Early Life in the Backcountry

Robert Gouedy established a trading post on this site in 1753, supplying cloth, tools, gunpowder, lead, and rum to soldiers, Indians, slaves, and settlers traveling through Ninety Six between Charleston and the Cherokee villages, as well as representatives of the British colonial government. As the backcountry population grew, violence between settlers and Indians also increased, with Indian attacks often encouraged by the French in their effort to wrest South Carolina from British control. In October 1759, Governor Lyttleton formed a militia to protect settlers against Indian attacks and, seeking a suitable place for a magazine and stockade fort, chose Gouedy's post at the crossroads of Ninety Six. He commandeered Gouedy's house, barn, and outbuildings, enclosed them within a 90-foot-square stockade, garrisoned his militia there, and renamed the place Fort Ninety Six. This became the site of at least two dramatic Indian attacks in 1760, including the attack of March 3, when about 240 or 250 Indians fired on the fort for 36 hours with scarcely any intermission, even through the night, but did not come within 60 yards of the stockade except for one man who was killed and scalped. By the end of 1761, the British and Cherokee had negotiated a truce. As the town of Ninety Six developed near Island Ford Road, Fort Ninety Six was abandoned and all traces of it disappeared. Gouedy prospered, eventually owning more than 1,500 acres in Ninety Six and 34 slaves before his death in 1775.

Ninety Six, South Carolina · United States