Qualla: Abbeville, South Carolina

Abbeville, South Carolina: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bill Golladay, CC BY-SA 4.0. Abbeville is where the Confederacy began and where, in a sense, it ended. On November 22, 1860, a delegation gathered on a knoll the locals still call Secession Hill to decide that South Carolina should leave the Union - the first formal step toward civil war. Four and a half years later, on May 2, 1865, Jefferson Davis sat at the Burt-Stark Mansion a few blocks away and convened what historians regard as the last full meeting of his Confederate war council. The decision that day was to dissolve the government. Two pivotal Confederate moments, bookended in the same small Carolina town.

Image: Bill Golladay | CC BY-SA 4.0

Abbeville, South Carolina: The Old 96 District

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonas N. Jordan, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Public domain. Abbeville sits in what South Carolinians call the Old 96 District, named for the colonial-era Ninety Six District that once stretched across the piedmont. The town is tucked into a rather isolated patch of the state - about seventeen miles west of Greenwood and roughly thirty mil...

Image: Jonas N. Jordan, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers | Public domain

Abbeville, South Carolina: Court Square and Burt-Stark

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonas N. Jordan, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Public domain. Court Square anchors the visit. The 1908 Abbeville County Courthouse and the adjoining Abbeville Opera House, both designed by William Augustus Edwards, form a single architectural composition - a brick-and-stone civic ensemble that survived the fires and economic shifts that fla...

Image: Jonas N. Jordan, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers | Public domain

Abbeville, South Carolina: Lake and Country

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonas N. Jordan, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Public domain. Beyond the town square, the country opens out. The Richard B. Russell Dam impounds Lake Russell on the Savannah River to the west - a long, fingered reservoir straddling the Georgia line, popular for fishing and quiet boating. Sumter National Forest fragments fill in much of the ...

Image: Jonas N. Jordan, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers | Public domain