Marlboro County, South Carolina Genealogy Trails

'' Sit at the feet of history—through the night of years, the steps of virtue she shall trace and show the earlier ages. "—Bryant.

The region of country, the history of which these pages is designed to treat, is called Marlboro. Marlboro County (first called District) was established by law, March 12, 1785. It takes its name from John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, who died in the early part of the 18th century. He was an able English statesman, a successful politician and one of the very few generals, who through a lifetime of war, never met defeat. It is situated in the northeastern corner of South Carolina, and bounded north and northeast by North Carolina; south and southeast by Marion County, and west and southwest by the Great Pee Dee river. In the northern part of the County there are three small creeks rising in the sand hills and flowing in-the Great Pee Dee, namely; Beaverdam, Phills and Naked. Crooked Creek, a considerable stream, rises in the extreme northeast and, flowing in a southwesterly direction empties into the Pee Dee river. In the southern part of the County, are the Three Creeks; and two others, designated by the name of Muddy. These various streams, with their smaller tributaries, afford ample drainage for the entire County. The area of the County is about 480 square miles. The surface is slightly undulating, the soil fertile, and largely open, and in a fine state of cultivation. Corn, cotton, oats, wheat, potatoes, rye, rice, tobacco, sugar cane, hay, melons and fruits all yield a rich and bounteous harvest to the intelligent labor of the husbandman. Marlboro County is the pioneer county in South Carolina in the intensive system of agriculture. Improved methods, implements, seed, stock, drainage and buildings are every where supplanting the inferior. The population is about 25,000. The whole County is teeming with busy, industrious, prosperous people, in large degree employed in agricultural pursuits. But tradesmen, merchants, manufacturers are all favored in their callings, while medicine, law, and religion are all honored in the men who represent the learned professions.

One hundred and seventy-five years ago, so far as can be ascertained af. the present time, there was not a white man living in what is now Marlboro. According to the conclusions of Bishop Gregg, of Texas, after a research which has left nothing for the discovery of writers who came after him, this whole Pee Dee region was held by the aboriginal red men, until about 1730. He supposes that a numerous tribe called "Cheraws" ranged the forests from the Cape Fear to the Pee Dee, and from the Atlantic coast to the mountains; that smaller tribes occupied more limited bounds within this vast area; and that upon the middle Pee Dee region a tribe known as the "Pee Dees" had their favorite hunting grounds, and from these wild men the two Pee Dee Rivers took their names. The men yet live who remember to have seen the evidences of a former population, in the mounds, the arrow-heads, pottery and pipes found in various localities in the valley of the Pee Dee. No more sad and mournful requiem can be any where chanted over the dead, than could be imagined by kindly sentiment at the disappearance of these children of the forest, endowed by nature with certain noble characteristics, yet always weakening and deteriorating when brought into contact with the "pale faces." They have invariably disappeared before the tide of emigration and civilization, until what were once strong, numerous tribes have dwindled and faded, till many are extinct and the remnants seem doomed to perish. But however sad this first chapter in all the history of all parts of this country may be, truth demands the record that these strange people were here, sole proprietors of the soil, the forests, game and waters of the land, when our ancestor first landed upon the shores of the new world. The marvel is not that they sometimes gave trouble to the whites that came among them, but that those troubles were not tenfold more terrible and protracted than thev were. When they saw their forests falling before the axe, their streams being ponded upon their hunting grounds, the graves of their dead turned by the plow-share, it is not strange that they should look upon the newcomers as invaders of their rights and their homes. It is almost too late for "pity for the poor Indian," but not too late to bless the expiring years of his existence with whatever of help and comfort a generous people can give a dying race. How long they trod on plains, climbed our mountains, and paddled their light canoes upon our waters, no man knows; but the statesman and Christian alike must see that if anything is done for he'bettermentof their condition, it should be done quickly. Hitherto, there has been a wild West, to which their steps could flee before the tide of the white man's enterprise: but now the iron horse and the lightning messages are running from shore to shore, and the wild hidings of the Indian are disappearing forever. With him it is civilization, Christianization, or annihilation.

Among the musty record may be seen at the State House in Columbia a literary curiosity in the shape of a treaty or covenant made between certain aboriginal tribes who once owned the wide forests of this State, and some of the Lord Proprietors who sought fortunes in the new world. It dates back to 1675, or thereabout, and describes certain lands upon the Edisto River and its branches which the Indians sold to the Englishmen, conveying the rights and titles to the forests, the streams the lands, the hunting grounds; the consideration being "cloths, hatchets, beads and such like trinkets and goods." The contract is signed on the one part by the purchasers, and on the other by the Indian settlers; the chiefs and leaders of the tribes, of course all making their own peculiar "marks." But what is especially remarkable, is the fact that several "women captains" signed this treaty, or at least made "their marks," and while the chiefs each made a mark peculiar to his own hand, every woman made her mark in the shape of a serpent, not all horizontally, but some perpendicularly and others diagonally across the page, but everyone is a crooked serpentine line, some even giving the larger head and small neck. That the Indian savage allowed a dower to their women seems to be implied, but why this peculiar signature? Did it signify a claim to superior subtility and cunning? Did it indicate her peculiar power to hurt and destroy? It has long been a mystery and is yet. But a few years ago, while the late Major Leitner was the Secretary of State, he called the attention of Chief Morrison of the Catawba tribe to these ancient signs and solicited an explanation of the mystery and there is pinned upon the page in the handwriting of the Secretary, the explanation of the chief; it is in substance as follows:
The Indians have a tradition which they claim to be five thousand years old. That a woman from whom they are descended met in the forests a singular serpent whose antics so pleased and charmed her, that she was induced to break a solemn pledge to which her troth had been plighted, and in punishment for her crime, an awful curse befell her; and ever since, when an Indian woman would make the most solemn vow of which she is capable, she puts herself under the sign of the serpent, calling down upon herself the malediction of the perjuror, a punishment similar to that which befell the mother Indian who was betrayed into falsehood. As Chief Morrison explained it, the sign of the serpent indicates the most solemn oath a woman can make. You who will may speculate about the meaning of this singular relic of the past, and find a better explanation than that given by the civilized chief of the remnant of a once powerful tribe. And alongside this there is another curiosity. The old mace presented to the colony, ornamented with the crown, its globe, its cross—symbol of royalty. And to this day along with the "broad sword" of State it is borne before the chief magistrate of a free people as he is conducted to his inauguration and oath of office. It may mean nothing to us, but did mean much to the old colonists, who received it from the mother country.