Lincolnville, SC

Lincolnville was founded in 1867 by Rev. Richard Cain and seven African American men who bought land from the South Carolina Railroad for a town for freed people. The town was first known as Pump Pond, a railroad water stop, before incorporating in 1889 and taking its present name in honor of Abraham Lincoln. That origin makes Lincolnville one of the state’s Reconstruction-era Black towns, with its downtown and historic greenway carrying the story forward. Lincolnville sits just south of Summerville, with Lincoln Avenue running through the town. The local shorthand is railroad beginnings, Black history, and a small Charleston County town that built itself after the Civil War.