Georgetown, South Carolina

In 1526 a Spanish expedition under Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón founded a colony on Waccamaw Neck called San Miguel de Guadalupe. The settlers included enslaved Africans, and was the first European settlement in North America with African slaves. The colony failed for multiple reasons including a fever epidemic and a revolt of the slaves, who escaped to join the indigenous Cofitachequi Indians in the area. Having failed as farmers, the surviving Spanish built a ship from local cypress and oak trees and sailed to the Spice Islands in Maritime Southeast Asia.

The next settlement in the area was by English colonists. After settling Charles Town in 1670, the English established trade with regional Indian tribes. Trading posts in the outlying areas quickly developed as settlements.

By 1721 the colonial government granted the English residents' petition to found a new parish, Prince George, Winyah, on the Black River. In 1734, Prince George, Winyah was divided; and the newly created Prince Frederick Parish congregation occupied the church at Black River. Prince George Parish, Winyah encompassed the new town of Georgetown that was developing on the Sampit River.

In 1729, Elisha Screven laid the plan for Georgetown and developed the city in a four-by-eight block grid. The original grid city is listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. It bears the original street names, lot numbers, and has many original homes.

The Indian trade declined soon after Georgetown was established. Planters established large plantations and cultivated indigo as the cash commodity crop, with rice as a secondary crop. Both were labor-intensive and dependent on slave labor, primarily workers imported from Africa in the Atlantic slave trade.[9] Agricultural profits were so great between 1735 and 1775 that in 1757 the Winyah Indigo Society, whose members paid dues in indigo, opened and maintained the first public school for white children between Charles Town and Wilmington. Rice became the chief commodity crop by the early 19th century, and a staple of regional diets as well.

In the American Revolution, the father and son Georgetown planters, Thomas Lynch Sr. and Thomas Lynch Jr., signed the Declaration of Independence. During the final years of the conflict, Georgetown was the important port for supplying General Nathanael Greene's army. Francis Marion (the "Swamp Fox") led many guerrilla actions in the vicinity.

Winyah Indigo Society Hall, Georgetown

Crowley Store, Georgetown

Following the American Revolution, rice surpassed indigo as the staple crop. It was cultivated in the swampy lowlands along the rivers, where enslaved labor built large earthworks: dams, gates and canals to irrigate and drain the rice fields during cultivation. Large rice plantations were established around Georgetown along its five rivers. Planters often had chosen to import slaves from rice-growing regions of West Africa, as they knew the technology for cultivation and processing.

By 1840, the Georgetown District (later County) produced nearly one-half of the total rice crop of the United States. It became the largest rice-exporting port in the world. Wealth from the rice created an elite European-American planter class; they built stately plantation manor houses, bought elegant furniture, and extended generous hospitality to others of their class. Their relatively leisured lifestyle for a select few, built on the labor of thousands of slaves, lasted until 1860.[10]

J.R. Smith House at 722 Prince Street. Also  known as the Mark Moses, it served briefly as a Jewish school[11]

The profits from Georgetown's rice trade buoyed the economy also of nearby Charleston, where a thriving mercantile economy developed. The profits from rice meant that planters bought products from Charleston artisans: fine furniture, jewelry, and silver, to satisfy their refined tastes. Joshua John Ward, who owned the most slaves in the US – eventually more than 1,000 slaves on several plantations, lived in Georgetown.

Many of the historic plantation houses are still standing today, including Mansfield Plantation on the banks of the Black River. Joshua Ward's main Brookgreen Plantation is the center and namesake of the Brookgreen Gardens park. Since the late 20th century, historic societies and independent plantations have worked to present more of the entire plantation world, including the lives and skills of enslaved African Americans.

Georgetown's thriving economy long attracted settlers from elsewhere, including numerous planters and shipowners who migrated from Virginia. These included the Shackelford family, whose migrant ancestor John Shackelford moved to Georgetown in the eighteenth century after serving in the Virginia forces of the Continental Army. His descendants became prominent planters, lawyers, judges and Georgetown and Charleston businessmen.[12]

During the Civil War, a Confederate fort and two camps were installed near Georgetown by Murrells Inlet. Fort Ward was in service beginning in 1861 but was abandoned and disarmed in March 1862; its exact location is unknown due to shifting sandbars and erosion.[13] Confederate Camp Lookout and Camp Waccamaw were also located near Georgetown. Camp Waccamawwas in use from 1862 until 1864;[14] Company E, 4th SC Cavalry were garrisoned at the camp. At least one soldier died there in 1862, probably from disease.[15]

Arcadia Plantation, circa 1893, Georgetown vicinity, Georgetown County

Georgetown and Georgetown County suffered terribly during the Reconstruction Era because of its continued reliance on agriculture, for which the national market was low. In addition, the rice crops of 1866–88 were failures due to lack of capital, which prevented adequate preparation for new crops; inclement weather; and the planters' struggle to find laborers.

Some freedmen left the area in an effort to reunite families separated by the domestic slave trade. Many families withdrew women and children from working as field laborers. Many freedmen families wanted to work for themselves as subsistence farmers, rather than work in gangs for major planters. Rice continued to be grown commercially until about 1910, but the market had changed. It was never as important economically or as profitable a crop as before 1860.

By the time the Reconstruction period ended, the area's economy was shifting to harvesting and processing wood products. By 1900 several lumber mills were operating on the Sampit River. The largest was the Atlantic Coast Lumber Company; its mill in Georgetown was the largest lumber mill on the East Coast at the time.

Around 1905, "Georgetown reached its peak as a lumber port", according to the historian Mac McAlister.[16]

As the twentieth century dawned, Georgetown under the leadership of Mayor William Doyle Morgan began to modernize. The city added electricity, telephone service, sewer facilities, rail connections, some paved streets and sidewalks, new banks, a thriving port, and a new public school for white students. Public schools were segregated and black schools were historically underfunded. The US government built a handsome combination post office and customs house.

Like most cities, Georgetown suffered economic deprivation during the Great Depression. The Atlantic Coast Lumber Company went bankrupt early in the depression, putting almost everyone out of work. Businesses related to the mills also lost revenues and had to lay off employees, with a cascading effect through the city. In 1936 help arrived, when the Southern Kraft Division of International Paper opened a mill; by 1944 it was the largest in the world.

From the mid-20th century, the city developed more industry. In 1973, the Korf company of Germany founded a steel mill in town. in 1993, the steel mill was financed by Bain Capital and was called Georgetown Steel, which became GST Steel Company with its sister Kansas City Bolt and Nut Company plant in Kansas City, Missouri.

In 1978, Sigma Chemical Company founded its third chemical plant (the other 2 being in Italy) in Georgetown.[17]

In September 1989, a major disaster struck the area with Hurricane Hugo struck south of Georgetown. Its extremely hard winds and an intense storm surge along the rivers flooded and damaged Georgetown and nearby areas. As Georgetown was under Hugo's northern eyewall, it suffered winds more severe and damaging than in Charleston, which was in the hurricane's weak corridor.

In recent years, the economy has become more diversified. The GST Steel Company declared bankruptcy in 2001, first closing the Kansas City plant. In 2003 it closed the South Carolina plant. The Georgetown plant has subsequently reopened under ownership of ArcelorMittal. Due to the influx of cheap foreign steel into the United States, the plant closed its doors again in August 2015.[18][19][20][21] On May 19, 2017, Mayor Jack Scoville announced that ArcelorMittal had agreed to sell the mill to Liberty Steel.[22]

On September 25, 2013, a fire engulfed seven historic buildings on 700 Block of Front Street. The fire raged for hours while over 200 firefighters from ten departments and the United States Coast Guard fought to contain the blaze.[23]

Heritage tourism has become a booming business in Georgetown, supporting much retail activity. In addition, many retirees have chosen to settle in this area of beaches, plantations redeveloped as residential communities, and pleasant climate.

On January 18, 2018, long-time Democratic City Councilman Brendon Moses Barber, Sr. was inaugurated as Mayor of Georgetown; he is the first African-American mayor of the city. The City of Georgetown has always elected Democratic mayors, even as the make-up of the major parties has realigned since the late 20th century.

As of 2019, brackish water incursions into the Waccamaw River near Georgetown due to rising sea levels are increasing the risk of exposure to toxic vibrio bacteria.[24]