Lincolnville, South Carolina is located at the extreme western end of Charleston County. It is one mile from Summerville and joins Dorchester County. 

The Founding of Lincolnville, SC 

In South Carolina in the first decade after the end of the Civil War, African Americans were freed, but they weren’t yet free. In every issue they addressed – politics, education, health care, law enforcement – they met resistance from whites who refused to give up the power they had always held. For a short golden moment, roughly 1865-1876, blacks took positions in city councils and the state legislature, schools and police forces. They had to struggle for each achievement, and in 1876 they were thrown out of power after a period of white terrorism never before seen in this country. 

Many African Americans chose another route: They would handle their own affairs. They decided to establish their own cities, control all local agencies, and take care of each other. 

In 1867, seven men, headed by Richard Harvey Cain, an AME minister, took a ride on the South Carolina Special, a local train. They were looking for sites that the South Carolina Railway Company wanted to sell. These seven Black men purchased Six hundred, twenty acres of land for $1000 from the South Carolina Railway Company. These acres of land would become the Town of Lincolnville. 

The town was incorporated on December 24, 1889 by African American attorney Samuel J. Lee of Charleston.  Samuel Lee was the former speaker of the SC House of Representatives, a trustee of South Carolina College (now known as the University of South Carolina). 

The Name Lincolnville

When the South Carolina-Georgia Railroad was built through what is now the Lincolnville community, there were three swamps within a radius of two and one-half miles that the railroad crossed. The western swamp was the largest. There was a saw mill and a grist mill that were run by flowing waters from these swamp. This was known as the Saw Mill Swamp. About a mile below this swamp was another swamp, which the railway pumped water for its engines. These were known as Pump Swamp.  The eastern-most swamp had a brick arch culvert for the crossing of trains. This swamp was known as the Brick Arch Swamp.  These were the water outlets of a vast section of the region. All waters from the swamp flowed to a creek known as Eagle Creek and then on to the Ashley River. 



The highest land was around the Pump Pond Swamp where the railroad loaded wood and water for its engines. The workers and town settlers called it Pump Pond.  The surveyors in naming this region on their plot took the name the Negroes used and named the region Pon Pon.  This was the name used by the settlers until the town was incorporated in 1889 and changed to Lincolnville in honor of Abraham Lincoln. 

[Excerpts taken from:  The History of Lincolnville, South Carolina written by Christine W. Hampton and Rosalee W. Washington and from: A Study of Lincolnville, SC: A Negro Community” By Luella D. Seele. Master’s thesis, School of Education, Atlanta University, 1956.]