Echoes & Insights — Sacred Ground: Completing the Laurens County Revolutionary War Driving Tour, and the Carolina Day Celebration of June 28
May 27, 2026
MAY 2026 COLUMN
Echoes & Insights: The Laurens County Series. Readers are invited to journey through the history of Laurens County, uncovering the stories, places, and people that have shaped our community. This series is designed to preserve history while sparking conversation about how it continues to guide us today.
We’d like to thank our Founding Sponsors for making this series possible. Their support ensures that the stories of our county are remembered, celebrated, and passed on to future generations.
Echoes & Insights — Sacred Ground: Completing the Laurens County Revolutionary War Driving Tour, and the Carolina Day Celebration of June 28
Last month, Echoes & Insights introduced the first seven sites on Laurens County’s 14-site Revolutionary War driving and biking trail — from Rutledge Ford to the Battle of Musgrove Mill — and began telling the story of how this county’s men and women shaped the outcome of the American Revolution in ways that most history books have never fully captured. This month, the series concludes with Sites 8 through 14, and the story of the landmark celebration that brings it all together on June 28, 2026.
Completing the Trail: Sites 8 Through 14
The second half of the driving tour moves deeper into the county, tracing the war’s final brutal years in the back country and the sacred ground where Laurens County’s Patriots now rest.
Site 8: Duncan Creek Meeting House
One of the oldest Presbyterian congregations in the Upstate, Duncan Creek Meeting House represents something essential about the Revolutionary War in the South Carolina back country: the church was not simply a spiritual institution. It was the center of community life, the gathering place where men deliberated, organized, and ultimately chose sides in a war that would tear their neighborhoods apart. Congregations like Duncan Creek produced many of the officers and militia soldiers who fought across Laurens County. The site anchors the trail’s second half as a reminder that the Revolution was as much a community decision as a military one.
Site 9: Hurricane Meeting House
Like Duncan Creek, the Hurricane Meeting House stands as a testament to the role faith communities played in sustaining the Patriot cause through years of uncertainty and violence. Meeting houses across the back country served as rallying points, refuge sites, and places where information passed between neighbors when formal communication networks did not exist. The Hurricane Meeting House was one of those gathering points — a place where the ties that held communities together were tested and, ultimately, held.
Site 10: Hammond’s Old Store
Three miles south of Clinton, one of the most tactically significant engagements of the entire southern campaign unfolded on Dec 30, 1780. Lt. Col. William Washington — a cousin of Gen. George Washington and the Revolution’s most celebrated cavalry commander — led a surprise charge with 80 horsemen against 250 Loyalists encamped at Hammond’s Old Store, supported by 200 local riflemen. The result was a Patriot victory with zero American casualties. The timing was not incidental. The Battle of Hammond’s Old Store came just 18 days before the Battle of Cowpens, and Washington’s cavalry formed the core of the force that helped turn that tide as well. What happened just south of Clinton helped determine what happened at one of the war’s most celebrated engagements.
Site 11: Hayes Station
Hayes Station carries one of the darkest stories on the entire driving tour. In November 1781, William “Bloody Bill” Cunningham — whose campaign of terror through Laurens County has already been documented at Fort Ridgeway — arrived at Hayes Station with a force of Loyalists and demanded the surrender of the Patriots sheltering there. The men inside surrendered on the promise of quarter. Cunningham executed them anyway. The massacre at Hayes Station became one of the most notorious atrocities of the southern war, and the site stands today as a place of remembrance for those who laid down their arms in good faith and paid for it with their lives.
Site 12: Fort Williams and the Battle of Mudlick Creek
Fort Williams represents the defensive infrastructure that ordinary back-country families built to survive a war that came directly to their doorsteps. The Battle of Mudlick Creek, connected to this site, reflects the ongoing guerrilla conflict that defined the southern theater long after the major engagements had concluded. Even as Cornwallis moved toward Yorktown, the fighting in Laurens County’s back country continued — neighbor against neighbor, in engagements that rarely made the history books but determined who would control the land when the war finally ended.
Site 13: Liberty Springs Presbyterian Church
Liberty Springs Presbyterian Church is both a spiritual landmark and a community monument. Like the meeting houses earlier on the trail, it represents the congregation-as-community model that defined back-country life in the Revolutionary era. The name itself carries the weight of what those families believed they were fighting for. Liberty Springs sits on the trail as a place for visitors to pause and consider not just the battles, but the values and the faith that sustained the people who fought them.
Site 14: Rosemont Plantation
The final stop on the driving tour carries a story that begins in the Revolutionary War and extends well beyond it. Rosemont Plantation was the home of Ann Pamela Cunningham — granddaughter of a Loyalist colonel and a cousin of William “Bloody Bill” Cunningham himself. The family’s divided legacy during the Revolution gives way, in the generation that followed, to one of the most remarkable acts of national reconciliation in American history. Ann Pamela Cunningham founded the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association in 1853, leading the successful effort to purchase and preserve George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon. In doing so, she launched the American historic preservation movement — uniting a nation on the eve of another war around a shared sense of who George Washington was and what he had meant. Her story begins here in Laurens County, and the Laurens County Museum has honored it with a dedicated exhibit. It is a fitting end to a trail that began with a river crossing and ends with a woman who saved a president’s home.
Celebrating It All: Carolina Day in Laurens, June 28, 2026
The work of the Laurens County American Revolution 250th Anniversary Committee does not end with the installation of signs and kiosks. On Sunday, June 28, 2026 — Carolina Day — LC250 will mark the culmination of nearly five years of preservation, scholarship, and community building with one of the most significant celebrations in the county’s modern history.
The afternoon begins at 3 p.m. at First Baptist Church of Laurens, with guest speakers and the ringing of the bells. A walking parade will follow to the Laurens Historic Square for the dedication of the America 250 Marker — a permanent addition to the public square that will connect every future visitor to the county’s place in the story of American independence. The celebration concludes with the grand opening of the Laurens County Museum’s American Revolutionary War Exhibit, a landmark new installation that brings the county’s extraordinary role in the Revolution into the museum’s permanent collection.
June 28 is Carolina Day — the anniversary of the 1776 Battle of Sullivan’s Island, the first decisive American victory of the Revolutionary War and one of the most important early engagements in the fight for independence. It is the right day to dedicate a marker, open an exhibit, and remind every resident of Laurens County that the ground they walk on helped determine the outcome of a revolution that changed the world.
The community is invited. Learn more at www.laurenscounty250.com.
