Thomas Sumter’s Store

Thomas Sumter, influential militia leader in the American Revolution, kept a store in this area about 1765-1767. Born in 1734 in Va., he served in the colonial militia and visited Charleston during a 1762 diplomatic mission with the Cherokees. He later fled a Va. debtor’s prison and established himself as a merchant here in St. John’s Berkeley Parish, acquiring land and enslaved people.

His store was located where traffic to the Upcountry split between the Road to the Congarees and Nelson’s Ferry Road. Sumter moved across the Santee River to St. Mark’s Parish in c.1767. Nicknamed the “Gamecock,” during the Revolutionary War he rose to the rank of Brigadier General of the S.C. militia in 1780. Later a state and national legislator, Sumter died in Stateburg, S.C. in 1832.