Estill, SC

Estill is a Hampton County town that replaced an older settlement rather than simply growing beside it. Lawtonville stood about a mile west, was badly damaged during the Civil War, and then lost its position when a new Augusta-to-Savannah rail line was built in the early 1900s. Colonel John Holbrook Estill gave the new town its name; the railroad alignment shifted the community, and Estill incorporated in 1905. The town's southern Hampton County setting still reads through timber, agriculture, and the roads leading toward Savannah, Hilton Head, and Charleston.

The old town-and-church record is especially visible here. Estill Presbyterian organized in 1898, built its first church in 1909, and opened the present brick building in 1937 after a fire. First Estill Baptist dates to 1890, while the Lawton House, built in 1908, became a meeting place for the Estill Book Club and helped lead to the town library. The former first Town Hall and jail has been reconstructed as the Estill Museum, and a war memorial sits nearby. Estill's story is a rail relocation followed by a town that kept turning its early buildings into places to remember, worship, and meet.