Due West Environs During the American Revolution by James Wylie Gettys, Jr., 2025
Acknowledgements – The writer is indebted to persons who helped in this work, and especially to Sandra L. Gettys who is an excellent proof reader with insightful comments.
Additional Information – This pamphlet is also available at Roots and Recall, managed by the Louise Pettus Archives of Winthrop University at no cost. Access: www.rootsandrecall. Click on Search by County, click on Abbeville County and enter the search title, “Due West Environs” [be sure to use the quotation marks].
Without Tap of Drum, a work on the 1865 flights of Varina and Jefferson Davis, is also on Roots and Recall. Click on the link to access the book on Davis’s flight.
Unpublished work 2025 James Wylie Gettys, Jr. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized use strictly prohibited.
Prologue and publication by James W. Gettys, 2025
The area comprising the little village of Due West, South Carolina was part of the Cherokee Nation, an ally of Great Britain, before 1765. In that year the land became a colony of South Carolina. The Lower Cherokee towns used the area for hunting and gathering meat, animal skins and fur, ginseng, nuts, berries and especially shad. During spawning seasons small streams were filled with this anadromous member of the herring family. Cherokees seined hundreds of thousands of shad, preserved them by smoking and carried them back to their towns. The Anglo-Cherokee War (1758-1761) resulted in a new boundary line about six miles west of Due West, opening the environs of Due West for European settlement. The streetscape of the area was based on indigenous paths along watershed ridges. There were three indigenous paths or trails and one early colonial road that served the area of what later became Due West.
The most extensive path in pre-Columbian South Carolina was called the Keowee or Cherokee Path or Trail. It began in Charleston and terminated at the Mississippi River. Current roads, Highway 246 from Coronaca to Hodges and Highway 178 from Hodges to Donalds, follow the watershed ridge used by the Cherokee Path. Tributaries flowed northeast of the ridge into the Saluda River. After passing what is now Donalds, tributaries of the path flowed southwest into the Savannah River. The trail could have crossed some spring branch or branches of Long Cane Creek, or it could have encircled those headwaters. The first tributary of the Savannah that it crossed was Chickasaw Creek at Webb Shoals, three quarters of a mile from Due West’s northeastern corner. It then climbed the ridge above Chickasaw in a northwestern direction for about a mile, and crossed the junction of what is now Winona Church Road and Due West’s Church Street Extension. It continued in the same direction until it reached what is now referred to as Corner Creek. Hunter’s Map of 1730 shows “Dividing Paths” of the Cherokee Path at “Apple Tree Creek.” One path led to Keowee Town near Clemson and from there to the Mississippi River, and the other, known as the Tugaloo Old Path in Georgia, also connected with the Mississippi. In 1725 Colonel George Chicken visited Tugaloo and called it, “‘the most ancient town in these parts.’” Over the years Corner Creek has been given various names, such as “Jewetts corner,” Dewet’s, Dewitt’s, Dewise’s, Devise’s, Dewiss’, Duet’s, and Duett’s. Trade goods were transported from the present state of Mississippi to the current states of Tennessee and Kentucky, making the Cherokee Path an enormous funnel through which an international trade from indigenous peoples went to Charleston and then across the world….
Continue reading – see PDF this page for complete article / Link under Abbeville map. Alexander Cameron and Lochaber, The Massacre of Captain Aaron Smith’s Family, The Treaty of Dewitt’s or Dueit’s Corner, Dunlap’s Defeat, Pratt’s Mill, John Johnston’s House and Miller’s Block House.
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