page_title: Georgetown, South Carolina
section_title: Reconstruction and post-reconstruction period
hierarchical_section_title: Georgetown, South Carolina / History / Reconstruction and post-reconstruction period
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph showing the front side of Arcadia Plantation, U. S. Highway 17 vicinity, Georgetown vicinity, Georgetown County, South Carolina. Historic American Buildings Survey, The Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
context_page_description: Georgetown is the third oldest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina and the county seat of Georgetown County, in the Lowcountry. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 9,163. Located on Winyah Bay at the confluence of the Black, Great Pee Dee, Waccamaw, and Sampit rivers, Georgetown is the second largest seaport in South Carolina, handling over 960,000 tons of materials a year.
  Georgetown was the commercial center of an indigo- and rice-producing area. It is the birthplace of former First Lady Michelle Obama's grandfather, Fraser Robinson. Many of Michelle Obama's Robinson relatives still reside in Georgetown.
context_section_description: Georgetown and Georgetown County suffered terribly during the Reconstruction Era because of its continued reliance on agriculture, for which the national market was low. In addition, the rice crops of 1866–88 were failures due to lack of capital, which prevented adequate preparation for new crops; inclement weather; and the planters' struggle to find laborers.
  Some freedmen left the area in an effort to reunite families separated by the domestic slave trade. Many families withdrew women and children from working as field laborers. Many freedmen families wanted to work for themselves as subsistence farmers, rather than work in gangs for major planters. Rice continued to be grown commercially until about 1910, but the market had changed. It was never as important economically or as profitable a crop as before 1860.
  By the time the Reconstruction period ended, the area's economy was shifting to harvesting and processing wood products. By 1900 several lumber mills were operating on the Sampit River. The largest was the Atlantic Coast Lumber Company; its mill in Georgetown was the largest lumber mill on the East Coast at the time.
caption: Arcadia Plantation, circa 1893, Georgetown vicinity, Georgetown County
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