Qualla: Cheraw, South Carolina

Cheraw, South Carolina: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ashley Rivers, Public domain. John Birks Gillespie was born here on October 21, 1917, the youngest of nine children, in a small house in Cheraw, South Carolina. His father, a bricklayer and amateur bandleader, kept musical instruments around the house and beat John Birks regularly. The father died when the boy was ten. By twelve, he was playing trombone in school. By fourteen, trumpet. He left Cheraw for the Laurinburg Institute across the state line, then for Philadelphia, then for the bandstands where, alongside Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, he reinvented American music as bebop. He went by Dizzy. And he came back to Cheraw whenever he could.

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Image: Ashley Rivers | Public domain

Cheraw, South Carolina: Dizzy's Town

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jimmor30, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cheraw markets itself as 'The Prettiest Town in Dixie,' a slogan that predates the era when the nickname became uncomfortable. But the most important thing about Cheraw isn't its prettiness — it's that this is the town that produced Dizzy Gillespie, the jazz trumpeter who, with C...

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Image: Jimmor30 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cheraw, South Carolina: The Cheraw People

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Kalasnik from Fort Mill, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. Before the town, there was the tribe. The Cheraw lived near the waterfall hill at the fall line of the Pee Dee River, in the place that would later take their name. By the 1730s, infectious diseases carried inadvertently by European traders had devastated them. Survivors joined t...

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Image: Mike Kalasnik from Fort Mill, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cheraw, South Carolina: The First to Secede

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Edwards, CC BY-SA 2.0. On November 19, 1860, the first public meeting calling for South Carolina's secession took place at the Chesterfield County Courthouse. A Cheraw lawyer named John A. Inglis attended, then introduced the resolution that became South Carolina's secession ordinance, and chaired the ...

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Image: John Edwards | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cheraw, South Carolina: Steamboats and Cotton

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ashley Rivers, Public domain. In 1819, the first steamboat made it up the Pee Dee to Cheraw, opening river trade to Georgetown and the coast. The town incorporated in 1820. Cotton, corn, tobacco, rice, and indigo all moved through the warehouses on the riverfront. Cheraw became the largest cotton market betwe...

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Image: Ashley Rivers | Public domain

Cheraw, South Carolina: Riverside, Sandhills, and Sound

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit HangingCurve, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cheraw State Park, founded in the 1930s, was the first state park in South Carolina built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. The Sandhills State Forest borders it. Both protect the rare longleaf pine ecosystem that once stretched from Virginia to Texas. The Pee Dee River still r...

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Image: HangingCurve | CC BY-SA 4.0