Hamburg, Aiken County, South Carolina

The dead town of Hamburg, South Carolina was once a thriving upriver market located in Edgefield District (now Aiken County). It was founded by Henry Shultz in 1821 as a rival place of trade to Augusta, Georgia (Cordle 1940:82). In its heyday, 60,000 bales of cotton worth $2,000,000 were brought by wagon to Hamburg each year (Chapman 1897:237). This cotton continued by pole boat or steam boat to the ports of Charleston or Savannah for subsequent shipment to manufacturers in New England or Europe. With the Augusta Canal (1848) and general expansion of railroads in the 1850's, strenuous overland hauls to Hamburg became unnecessary and the famous wagon traffic declined (Chapman 1897:238).

Hamburg became a ghost town by the time of the Civil War (Chapman 1897:20). It was repopulated and governed by freedmen until the Hamburg Massacre of July 8, 1876, after which the town declined for good (Vandervelde 1999:154).

Augusta began construction of a river levee after a 1911 flood (Cashin 1980:210), but Hamburg remained unprotected, and floods forced out the last residents in 1929 (need citation). There are no visible remains of the original Town of Hamburg.

Geography

Occasionally styled as "Hamburgh", the town was named after Shultz's home town in Germany, and was located at 33.4799°N, 81.9579°W directly across the Savannah River from Augusta, Georgia. Population at its peak in the 1840s reached 2,500 (Haskel 1843:257), and exceeded 1,000 in the 1870s (Budiansky 2008). Under protection of the Clarks Hill Dam and Lake, adjacent North Augusta has begun to grow back over old Hamburg.

Notable People and Places

During his American tour as 'Guest of the Nation', the Marquis de Lafayette visited Hamburg on March 24, 1825 (Cashin 1980:86).

The South Carolina Railroad was the world's first railroad in the modern pattern. Providing scheduled steam service over 136 miles of line from Charleston to Hamburg, it was the world's longest at its completion in 1833 (Derrick 1930:58-59).

References

*cite book | first = Daniel | last = Haskel | title = Descriptive and Statistical Gazetteer of the United States of America | year = 1843 | publisher = Sherman & Smith | url=http://books.google.com/books?id=ucIBAAAAMAAJ | id = ISBN 0-8063-4696-5

*cite book | first = John A. | last = Chapman | title = History of Edgefield County, South Carolina | year = 1897 | publisher = Various Reprints | id = ISBN 0-8063-4696-5 pp. 20 and 236-243

*cite book | first = Samuel Melanchthon | last = Derrick | title = Centennial History of South Carolina Railroad | year = 1930 | publisher = State Company, Columbia, SC

*cite book | first = Charles G. | last = Cordle | title = Henry Shultz and the Founding of Hamburg, South Carolina. Studies in Georgia History and Government | year = 1940 | publisher = University of Georgia Press pp. 79-93 and 257-263

*cite book | first = Edward J. | last = Cashin | title = The Story of Augusta | year = 1980 | publisher = Various Reprints | id = ISBN 0-87152-452-X

*cite book | first = Isabel | last = Vandervelde | title = Aiken County: The Only South Carolina County Founded During Reconstruction| year = 1999 | publisher = Reprint Company Publishers | id = ISBN 0-87152-517-8

*cite book | first = Stephen | last = Budiansky | title = The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox | year = 2008 | publisher = Viking Penguin | id = ISBN 0670018406

External links

* [http://www.arete-designs.com/hamburg Henry Shultz and the Dead Town of Hamburg, SC]
* [http://cityofdust.blogspot.com/2004/12/honky-tonk-hell.html City of Dust: Honky Tonk Hell]
* [http://www.palmettohistory.org/exhibits/Town%20Plans/images/Hamburg.pdf 1835 Hamburg Town Plat]
* [http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/sanborn/CityCounty/Augusta1884/IndexMap.html Streets of Hamburg shown on 1884 Sanborn Map of Augusta, Georgia.] Hamburg is located just right of center of the Augusta index map
* [http://topoquest.com/map.asp?z=17&n=3704896.37419119%20&e=411003.101707633&u=5&datum=nad83 TopoQuest topographic map]