History
Though Florence was part of one of the original townships laid out by the Lords Proprieters in 1719, it was slowly and thinly settled until the coming of the railroads. Prior to then, the Pee Dee River was the route of most commerce. Early settlers practiced subsistence farming and produced indigo, cotton, naval stores and timber, which were shipped downriver to the port at Georgetown and exported.
In the mid-19th century two intersecting railroads were built, The Wilmington and Manchester, and the Northeastern. Gen. W. W. Harllee, the president of the W & M road built his home at the junction, and named the community Florence, after his daughter.
During the Civil War the town was an important supply and railroad repair center for the Confederacy, and the site of the Florence Stockade, a prison for Union prisoners of war. Many of the prisoners died during the latter years of the war, and the burial ground adjacent to the stockade was to become the Florence National Cemetery, which continues to be a national burial ground for veterans of all wars since.
The Civil War also brought to prominence Henry Timrod, nicknamed The Poet Laureate of the Confederacy, who taught at a schoolhouse on the Cannon Plantation nearby.
After the war, Florence grew and prospered, using the railroad to supply its cotton, timber, and by the turn of the century, tobacco.
During the 20th century Florence grew into a major medical center, of far greater importance than its size. Industry grew, especially after World War II, when Florence became increasingly known for textiles, pharmaceuticals, paper, manufacturing and in addition to agricultural products, which makes it the hub for business in the northeastern portion of South Carolina.
On March 11, 1958, an H-bomb was accidentally dropped on a small community, Mars Bluff, outside the city. Although the 200 pounds of TNT detonated causing some damage, the nuclear portion remained intact.
Read more about this topic: Florence, South Carolina
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do. It’s an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.”
—Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)