National Register Listing

Abbeville Historic District

a.k.a. See Also:Courthouses in South Carolina Designed by William A

Roughly bounded by Seaboard Coastline RR, SR 72, Rickey, Haight, Hemphill and Haigler Sts., Abbeville, SC

In 1764 a group of French Huguenots founded the nearby village of New Bordeaux; it is believed that these settlers later named Abbeville, South Carolina, for the French city of Abbeville. The seat of Abbeville County which was formed from the Ninety-Six District in 1785, the town of Abbeville was one of South Carolina's early centers of culture, agriculture, and commerce in the Upcountry.

Political Significance
John C. Calhoun, South Carolina's preeminent statesman, and Abbeville county native, opened his first law office in Abbeville in 1807. During his years of public service, Calhoun held many high offices including Secretary of War, Vice-President, Senator and Secretary of State. He was the outstanding political philosopher of the period and the originator of the doctrine of nullification. In later political activity, Abbeville was the site of one of South Carolina's most potent secession meetings on November 22, 1860. Approximately 3,000 people gathered on Magazine Hill (since called Secession Hill) to listen to notable speakers who urged immediate secession. As a result of this meeting, Abbeville selected the following delegates to the state secession convention in Columbia: Judge D.L. Wardlaw, Judge Thomas Thomson, Thomas C. Perrin (first signer of The Ordinance of Secession), Edward Noble, John A. Calhoun, and John H. Wilson. Chancellor Francis Hugh Wardlaw, another Abbeville native, supervised the drafting of The Ordinance of Secession.

Educational Significance
Robert Mills, in his Statistics of South Carolina, regarded Abbeville as "the original seat of learning in the upper country... attention to education was coeval with the settlement."

Theatrical Significance
The Abbeville Opera House, now restored and used frequently, dates from 1904. It was a center of culture and entertainment for the district where traveling theatre companies performed plays like "Ben Hur," "The Great Divide" and George White's "Scandals." Celebrities such as Jimmy Durante and Fanny Brice performed here.

Local significance of the district:
Commerce; Politics/government; Architecture

Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.