Darlington County

To lure settlers into the wild backcountry of Darlington, the British colonial government offered two large tracts of land to a group of Welsh Baptists from Delaware in 1736. The land of dense pine forests still bearing the footprints of the Cheraw tribe of Native Americans welcomed the Welshmen, and they located on a bend in the Pee Dee River that came to be known as Welsh Neck. Eventually, German, Swedish, Scotch Irish, English, and French Huguenot settlers came too, creating more communi...