Grave of General Tristam Thomas/Saw Mill Baptist Church

In Saw Mill Church cemetery is the grave of Tristram Thomas, major of militia during the Revolution. At Hunt’s Bluff, ten miles south, a band of Patriots under his command seized a British flotilla in 1780. He served as legislator, as first Brigadier General of the Cheraw Militia, and as commissioner for locating the county seat.

In 1785 Philip Pledger donated to the Cheraw Hill Baptist Church a tract of land here adjoining his saw mill. Pledger’s Saw Mill Church was eventually constituted in 1820 as a separate church. The original congregation relocated in 1832 as Bennettsville Church. Sawmill Church today is a member of the S. C. Baptist Educational and Missionary Convention.