Andersonville, South Carolina: The River Town Lake Hartwell Covered

01A Port at the River Fork

The town was created by an act of the South Carolina General Assembly in 1801. A 2002 historical and architectural survey by the South Carolina Department of Archives and History says Samuel Earle established Andersonville that year from 340 acres bought from Jacob Mauldin. It names Robert Anderson, Samuel Earle and Baylis Earle as commissioners.

The town took its name from Robert Anderson, a Revolutionary War veteran.

The location explains most of what followed. A town at the meeting of two rivers, at the head of the Savannah, could ship goods down toward Augusta and receive them from there. Roots and Recall cites an interview with Fred G. Dobbins of Townville about navigating the river and shipping goods up from Augusta to Andersonville. The 1885 Anderson Intelligencer, quoted second-hand by The Tiger, called the place "quite an important place," with many boats loaded there for Hamburg and later Augusta.

02Mills, Foundries and a Female Academy

The state survey lists a surprising range of enterprises for a town on a river fork. They include:

• the Southern Clock Company
• an iron foundry
• cotton and wool factories
• a gun factory
• tailor, wagon and shoe shops
• a cotton gin
• flour, grist and saw mills

The survey also records a female academy by 1812. Andersonville was a textile and trading community, and its primary industry was river trade, supported by mills and small-scale manufacturing.

No source gives a peak population or a count of buildings, so the town's size can't be stated. The list of businesses suggests a settlement that was a working river port and manufacturing center, with a school as well.

03What Happened to Andersonville?

The sources point to a slow decline rather than a single collapse. Roots and Recall places the start in the 1840s and 1850s.

Floods. The Tiger, citing research by Samuel Snipes, says floods damaged or destroyed the town in 1840 and 1852. A hobbyist travel blog, Mark's Photo Travels, agrees. It says the town was not rebuilt after 1852 and that an 1897 map shows only a mill and the church. The state survey says Andersonville was severely damaged by flooding several times and "did not survive into the twentieth century."

Railroads. The railroads bypassed the town, taking its industry and many of its residents with them. The Columbia and Greenville railroad was the line that passed it by. A river port that rail traffic had skipped lost its reason to exist.

The final years. Roots and Recall says only a few families remained, and that by World War II Andersonville was a ghost town. There is no single abandonment date. The town faded across more than a century.

The post office puzzle

The postal record is contradictory. Wikipedia and Roots and Recall say the Andersonville post office closed in 1893. Carolana's list of Anderson County post offices tells a different story. It shows an Andersonville office under postmaster James Swanson from October 1, 1811, renamed Sadlers Creek on February 18, 1832. It also shows a second Andersonville office running from 1832 to September 6, 1845, and a third re-established on April 28, 1895. Carolana's entries may include offices elsewhere in the county, and its sourcing is unclear. The 1893 date has no backing from the state survey, so the closing date stays uncertain.

04Lake Hartwell and the Final Erasure

Lake Hartwell finished what the floods began. According to Roots and Recall, the reservoir covered the site by about 1962, leaving only a high ridge standing as an island. The site lies at roughly 34.4473, -82.8551, and is recorded as inundated by Hartwell Lake.

Anderson Magazine says more than 2,000 people in the reservoir area were displaced when Hartwell Dam was built. Oral histories from families who lost their homes to the lake are collected by Local History Matters.

Graves went the way of the town. Most of those buried in the Andersonville cemetery were moved to Andersonville Baptist Church, and grave-relocation data compiled by Old Pendleton lists burials moved there. The town's namesake met a similar fate. Robert Anderson's body was reinterred at Old Stone Church during construction of the lake.

05What Remains of Andersonville Today

Almost nothing stands where the town did. Andersonville Island, about two miles long, is all that is left of the high ground. It is the ridge that stayed above water when the reservoir rose. The abandoned Andersonville site is mostly lake, and the town's streets, mills and foundry lie beneath it.

On land, the main link to the old community is Andersonville Baptist Church. Anderson Magazine says the congregation was established in 1839, and the church received graves relocated from the old cemetery. Mark's Photo Travels, a blog account of a visit to the island, mentions the church's relocation as part of the story.

The place survives in the federal gazetteer under the label "Andersonville," and mapping sites such as TopoZone carry the same entry. Anyone interested in the Andersonville ghost town should treat it as a lake-and-island landscape rather than a walkable ruin. The history is in the archives, the oral histories and the relocated graves.