Qualla: Lancaster County, South Carolina

Lancaster County, South Carolina: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Evanoco, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two roses fought a war in England that has nothing to do with South Carolina, except that the people who eventually settled this corner of the Piedmont came from Lancaster, Lancashire, and brought the name with them. The red rose of the House of Lancaster and the white rose of the House of York gave their colors to two adjacent counties on the South Carolina/North Carolina border - Lancaster and York. The Wars of the Roses ended in 1485. The naming of Lancaster County, South Carolina came nearly three hundred years later. The Catawba had been here the whole time.

Image: Evanoco | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lancaster County, South Carolina: The Catawba Were Here

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Washuotaku, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Catawba Nation - Siouan-speaking, sedentary, agricultural - held this stretch of Piedmont for centuries before any European set foot in the backcountry. The Catawba were considered one of the most powerful Southeastern tribes. They cultivated corn and other crops along the Ca...

Image: Washuotaku | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lancaster County, South Carolina: Scots-Irish from County Antrim

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Nopira assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. The settlers who poured into Lancaster County through the 1750s and 1760s were overwhelmingly Scots-Irish - more than nine out of ten originating from County Antrim in what is now Northern Ireland. They had landed at Philadelphia, drifted south through the Great Wagon Road, and p...

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Nopira assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Lancaster County, South Carolina: Revolutionary War Country

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Evanoco, CC BY-SA 4.0. Lancaster County is dense with Revolutionary War sites. On May 29, 1780, the Battle of Waxhaws - locals still call it Buford's Massacre - saw Colonel Banastre Tarleton's British Legion overtake Colonel Abraham Buford's retreating Patriots a few miles south of the modern North Car...

Image: Evanoco | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lancaster County, South Carolina: Andrew Jackson's Country

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jebbikrebbi, CC BY-SA 4.0. Andrew Jackson was born somewhere in the Waxhaws region in 1767. Whether his birthplace was on the North Carolina side or the South Carolina side of the modern state line has been disputed since both Carolinas began claiming him in the early nineteenth century. South Carolina mak...

Image: Jebbikrebbi | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lancaster County, South Carolina: Piedmont and Sandhills

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jebbikrebbi, CC BY-SA 4.0. Geographically, Lancaster County sits in the South Carolina Piedmont - rolling hardwood and pine forest, worn-down ancient mountains, rocky clay soils, slow brown rivers. The Catawba River and Sugar Creek bound the county on the west. The Lynches River bounds it on the east, gath...

Image: Jebbikrebbi | CC BY-SA 4.0