Ribbon cutting marks completion of Laurens250 kiosk at the Clinton Depot

A new four-sided kiosk at the Clinton Depot is telling the story of the American Revolution in Laurens County, and it is now officially open.

Officials cut the ribbon on the completed Laurens250 Clinton Depot Kiosk on Sept. 9, marking the end of a project built to share the role Clinton and the surrounding area played in the nation’s fight for independence. The City of Clinton, Clinton City Council and the Laurens County 250 Committee partnered on the work.

Each face of the kiosk carries an illustrated panel on a Revolutionary War subject tied to this part of the South Carolina backcountry: the Hayes Station massacre, the Battle of Musgrove Mill, the Battle of Hammond’s Old Store and the young Patriot heroine Dicey Langston. The Langston side also displays the Laurens County Revolutionary War Driving Tour map, which points visitors to sites scattered from Gray Court to Cross Hill. Every side includes a QR code for readers who want to go deeper on their phones.

The kiosk carries the SC250 anniversary mark along with the Laurens County designation. The driving tour, built around the theme of highlighting heroes, heroines and the unheralded, lists the Laurens County Museum at 116 S. Public Square in Laurens as its headquarters.

The panels do not soften the history. The Hayes Station side recounts the events of Nov. 19, 1781, when William “Bloody Bill” Cunningham and roughly 300 men arrived at the stagecoach stop and homeplace of Col. Joseph Hayes, commander of the Little River Regiment. About 25 regiment members took shelter in a blockhouse. After Cunningham set the structure on fire, the trapped men surrendered and were bound together. A few were reprieved. Eighteen were killed. The panel notes that Cunningham had begun the war as a Patriot and that the raid, remembered as the Bloody Scout, left 79 men dead across the state.

Another side covers the Battle of Musgrove Mill, fought Aug. 19, 1780, at the ford over the Enoree River. It describes a Patriot force that rode 40 miles overnight under a command-by-committee arrangement shared by Cols. Elijah Clarke, Isaac Shelby and James Williams, the latter commanding the Little River Regiment. Outnumbered after the Loyalists were reinforced, the Patriots built rough breastworks and drew the enemy in with a feint. The panel frames the victory as a rare bright spot in the darkest stretch of the war in South Carolina.

The Hammond’s Old Store side tells of Dec. 30, 1780, when Lt. Col. William Washington’s dragoons and local mounted riflemen surprised Loyalists stopped for a midday break at a frontier store. The panel makes a point often lost in battlefield summaries: Patriots and Loyalists in that fight were neighbors.

The Dicey Langston side honors a young woman who grew up on Langston Road just north of Clinton and who, at 15, warned her brother of a coming Tory raid after crossing the Enoree on a cold November night. She later married Thomas Springfield, the 15-year-old private to whom she handed a hidden rifle. The two settled in Travelers Rest and raised 22 children. Her story appeared in Elizabeth Ellet’s 1848 work on the women of the Revolution.

Together, the four sides place Clinton inside a story that stretches from Ninety Six to Kings Mountain to Cowpens, and they invite residents and visitors alike to follow the driving tour out into the countryside where it happened.

The kiosk stands at the Clinton Depot and is free to visit at any time.