Alexander Cameron was a Highland Scot who came to America prior to the 1760’s and joined the British Independent Regulars. He was stationed in the Cherokee Lower Towns by 1762 and learned the Cherokee language and culture, befriending the Indigenous tribes. They nicknamed him “Scotchie” for his origins.

By 1768, Cameron had acquired 2,000 acres in Abbeville, near Penny Creek, and relocated his Cherokee wife and children there. He became a British Indian Agent, a job that entailed promoting peace between the settlers and Cherokees, establishing trade, preventing settlers from moving onto Native land, and advocating for the Cherokees’ rights within treaties.

When the Revolution began, Cameron worked to keep the Cherokees neutral, but local settlers, angry that Cameron had enforced boundary lines and had told the Cherokees not to ally with the colonies against the King, accused him of instigating Cherokee attacks. Cameron denied it, but James McCall and the Patriot militia marched on Cameron’s home, Lochaber, to kill him. The family escaped, but with the burning of their home and calls for war from the Cherokees and his British supervisor, Cameron chose a side.

In July of 1776, Cameron and the Cherokees led attacks on settlements in the Second Cherokee War, with Andrew Pickens razing the Cherokee Lower Towns in response. After DeWitt’s Corner, Cameron was reassigned to serve the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes, but he was a wanted man to the Patriots and could not travel to their territory. He died in Savannah in 1781 before the Revolution ended.

William Cunningham, better known by his nickname “Bloody Bill,” was one of the most infamous figures in the backcountry of Abbeville, but he began his involvement in the Revolution as a Patriot soldier. He grew disenchanted with the army when he was passed over for a promotion and tried to resign, but was court-martialed for mutiny and publicly whipped for planning his departure. Then he learned that one of the Patriots he had served with, Captain Ritchie, had beaten his disabled brother to death and turned his father out of his home.

From then on, Cunningham seems to have been bent on revenge, joining the British dragoons and embarking on a march of destruction through the backcountry, known as “the Bloody Scout.” He shot Ritchie to death in front of his family at their dinner table, and committed multiple brutal massacres of soldiers and civilians across South Carolina.

Under his orders, John Crawford attacked Patriots at McCord’s Creek, and Cunningham himself led the raid on Pratt’s Mill in Due West. General Andrew Pickens hunted Cunningham down and finally met him in battle on the Edisto River, ending the Bloody Scout.

Cunningham escaped, living as an outlaw in Florida before dying in the Bahamas in 1787.

Samuel Hill was an Irish Loyalist who lived in the backcountry of Abbeville. He was a member of the local Loyalist militia during the Revolutionary War, but the fighting brought the conflict literally to his doorstep. He owned a cabin between Donalds and Due West, and in March of 1781, the land around his home became the site of the Battle of Dunlap’s Defeat.

Leading up to the conflict, James Dunlap, an aggressive Loyalist officer, had led raids across the backcountry, including one in January that destroyed Andrew Pickens’ home. Pickens learned that Dunlap was near Long Cane Creek with his dragoons, and he sent James McCall and Elijah Clarke to hunt him down.

Dunlap, Samuel Hill, and Hill’s nephew, William Conway, were part of a unit that retreated to Hill’s cabin after the pursuit, and the two forces met on the field at Hill’s cabin and fought for four bloody hours. Hill was badly wounded in the arm and head, and after 34 Loyalists had been killed and the rest wounded, Dunlap surrendered to McCall and Clarke. William Conway was killed in the fight, and later, Dunlap would be killed in captivity; his brutality towards civilians had ensured that he would receive no mercy.

Samuel Hill was transported to Ninety-Six, where his arm was amputated. His property was confiscated by the Patriots, and he and his family were refugees in Charleston who went to Jamaica and then England before settling in Canada with other displaced Loyalists.

Andrew Williamson remains one of the most controversial figures in the Revolutionary War. Called the “Benedict Arnold” of the South, he came to America from Scotland. Although he was illiterate, he was clever and worked hard, rising from a cattle driver (the Eastern equivalent of a cowboy) to a military leader quickly.

He acquired land in Greenwood and Abbeville and owned a large plantation called White Hall on Hard Labor Creek, becoming a well-regarded local figure (he was known to send gifts of one of his favorite foods, rattlesnake, to his friends).  He was crucial in the establishment of the town of Ninety-Six and Star Fort.

During the Revolution, he was promoted to Brigadier General and fought in engagements against the Cherokees, gaining a reputation as a hardened fighter who led the destruction of the Lower Towns after the Smith Massacre of 1776 in Abbeville, although he reportedly spared the village of Nancy Ward, a Cherokee peacemaker.

Everything changed in 1780 when the British captured Charleston and offered paroles to Patriots. Williamson, as well as Andrew Pickens, accepted the parole and retired from service. Williamson caused a stir when he began hosting British officers at White Hall, officers who asked him to join them and convince Andrew Pickens to as well.

Rumors spread that he was a traitor, and when he left his plantation to join the British in Charleston, it confirmed the suspicions of local Patriots. He was captured twice by Patriots but escaped.

After the war, there were calls to seize his property and hang him. To everyone’s surprise, American General Nathanael Greene spoke up and said that Williamson had actually been passing him information from the British, making him one of the first double agents.

Still, the damage was done–Andrew Pickens and John Bowie, former friends, considered him a double traitor.

Dr. John de la Howe was a physician swept up in the tide of Revolution. He was a French Huguenot who came to America in 1764 and obtained property in the Charleston area and in the backcountry of Abbeville. He opened a successful medical practice in Charleston and served the King as a Justice of the Peace.

Once the Revolutionary War began in 1775, everything changed. As a physician, John de la Howe believed it was his duty to treat any sick or wounded, regardless of what side they were on. Both in Abbeville and in Charleston, he helped patients from both the Patriot and Loyalist armies, but the occupying British Army was suspicious that an official of the crown would heal American soldiers, and imprisoned him.

He joined a Loyalist regiment to be released, but continued to quietly treat Patriot soldiers until the war ended. By this time, he had thousands of acres in the old Abbeville district between Little River and Long Cane Creek, and when the newly formed American government seized some of his low-country property to punish him for treating British soldiers, he decided to live in Abbeville permanently at his plantation, Lethe (named after the river in Greek mythology that allows the drinker to forget their troubles).

When the Ninety-Six District was divided into different counties in 1785,  John de la Howe named this county “Abbeville” after his hometown in France. In his will, he made provisions for his plantation to be a school for agriculture for both male and female students, which is still in operation today.

John Daniel Hammerer was a German Lutheran minister, or “Parson,” as he was known locally, who ran a school for Cherokee boys in the Keowee area, part of the Cherokee Lower Towns. As tensions arose there between the Cherokees and the settlers, he relocated to the Long Canes settlement in what is now Due West, opening a new school near Hogskin Creek, where he continued to educate Cherokee children.

In 1770, because of his close relationship with the indigenous peoples, he served as a translator at the Treaty of Lochaber, held at Alexander Cameron’s plantation. This meeting brought together more than one thousand Cherokees from across the Southeast, and must have seemed like the start of better relations between the settlers and their Cherokee neighbors.

Once the American Revolution began and local settlers largely supported the Patriot cause, these relationships with the Cherokees became dangerous for Parson Hammerer when the Cherokees became British allies. He was forced to close his school and abandon his property to seek safety in Savannah, which was under British control by 1778.

There, he joined the Loyalist cause and began writing the Royal Georgia Gazette, a newspaper publication that defended King George III and advocated for the colonies to remain under Crown rule. Parson Hammerer accepted a position as a magistrate in the Royalist-operated Chatham County, serving until Savannah was retaken by the Patriots.