Thomas Sumter, an influential militia leader in the American Revolution, kept a store in this area about 1765-1767 after serving in the colonial militia and visiting Charleston during a 1762 diplomatic mission with the Cherokees. Born in Virginia in 1734, he later fled a Virginia debtor’s prison and established himself here in St. John’s Berkeley Parish as a merchant, acquiring land and enslaved people. His store stood where traffic to the Upcountry divided between the Road to the Congarees and Nelson’s Ferry Road. In about 1767, Sumter moved across the Santee River to St. Mark’s Parish. Nicknamed the “Gamecock,” he rose during the Revolutionary War to brigadier general of the S.C. militia in 1780, later served as a state and national legislator, and died in Stateburg, S.C. in 1832.