as broken English, Gullah was shown by the linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner in the 1940s to carry words, names and grammar from West African languages.

Which German carmaker's plant near Spartanburg was its highest-volume factory worldwide in 2025?

BMW began at Greer in 1994 with 318i sedans and soon added Z3 roadsters; the plant now builds X-series SUVs, and about half of its 2025 output went abroad, making BMW the top US car exporter by value.

Which soul singer was born near Barnwell, South Carolina, in 1933 and grew up in Augusta?

James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, was sent at about five to live with aunts in Augusta, in a house of gambling and bootlegging, and first sang in public at local talent nights.

Which late-night host grew up on James Island outside Charleston, the youngest of eleven children?

Stephen Colbert's father and two brothers died in the 1974 crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 near Charlotte when he was ten.

What fraction of South Carolina is made up of the Atlantic Coastal Plain?

The Atlantic Coastal Plain covers about two-thirds of South Carolina, from the Sandhills fall line to the coast; the rest rises through the Piedmont to a sliver of Blue Ridge in the northwest.

Which pirate blockaded Charleston's harbour for about a week in 1718, taking prominent citizens hostage?

Blackbeard asked only for a chest of medicine as ransom; the governor sent it, the hostages went free and the pirate sailed for North Carolina, where he was killed six months later.

Which South Carolina-born tennis champion was the first Black player to win Wimbledon?

Althea Gibson grew up in Harlem after her family left the cotton fields, won Wimbledon and the US title in both 1957 and 1958, then broke a second colour bar as the first Black player on the women's golf tour.

Which of these states borders South Carolina?

Georgia lies across the Savannah River and, higher up, the Tugaloo and the Chattooga, the white-water river where the film Deliverance was shot in the early 1970s.

South Carolina's biggest resort city, at the centre of the Grand Strand, is named after what?

Wax-myrtle shrubs, common along that coast, gave the resort its name: the widow of developer Franklin Burroughs chose it for a settlement that had begun as the terminus of a logging railroad.

Myrtle Beach is the largest city in which South Carolina county?

Horry County is pronounced OR-ee, with a silent H, after the Revolutionary War officer Peter Horry; hemmed in by swamp and sea, its people came to call it the Independent Republic of Horry.

Which NASCAR track, nicknamed 'The Lady in Black', staged the first Southern 500 when it opened in 1950?

Darlington Raceway was built by Harold Brasington, who had seen the Indianapolis 500 and wanted the same for his hometown; neighbours laughed, but the egg-shaped track ran the first Southern 500 on Labor Day 1950.

Which Lowcountry shrimp boil is named for a community on St. Helena Island?

Frogmore stew carries the name of one Sea Island community, though the same one-pot boil of shrimp, corn, sausage and potatoes is cooked all along the Southern coast, where it also answers to Lowcountry boil.

Which South Carolina-born heavyweight first beat Muhammad Ali as a professional?

Joe Frazier, the youngest of twelve children on a ten-acre farm, left for the North at fifteen; he won Olympic gold in 1964 and outpointed Ali in 1971's Fight of the Century.

Which mayonnaise brand began with sandwiches a South Carolina woman sold to soldiers?

Duke's began with Eugenia Duke, whose sandwiches so pleased the servicemen that they asked for jars of her mayonnaise, made without sugar and sharpened with cider vinegar.

Which 1954 hurricane came ashore near Little River at Category 4 strength and wrecked most of Myrtle Beach's oceanfront homes?

Hazel crossed the coast at the state line on October 15, 1954, with winds of about 130 mph, then kept its force far inland: its remnants killed 81 people in Canada, most of them in Toronto.

In 2015 the Myrtle Beach Pelicans became the farm club of which MLB franchise?

Chicago Cubs: the Pelicans are the old Carolina League club from the film Bull Durham, which left Durham when a Triple-A team took its name and reached the beach in 1999; the Braves and Rangers were its parents first.

Myrtle Beach's Canadian-American Days each March coincide with which province's spring break?

Canadians have long been a major share of the Grand Strand's off-season visitors, which is why the festival is timed to Ontario's school holiday.

Which oceanfront amusement park, a Myrtle Beach landmark since the late 1940s, closed for good in 2006?

The Pavilion took its name from the dance pavilions that had stood beside the Seaside Inn since the early 1900s; its hand-carved 1912 carousel outlived the park and still turns at Broadway at the Beach.

Myrtle Beach's Market Common district was built on the site of what former facility?

An Air Force base stood there until 1993; its airfield, which had begun as the town's own airport, went back to civilian flights, and the Market Common opened on the rest of the site in 2008.

Which country's 1526 colony of some 600 settlers, planted somewhere on the southeastern coast, collapsed within months?

Spain's Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon led the settlers to San Miguel de Gualdape, whose site is still disputed; he died within weeks, the colonists mutinied, and the enslaved Africans among them rose up.

French Huguenots founded the short-lived Charlesfort settlement in 1562 at which Lowcountry site?

Jean Ribault's Charlesfort stood on Parris Island; the later town of Santa Elena rose on the same spot, now the Charlesfort-Santa Elena National Historic Landmark inside the Marine Corps recruit depot.

English planters from which Caribbean island were prominent among the Lowcountry's first settlers in the 1670s?

Planters from Barbados, short of land on their sugar island, brought enslaved Africans and the plantation system to the Lowcountry in the 1670s; by 1720 the enslaved formed most of the population.

Which colonial South Carolinian developed indigo, the blue-dye plant, as a cash crop?

Eliza Lucas, managing her father's plantations as a teenager, produced a successful indigo crop in 1744; the dye became the colony's second staple after rice.

Which man-made lake is South Carolina's largest, at about 110,000 acres?

Lake Marion filled behind a New Deal dam in 1941 before its basin had been fully cleared, so stumps and standing cypress still break the shallows, and the fishing they shelter made the lake famous.

Which 22-mile waterway, finished in 1800 to carry inland crops to port, was among America's first canals?

The Santee Canal linked its river to the Cooper and so to the port, but droughts and poor construction dogged it, railroads finished it off, and most of it now lies under a reservoir.

Geologists interpret the Carolina Sandhills as ancient what?

Wind-blown dunes: recent dating puts most of the sand's movement in the last ice age, when the Southeast was colder and windier, while older accounts credit an ancient shoreline that once crossed the middle of the state.

Which Revolutionary War commander earned the nickname 'the Swamp Fox'?

Francis Marion harried the British from the Pee Dee swamps; the name reportedly came from Banastre Tarleton, who gave up a long chase swearing that the devil himself could not catch the damned old fox.

Who became South Carolina's first female governor after the 2010 election?

Nikki Haley, born Nimarata Randhawa in Bamberg to Sikh immigrants from India, called in 2015 for the Confederate battle flag to come down from the State House grounds, and it did.

Which television personality grew up in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina?

Vanna White was born Vanna Marie Rosich and took the surname of the stepfather who raised her; Merv Griffin hired her in 1982 to turn the letters on Wheel of Fortune.

Which breed is South Carolina's official state dog?

The Boykin Spaniel began with a stray that Whit Boykin of Camden turned into a superb turkey dog; he bred its descendants small and sturdy enough to ride in hunters' boats in the Wateree River swamp.

Boeing's North Charleston plant is the final assembly site for which airliner?

The 787 Dreamliner has been assembled at the South Carolina plant since 2011; in 2021 Boeing consolidated all 787 final assembly there, and the stretched 787-10 has only ever been built there.

Darius Rucker and Mark Bryan formed Hootie & the Blowfish as freshmen at which school?

At the University of South Carolina, Darius Rucker and Mark Bryan started out in 1986 playing covers around campus; eight years later their debut, Cracked Rear View, became one of the best-selling albums in the country.

South Carolina barbecue is best known for a sauce based on which ingredient?

Mustard-based sauce, sometimes called Carolina Gold, rules the central Midlands and may go back to the German immigrants who settled there in the 1700s; the Pee Dee, by contrast, swears by vinegar and pepper.

Who coached the Gamecocks women's basketball team to national titles in 2017, 2022 and 2024?

Dawn Staley took over a Gamecocks programme that often finished near the bottom of its league in 2008 and rebuilt it into a champion; as a point guard she had already won three Olympic golds.

The Angel Oak, a much-visited giant on Johns Island near Charleston, is what kind of tree?

The Angel Oak is a Southern live oak only about 65 feet tall, but its limbs reach so far that the canopy shades some 17,000 square feet; the city has owned the tree and its park since 1991.

South of the Border, the I-95 stop famed for its Pedro billboards, sits near which town?

Dillon County's South of the Border began as a beer depot that Alan Schafer set just inside South Carolina to sell to a dry North Carolina county next door; the Mexican theme and Pedro came later.

Which senator spoke for over 24 hours in 1957 in a one-man bid to block a civil rights bill?

Strom Thurmond held the floor for 24 hours 18 minutes, reading out state election laws and Washington's Farewell Address; the bill passed two hours after he sat down.

Which of these is an official motto of South Carolina?

'While I breathe, I hope' translates Dum spiro spero on the 1776 state seal, whose other face shows a palmetto standing over a shattered oak: the log fort that beat off Britain's oak-built warships.

Which singer, born Ernest Evans in Spring Gully, South Carolina, grew up in Philadelphia?

Chubby Checker was a Philadelphia teenager doing impressions for Dick Clark when Clark's wife suggested the stage name, a play on Fats Domino; his 1960 recording of The Twist set off a worldwide dance craze.

Which banned 1919 White Sox star was born in Pickens County and raised in a mill village?

Shoeless Joe Jackson got the name early on, when new cleats blistered his feet and he played on without shoes; he never learned to read, yet Babe Ruth said he modelled his own swing on Jackson's.

The Peachoid, a 135-foot peach-shaped water tower beside I-85, stands in which town?

Gaffney's Peachoid, built in 1981, holds a million gallons of water; the town bills itself as the Peach Capital of South Carolina, and the tank was given a cleft, a stem and a leaf to prove it.

Most of Forrest Gump, though set in Alabama, was filmed around which South Carolina town?

Beaufort and its Lowcountry stood in for Alabama: the Vietnam scenes were shot on Hunting and Fripp islands, and the Gump house was built beside the Combahee River near Yemassee.

Which writer, once a soldier at Fort Moultrie, set 'The Gold-Bug' on Sullivan's Island?

Edgar Allan Poe enlisted at 18 under the false name Edgar A. Perry, claiming to be 22, and spent a year at Fort Moultrie; the island's library, in a converted gun battery, now bears his real name.

Which Camden-born player became the American League's first Black player in July 1947, weeks after Jackie Robinson's debut?

Larry Doby went straight from the Newark Eagles of the Negro leagues to Bill Veeck's Cleveland Indians, and a year later became the first Black player to homer in a World Series, which Cleveland won.

Which stretch of thirteen historic houses lines Charleston's East Bay Street?

Rainbow Row got its look when Dorothy Legge bought numbers 99 to 101 and painted them pink; neighbours followed with pastels of their own, and the block became a symbol of the city's preservation movement.

Which Kiawah Island layout hosted the 1991 Ryder Cup, dubbed the 'War by the Shore'?

The Ocean Course, a Pete Dye design finished just before the 1991 matches, later staged the 2012 and 2021 PGA Championships, the second making Phil Mickelson the oldest major winner at 50.

The Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, opened in Charleston in 2005, is what type of bridge?

The Ravenel Bridge is cable-stayed: its 1,546-foot main span hangs from two diamond-shaped towers, and its eight lanes replaced two cramped older bridges, the first built in 1929 for Model A Fords.

Clemson's founder Thomas Green Clemson was the son-in-law of which vice president?

John C. Calhoun's Fort Hill estate came to Clemson through his wife Anna, Calhoun's daughter; he left it to the state for a college, a bequest accepted in 1889 only after a court fight.

Briggs versus Elliott, a Clarendon County schools case, was the first of five cases combined into which Supreme Court ruling?

Brown v. Board of Education began here with a modest request: farmer Levi Pearson wanted one school bus for Black children, some of whom walked nine miles while every county bus carried white pupils.

Which Challenger astronaut, killed in 1986, was born in Lake City, SC?

Ronald McNair, a physicist and saxophonist born in Lake City in 1950, refused as a nine-year-old in 1959 to leave the town's segregated library without his books.

Which enslaved harbour pilot seized the Confederate steamer Planter in 1862 and later sat in Congress?

Robert Smalls took the helm before dawn on May 13, 1862, while the ship's white officers were ashore, steered past the harbour's guns with his crew and their families aboard, and handed the vessel to the blockade.

Which Charleston theatre, built in the 1930s inside the old Planters' Hotel, is named for a 1736 playhouse on its site?

The Dock Street Theatre keeps the old name of what is now Queen Street: the 1736 playhouse there, one of the earliest in the colonies, opened with The Recruiting Officer, and a New Deal project revived it.

Which composer founded Charleston's Spoleto Festival USA in 1977?

Gian Carlo Menotti wanted an American twin for his Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, and picked the city for its compact historic core, where audiences could walk between theatres.

South Carolina-born physicist Charles Townes shared the 1964 Nobel Prize for work that led to which invention?

The laser grew out of Townes's maser, which amplified microwaves by stimulated emission; in 1958 he and his brother-in-law Arthur Schawlow showed that the same trick could be made to work with light.

The Savannah River Site near Aiken is the nation's sole source of which isotope?

Tritium loses half its strength about every twelve years, so the gas in the nation's warheads must be topped up constantly; the site began making it, along with plutonium, in reactors built in the 1950s.

In which South Carolina city did state patrolmen kill three protesting students in 1968?

Orangeburg's shootings on the South Carolina State campus came two years before Kent State; nine patrolmen were tried and acquitted, and the only person convicted was Cleveland Sellers, an activist among the students.

At which 1780 battle near the North Carolina line did frontier militia surround and destroy Patrick Ferguson's Loyalist force?

Kings Mountain was fought almost entirely between Americans: Ferguson, who died there, was the only British regular on the field, and the defeat made Cornwallis put off his march into North Carolina.

The rebels of the 1739 Stono Rebellion were making for freedom promised in which colony?

Florida's governors had promised freedom to anyone who escaped the British colonies and reached St. Augustine; the rising was quickly crushed, and South Carolina answered with the harsh Negro Act of 1740.

DuBose Heyward's 1925 novel about life in a Charleston tenement was the basis for which American opera?

Porgy and Bess owes Heyward more than its story: he wrote the libretto and the words to most of its songs, Summertime among them, while Gershwin spent the summer of 1934 on Folly Beach absorbing the local music.

Which South Carolina-born educator founded a college and advised Franklin Roosevelt?

Mary McLeod Bethune, born near Mayesville as the fifteenth of seventeen children, opened a school for Black girls at Daytona in 1904 that grew into Bethune-Cookman College, and Roosevelt made her an adviser on his New Deal programmes.

Denmark Vesey's planned 1822 uprising in Charleston was reportedly set for which symbolic date?

Bastille Day, July 14, was the date reportedly chosen; Vesey, a carpenter who had bought his freedom with a $1,500 lottery win, was hanged with dozens of others after the plan was betrayed.

Which Southern rock band, named after a blind piano tuner, formed in Spartanburg in 1972?

The Marshall Tucker Band kept Spartanburg as its home base while selling millions of records; its 1973 debut carried Can't You See, written by guitarist Toy Caldwell and still its best-known song.

Which Upstate county, home to Falls Park on the Reedy, is the most populous in South Carolina?

Greenville County counted more than half a million people at the 2020 census. Its seat was once known as the Textile Capital of the World.

Which South Carolina county, next door to the state capital, is named after a 1775 battle in Massachusetts?

Lexington County was chartered in 1785 to honour the Massachusetts town where the Revolutionary War began. A slice of the state capital spills over its border.

Which South Carolina county shares its name with the egg-shaped NASCAR track that hosts the Southern 500?

Darlington Raceway is egg-shaped because its builder tightened two turns to spare the landowner's fishing pond. It first hosted the Southern 500 in 1950.

Which South Carolina county, formed in 1902, honours the Confederate general who surrendered at Appomattox?

Lee County was formed in 1902 from parts of three neighbouring counties. Local folklore later gave it the Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp, first reported in 1988.

Which South Carolina county is named for an English duke who was an ancestor of Winston Churchill?

Marlboro County trims the spelling of Marlborough, the dukedom John Churchill held when he won the Battle of Blenheim in 1704.

Which South Carolina county is home to the State House and the state's geographic centre?

Richland County was probably named for its rich land. The state's geographic centre lies inside it, south-east of the capital.

Which South Carolina county, next to York County, is named for the red-rose side in England's Wars of the Roses?

Lancaster County's red rose faces the white rose of its neighbour, echoing the rival royal houses that fought over England's crown in the fifteenth century.

Which South Carolina county is named for the inventor of the mechanical reaper, who bought a gold mine there?

McCormick County honours Cyrus McCormick, who bought the local gold mines in 1871 and never made them pay. It is South Carolina's smallest county by land area.

From 1800 until 1868, South Carolina's counties were officially known by which other name?

Districts is the word to look for in old deeds and censuses, which cite vanished places such as Pendleton District, abolished in 1826.

Which South Carolina county is named for the Continental Congress president later imprisoned in the Tower of London?

Laurens County honours Henry Laurens, who was captured at sea by the British while sailing to the Netherlands as an envoy and held in the Tower for over a year.

Which South Carolina county honours the sergeant who rescued the fallen flag under fire at Fort Moultrie in 1776?

Jasper County, founded in 1912, remembers William Jasper, who raised the flag on a makeshift staff and held it under fire until a new one was fitted.

Which South Carolina county, birthplace of Strom Thurmond, has produced ten of the state's governors?

Edgefield County has produced ten governors and five lieutenant governors. Thurmond, born there in 1902, also died there at the age of 100.

Which South Carolina county shares its name with a town called the birthplace and deathbed of the Confederacy?

Abbeville hosted a secession rally in November 1860 and, in May 1865, the parlour meeting where Jefferson Davis accepted that the Confederate government was finished.

Which South Carolina county, the youngest in the state, was also its least populous at the 2020 census?

Allendale County was formed in 1919, yet its Topper Site holds what may be the oldest traces of human life in the state.

Which South Carolina county, home to Summerville, is named after a Massachusetts town its first settlers had left?

Dorchester County is named for a settlement that Congregationalists founded in 1696 and called after their last home. Summerville is nicknamed Flowertown.

Which Lowcountry county, named for two of Carolina's Lords Proprietors, has Moncks Corner as its seat?

Berkeley County took the surname of John and William Berkeley, two of the colony's co-owners. Its largest community is not the seat but Goose Creek.

Which county in South Carolina's north-western corner is the only one in the state that borders two other states?

Oconee County touches two neighbouring states at once. Clemson once ripened cheese in its unfinished Stumphouse railroad tunnel.

Which South Carolina county, whose seat Camden is the state's oldest inland city, honours a Revolutionary War colonel?

Kershaw County honours Joseph Kershaw, an early settler regarded as the father of Camden. The town hosts the Carolina Cup steeplechase.

Before counties took root, colonial South Carolina's Lowcountry was divided into which Church of England units?

Parishes gained a civil role in 1716, when they became the units for electing the colony's assembly. Their vestries also kept vital records and cared for the poor.

Which Union general's army captured South Carolina's capital in February 1865, on the night much of the city burned?

William Sherman's troops took the city on February 17, and fires that night destroyed about a third of it. Who was to blame has been argued ever since.

Which British general routed Horatio Gates's larger American army near Camden, South Carolina, in August 1780?

Lord Cornwallis lost just over 300 men against almost 2,000 American casualties. Gates, the hero of Saratoga, never held a field command again.

Which 1989 hurricane drove a record storm surge of about twenty feet onto the South Carolina coast near McClellanville?

Hugo was at the time the costliest Atlantic hurricane on record, wrecking homes from Guadeloupe and Puerto Rico to the Carolinas.

Which breakaway party ran South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond for president in 1948, carrying four states?

The Dixiecrats, formally the States' Rights Democratic Party, bolted over civil rights and won 39 electoral votes, including South Carolina's.

South Carolina's 1832 Ordinance of Nullification, which nearly brought armed conflict, voided which federal laws?

Import tariffs passed in 1828 and 1832 were the target. Congress replied with a Force Bill letting the president use troops, plus a lower compromise tariff.

Which South Carolina congressman beat Senator Charles Sumner with a walking cane on the Senate floor in 1856?

Preston Brooks was fined $300 and resigned, only to be re-elected within weeks, while admirers across the South sent him new canes.

Which former South Carolina barber became the first Black member of the US House of Representatives in 1870?

Joseph Rainey fled with his family to Bermuda in 1862, in the middle of the Civil War, then came home and won a seat in Congress.

Which South Carolina governor earned his nickname by threatening to prod President Grover Cleveland with a pitchfork?

Benjamin Tillman, or Pitchfork Ben, left a harsher legacy: the 1895 state constitution that took the vote from most Black South Carolinians.

Which South Carolina delegate was the youngest of all the signers of the Declaration of Independence?

Edward Rutledge, himself the youngest of seven children, was 26 when he signed. He ended his career as governor of the state.

Which sisters, daughters of a slaveholding South Carolina judge, moved north and became famous abolitionist speakers?

Sarah and Angelina Grimké were among the first American-born women to make public speaking tours, arguing for both abolition and women's rights.

Which nation's Lower Towns, including Keowee and Jocassee, once stood in South Carolina's north-western mountains?

Cherokee Lower Towns such as Keowee were drowned in the early 1970s, when a hydropower dam created the lake that carries the town's name.

The Catawba, South Carolina's only federally recognised tribe, are best known for which craft, made mainly by women?

Pottery made by Catawba women is believed to be the oldest surviving ceramic tradition east of the Mississippi.

The Catawba Indian Nation, federally recognised again in 1993, is based beside which South Carolina city?

Rock Hill is the nation's headquarters, and the 1993 deal that restored recognition also brought a $50 million land claims settlement.

Which trade good, supplied by Native hunters, made up at least half of colonial South Carolina's early export revenue?

Deerskins went to England in exchange for manufactured goods, until rice overtook them as the colony's leading export by the 1740s.

Which conquistador was greeted in 1540 by the Lady of Cofitachequi, who ruled near Camden, South Carolina?

Hernando de Soto was given pearls and food by the chief, who arrived carried on a litter. Weeks later his men marched on with her as a hostage.

Which tribe, settled near the Savannah River, led a 1715 war that killed some 7 percent of South Carolina's settlers?

Yamasee warriors and their allies emptied the frontier, sending colonists fleeing to a hungry Charles Town. It was one of the bloodiest wars in American history.

The Catawba of South Carolina traditionally called themselves Ye Iswa, a name that carries which meaning?

People of the river suits them: the nation's lands lie along the waterway that carries the Catawba name through both Carolinas.

Which coastal tribe gave its name to a South Carolina island and one of North America's longest blackwater rivers?

The Edisto runs for more than 250 miles without leaving the state, forming the largest river system that lies wholly inside South Carolina.

Which Conway-based tribe, sharing its name with a coastal river, became the first recognised by South Carolina, in 2005?

Waccamaw recognition came from the state alone, not Washington. A separate tribe of the same name has been recognised by North Carolina since 1971.

The Catawba language of South Carolina, whose last fluent speaker died in 1959, belongs to which language family?

Siouan languages are found mainly on the Great Plains and in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, making Catawba a far-flung eastern branch of the family.

Which mountain range names the smallest of South Carolina's landform regions, in its north-western corner?

Blue Ridge geology here ends at the Brevard Fault, a zone up to two miles wide that separates it from the Piedmont.

The name of South Carolina's Piedmont region comes from Italian words carrying which meaning?

Foot of the mountains is the literal sense, borrowed from the region of north-west Italy that lies beneath the Alps.

Which boundary, where South Carolina's rivers drop from the Piedmont to the coastal plain, halted boats heading inland?

The Fall Line's rapids forced cargo ashore, so trading towns grew up along it, and South Carolina later built its capital on it too.

Carolina bays, the oval wetlands of South Carolina's coastal plain, were most likely shaped by which force?

Wind and water are the leading explanation: steady Ice Age winds pushed ponds into ovals that point north-west to south-east. The meteorite theory is the least likely.

Which coastal chain, more than a hundred strong from South Carolina to Florida, includes Hilton Head and Kiawah?

Sea Islands tourism took off after Hilton Head was developed in the 1960s, paving the way for resort communities on Kiawah, Fripp and Daufuskie.

Which soil, left as ancient ranges wore down, covers the rolling hills of South Carolina's Piedmont?

Red clay, coloured by iron-rich minerals, made the Piedmont cotton country until falling prices, boll weevils and poor land conservation ended the boom by the 1930s.

Which term describes lone granite hills in South Carolina's Piedmont, such as Paris Mountain, left standing by erosion?

Monadnocks resisted weathering while the softer rock around them eroded away. Kings Mountain and Forty-Acre Rock are other Piedmont examples.

Which fire-dependent tree shares the dry, sandy soil of South Carolina's Sandhills with briars and cactus?

Longleaf pine seedlings sit out wildfires in a ground-hugging grass stage, their buds shielded by tightly packed needles.

Which swamp tree, with some specimens over 1,000 years old, dominates South Carolina's Francis Beidler Forest sanctuary?

Bald cypress and tupelo at Beidler, in Four Holes Swamp, form the largest virgin stand of its kind in the world.

Which wild river on South Carolina's mountainous north-western border was the model for the river in Deliverance?

Chattooga rapids appear in the 1972 film, and since 1974 the river has been protected as a National Wild and Scenic River.

Which Black Union regiment, later portrayed in the film Glory, led the 1863 assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina?

The 54th Massachusetts attacked at dusk across the sand of Morris Island and lost its colonel, Robert Gould Shaw, in the failed assault.