The site of the county seat, first known as Darlington Court House, was selected by two of the justices appointed for laying off the county, Col. Lemuel Benton and Mr. Isaiah Dubose. Col. Benton wanted the seat at his town of Mechanicsville; Mr. Dubose wanted it at his town of Coffee Town, now known as Early's Cross Roads. The solution was to have the site half way between these two towns. At that time, according to history, there was not much more than an Indian trail leading from Peedee River to Camden at the place selected for the county seat. The first court house was built about 1791 and was burned in 1806. According to History of Old Cheraws, "The fire occurred during court week, and an old woman, who was party to a cause then pending, and whose interest it was to get rid of the records of the court, was suspected of having been privy to the burning. Beyond this suspicion, however, no clue was ever discovered as to the origin of the conflagration." The next court house was burned in 1866 and rebuilt in 1870. This one was replaced by the present structure in 1903-4. The town of Darlington received its first charter December 19, 1835.
This residential suburb of Darlington is generally thought to have been named for an old Irish town, tradition says, by a member of the Dargan family who came from that country.
Two plantations on the outskirts of Doneraile were The Elysian Fields, owned by Chancellor George W. Dargan, and Belle Acres, owned by the Bacot family. The nearby Bellyache Creek was originally Belle Acres Creek. Another legend is that this creek bore an Indian name, which translated means Bellyache. On the bank of this stream about three miles from Darlington is the famous Mineral Spring, the meeting place of the Darlington Agricultural Society.
The old Ferry has now been replaced by a fine concrete bridge on Route 34, connecting the counties of Darlington and Marlboro.
0. L. Warr of the Lamar Community has supplied the following facts about the naming of Lamar:
"The section...once shared with a good many other localities the appellation of Devil's Woodyard, I have been told, and acquired its first touch of dignity when it came to be known as Mims Cross Roads, from the name of the owner of the store that operated at what is now the cross street at the extreme southern edge of the Town.
"For a fairly short period thereafter it bore the name of Lisbon -several plats of surrounding farms so designate it -, and I have been told that when the railroad from Darlington to Sumter was built through there, the railroad company named its station Lamar and the community went along with the change. That was during the period when the Hon, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar of Mississippi was perhaps the South's most noted man of public affairs, as Congressman and later Senator."
Lisbon was incorporated in 1872 and Lamar in 1890.
Lying south of Lamar and extending to the Florence County line, this section has borne the name for as long as anyone now living can remember. Quietude means rest, quiet, seclusion, and this being a remote part of the county and probably sparsely settled, the name was given by someone as being most appropriate at the time. The name may first have been applied to the neighborhood Quietude School, so named for as long as anyone can remember.
Springville, a summer residential area on Black Creek, three miles northeast of Darlington, derives its name from the numerous bold springs at the foot of the bluff adjacent to the creek. A wealthy and cultured summer colony flourished there before the War Between the States. From 1826 to 1832 there was a Springville Post Office. Some of the old houses are still standing, now being occupied as permanent homes.
About the year 1785 the name Long Bluff was changed to Greenville, so called in honor of General Nathaniel Greene of Revolutionary fame. The Circuit Courts of the Cheraws District were held at Greenville until the year 1791.
Charles Mason, Evander McIver, Thomas Powe and William Dewitt, set forth in their petition to the legislature that they had laid out the Town at Long Bluff on Peedee, out of their own property, bad given the streets, several lots of land, Town House and Market Place. In December, 1778, St. Davids Society was incorporated, "for the purpose of instituting and endowing a seminary of learning in the District of Cheraw." The first building was erected near the site now occupied by the Welsh Neck Church, and as the inhabitants began to move into the hills about half a mile from the site of Greenville, they gave the name Society Hill to the new settlement, named for the St. Davids Society. This was about the year 1798.
The Welsh Neck Baptist Church, founded in the year 1738, erected their first "Meeting House" in the Welsh Tract in what is now Marlboro County. Soon after the settling of Society Hill, about the year 1798, the Church was moved to its present location. In the year 1840 a very large, imposing structure was built at the same location, the steeple of which could be seen from miles away. This fine structure was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. The existing brick church was erected several years later.
The St. Davids Academy, founded in the year 1778, is still serving as the center of learning for the Society Hill community.
Trinity Episcopal Church was founded in the year 1834. The original building is still standing.
The Town of Hartsville was named for Captain Thomas Edwards Hart, a pioneer settler in that community, who moved there about the year 1820.
Capt. Hart was bom at Society Hill, married Hannah Lide of the Mechanicsville section of the county, then moved to a plantation home on a high bluff overlooking Black Creek, at the place now known as Kalmia Gardens. The Hart residence is still standing has been restored; the spacious grounds also have and been landscaped into a beautiful garden.
In naming the magnificent lake formed by damming the clear waters of Black Creek, Prestwood Lake, the Hartsville people have preserved an old family name, now extinct, Prestwood. A family of that name lived in that community many years ago.
Hartsville received its first charter December 11, 1891.
Leavenworth, one of the old settlements in Darlington County, is situated in the east-central part of the county about ten miles northwest of Darlington. it derives its name from Nathan Leavenworth, who was granted a large tract of land in that section on December 12, 1786.
Nathan Leavenworth sold his lands about the year 1800 and according to tradition moved to the State of Kansas. Fort Leavenworth in that State, built in 1827, named for Colonel Henry Leavenworth and the City of the same name, were said to have been named for Nathan Leavenworth's descendants.
Dr. B. G. Pitts of Darlington has supplied the following interesting tradition concerning the naming of Lydia, a prosperous community in Darlington County on U. S. Highway 15, about 14 miles west of Darlington.
"The naming of Lydia....It is an old tradition [that the town was named by]...one Captain Lee, pioneer farmer of about a century ago, the father of Dr. Henry G. Lee, Oren D. Lee and Arthur Lee, whose farm house stood just where new Lydia now is. Captain Lee, being a devout reader of his Bible, habitually carried it to the field where he attached it to his plow handles, and read while he plowed and plowed while he read. After reading his Bible in the Book of Acts, Verse 14, concerning Lydia, the good woman who with Paul and Silas held the first prayer meeting down by the river side, he resolved that the new Post Office then being established should be named Lydia.
"The Captain Lee home was located in close proximity to the Old Gully Camp Ground."
- T. E. Wilson