Wadboo Barony: Francis Marion’s Last Headquarters
Wadboo was a Native American name given to the enormous landholding of James Colleton, a son of Sir John Colleton, who was one of the original eight Lords Proprietors of the Carolina colony. Called a barony according to the Proprietors’ plan for an American nobility, Wadboo remained in the hands of James Colleton’s descendants from the original land grant in 1683 until after the Revolutionary War.
On August 29, 1782, a British foraging party, made up of white and black troops and commanded by Maj. Thomas Fraser, attacked Brig. Gen. Francis Marion and his militiamen at Wadboo, where they had camped the night before. Arranging his Brigade around the main house and slave quarters and along a lane of large cedar trees (across the creek from here), Marion beat back the British attack. During the engagement, Maj. Micajah Ganey, a former Tory who had recently come over to the Whig side in a treaty at Burch’s Mill, fought heroically with Marion.
From shortly after the skirmish until the British abandoned South Carolina in December, Francis Marion made Wadboo his headquarters. Here on December 15, 1782, the day after the British evacuation of Charleston, Marion dismissed his Brigade and made for his own ruined plantation of Pond Bluff.
Marker can be reached from South Carolina Route 402 just north of South Carolina Route S-8-44, on the left when traveling west.
Courtesy hmdb.org
