Hamburg, Aiken County, South Carolina
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The dead town of Hamburg, South Carolina was once a thriving upriver market located in Edgefield District (now Aiken County). It was founded by Henry Shultz in 1821 as a rival place of trade to Augusta, Georgia. In fact Shultz, harmed by business dealings in Augusta, openly hoped to gain revenge with his new town. Augusta’s commercial connections were stronger, but Hamburg was more convenient to overland traffic from points north and enjoyed a thriving cotton trade for a time, collecting much of the produce of upcountry South Carolina. In its heyday, 60,000 bales of cotton worth $2,000,000 were brought by wagon to Hamburg each year. This cotton continued by pole boat or steam boat to the ports of Charleston or Savannah for subsequent shipment to manufacturers in New England or Europe. With the Augusta Canal (1848) and general expansion of railroads in the 1850's, strenuous overland hauls to Hamburg became unnecessary and the famous wagon traffic declined.
Despite its hardy and enterprising reputation, Hamburg quickly deflated once its commercial underpinnings were removed, and became a ghost town by the time of the Civil War. It gained a second life after the War as a haven for freedmen, and became the center of a social experiment as former slaves created their own government to succeed or fail on its own terms. This was crushed in the bloody 1876 Hamburg Massacre (or Hamburg Riot), a key event in South Carolina Reconstruction. Hamburg's charter was revoked by the new Redeemer legislature in 1877 and town became an industrial slum exposed to flood, fire, and neglect.
With the 1915 construction of a protective levee by its rival across the river, continued habitation in Hamburg became pointless. The town was finally swept away for good in the massive double flood of 1929, and the last holdouts were relocated to nearby bluffs at today's Carsville and Carpentersville neighborhoods. There are no visible remains of the original Town of Hamburg.
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[edit] Geography
Named after Shultz's home town in Germany, Hamburg was located at 33.4799°N, 81.9579°W on the Savannah River flood plain directly across from Augusta, Georgia. Population at its peak in the 1840's Hamburg reached 2,000, and exceeded 1,000 in its postwar resurgence. Hamburg was developed on two tracts of land amounting to about 600 acres, with lots laid out over an area of 125 acres. Much of the site came to be destroyed by 'brick ponds' dug out in the mining of clay. Under protection of the Clarks Hill Dam and Lake, adjacent North Augusta has begun to grow back over old Hamburg.
[edit] Notable People and Places
Founder Henry Shultz was an immigrant that arrived in Augusta in 1806. In a career of mythical proportion, he made his mark with grandiose public works, spectacular business failures, and a masterful personality.
During his American tour as 'Guest of the Nation', the Marquis de Lafayette visited Hamburg on March 24, 1825.
At the age of 13, Josiah Sibley followed his brothers Amory and Royal to opportunity for advancement in Hamburg. Josiah went on to become a major cotton factor and industrialist. Augusta's Sibley textile mill dates from 1880.
Berry Greenwood Benson, born in Hamburg in 1843, was a Confederate war hero who bore his rifle home after the War, invented a profitable 'zero-error' accounting system, and became a beloved Augusta raconteur and philosopher. In his memoirs, Benson stated that he enjoyed an ideal childhood in Hamburg.
A Union Army veteran, Prince Rivers, came to Hamburg after the War and led its resurgence as an African-American community.
Matthew Calbraith Butler and Benjamin Ryan Tillman participated in the bloody events of July 8, 1876. Oddly enough, this damaged Butler's reputation in the U. S. Senate, but spurred Tillman in his successful 1890 campaign for Governor of South Carolina.
The South Carolina Railroad was the world's first railroad in the modern pattern. Providing scheduled steam service over 136 miles of line from Charleston to Hamburg, it was the world's longest at its completion in 1833.
Christian Breithaupt owned the nearby Mount Vintage plantation and built the pioneering textile mill at Vaucluse. Besides owning town lots in Hamburg, Breithaupt participated with Shultz in an 1821 lawsuit seeking redress for the failure of the Bridge Bank of Augusta.
[edit] External links
- Henry Shultz and the Dead Town of Hamburg, SC
- City of Dust: Honky Tonk Hell
- 1835 Hamburg Town Plat
- Topozone
[edit] References
- Chapman, John A. (1897). History of Edgefield County, South Carolina. Various Reprints. ISBN 0806346965. pp. 20 and 236-243
- Cashin, Edward J. (1980). The Story of Augusta. Various Reprints. ISBN 087152452X.
- Cordle, Charles G. (1940). Henry Shultz and the Founding of Hamburg, South Carolina. Studies in Georgia History and Government. University of Georgia Press. pp. 79-93 and 257-263
