Page 56 - Sea Level 2019

Our

COMMUNITIES Colonists began to spread out from the

SCREVEN’S HOPE plantations for growing indigo, tea and,
settlements and farm the land, building

especially, rice.
The rise of the plantations also gave rise
to the unique Gullah culture of enslaved
West Africans and their free descendants.
Without the cultivation of rice by the Gullah
people of South Carolina’s coast, many of
the Tideland’s most famous dishes – shrimp
and grits, gumbo and Frogmore Stew, for
example – never would have existed.
Communities The communities in Georgetown and

the Waccamaw Neck have developed from
these early days of pirates, Revolutionary
War soldiers, plantation owners, Civil
War bootleggers, and Prohibition-era rum
smugglers into thriving, modern, yet laid-
back places to live, work, and play. Referred
to today as the “Hammock Coast,” our area
is known for its unparalleled beauty and
Southern hospitality.

eople who come to Georgetown The first European to visit our part of South
County and the Waccamaw Neck Carolina was Francisco Gordillo in 1521. Georgetown produced more than
P first notice the patina of the past, of His fellow Spaniards attempted the first
original buildings that date back to Colonial European settlement in 1526, near what is half of the U.S. rice crop before the
days, and 300-year-old live oaks swathed now Georgetown, but the settlement failed Civil War. Some of the centuries-old
with curtains of Spanish moss. Touched and the Spanish sailed away to the Caribbean. plantation homes can still be
by Native Americans, the Spanish, French, English and French settlements appeared along seen and visited today.
English, and the Africans who were brought the dark rivers in the mid-1600s, creating
here as slaves, the history of our area makes trade with the Native Americans. Georgetown
itself known in our stories, our traditions County was officially founded in 1670
and our DNA. following the settlement of Charleston.

48 | SEA LEVEL The Lachicotte Company