Cheraw, South Carolina

Cheraw (/tʃəˈrɔː/ chə-RAW, local /ʃəˈrɔː/ shə-RAW) is a town on the Pee Dee River in Chesterfield and Marlboro counties, South Carolina, United States. The population was 5,851 at the 2010 census. It has been nicknamed "The Prettiest Town in Dixie". The harbor tug USS Cheraw was named in the town's honor.

History

Origins

When the first Europeans arrived in the area it was inhabited by the Cheraw and Pee Dee American Indian tribes. The Cheraw lived near the waterfall hill, near present-day Cheraw, but by the 1730s they had been devastated by new infectious disease inadvertently carried by the European traders. Survivors joined the Catawba Confederacy for safety and left their name in history. Only a few scattered Cheraw families remained by the time of the American Revolution. A few European settlers entered their territory in the 1730s, forced upriver when the Welsh came to claim the Welsh Baptist lands granted by the English government in the area around Society Hill. Many of the early settlers of the 1740s in Cheraw were ethnic English, Scots, French Huguenots, or Scots-Irish.