Alcolu is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

and

census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...

(CDP) in Clarendon County,

South Carolina South Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders North Carolina to the north and northeast, the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, and Georgia (U.S. state), Georg ...

, United States. As of the 2010 census, its population was 429. Alcolu has a

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

with ZIP code 29001, which opened on August 17, 1888. It developed as a lumber and mill town.

History

Early History

Alcolu was established between 1885 and 1890 by D.W. Alderman as a company mill town; it was developed to house the employees of his timber company and

lumber mill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes (dimens ...

. These were located in a relatively isolated area. The name Alcolu is derived from "AL" for Alderman, "CO" for Coldwell (a friend), and "LU" for Lula, then the only daughter of D.W. Alderman and his wife. When it was built, Alcolu was a

company town A company town is a place where all or most of the stores and housing in the town are owned by the same company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schoo ...

where everybody worked in one of the various businesses of D.W. Alderman & Sons. The business grew to encompass logging operations, a saw mill, planing mill, hosiery mill, flooring mill, and extensive farming and cattle ranching. They also ran a

cotton gin A cotton gin—meaning "cotton engine"—is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation.. Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (); ...

, hotel,

company store A company store is a retail store selling a limited range of food, clothing and daily necessities to employees of a company. It is typical of a company town in a remote area where virtually everyone is employed by one firm, such as a coal mine. In ...

, and several other businesses. Over time, the company helped found schools and churches, and built baseball fields, an electric plant, and a telephone system for the town. D.W. Alderman also founded the Alcolu and the Paroda railroads, and built the Alcolu railroad depot. The Alcolu Post Office was established on August 17, 1888. His friend Algernon Coldwell was appointed as its first Postmaster. Company employees were paid in "babbits", a metal coin stamped with an "A", which could be used only in the company store. There they could buy groceries, see the doctor, get a haircut, or watch a show in the 200-seat auditorium upstairs. In 1919, the company opened the "Alderman 20 Stores in One" in nearby

Manning, South Carolina Manning is a city in and the county seat of Clarendon County, South Carolina, Clarendon County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 3,245 as of the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census, with an estimated population in 2018 of 3,94 ...

. It was one of the first department stores in South Carolina and boasted of having the first elevator in town.

Execution of George Stinney

The site came to its attention to the scene on March 22, 1944, when two girls Betty June Binnicker, aged 11, and Mary Thames, aged 7, were found dead after being murdered. Notably, 14-year-old

George Stinney George Junius Stinney Jr. (October 21, 1929 – June 16, 1944) was an African American boy who was wrongfully executed at the age of 14 after being convicted, during an right to a fair trial, unfair trial, for the murders of two white girls – ...

was wrongly found guilty of their murder and became the youngest person to be executed in the United States since 12-year old

Hannah Ocuish Hannah Ocuish (sometimes "Occuish"; March 1774 – December 20, 1786) was a 12-year old Pequot Native American girl with an intellectual disability, who was hanged on December 20, 1786, in New London, Connecticut, for the murder of Eunice Bol ...

in 1786. The decision was vacated in 2014.

Post-War History

In 1947, the Alderman family sold the lumber mill to the Southern Coatings & Chemical Company and the Williams Furniture Company. They, in turn, were bought more than two decades later in 1968 by the

Georgia-Pacific Georgia-Pacific LLC is an American pulp and paper company based in Atlanta, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, and is one of the world's largest manufacturers and distributors of Tissue paper, tissue, Pulp (paper), pulp, paper, toilet and paper towe ...

company. Georgia-Pacific continued its operations in Alcolu until 2000, when the mill was finally closed. According to the 2010 census, the unincorporated town of Alcolu had a population of 429 people.

Geography

Alcolu is located in northern Clarendon County, north of

Manning Manning (a.k.a. Mannion, Manning) is a family name. Origin and meaning Manning is from an old Norse word — manningi — meaning a brave or valiant man; and one of the first forms of the name was Mannin; another cartography was Mannyg ...

, the

county seat A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or parish (administrative division), civil parish. The term is in use in five countries: Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, and the United States. An equiva ...

. The southern edge of the CDP follows

Interstate 95 Interstate 95 (I-95) is the main north–south Interstate Highway on the East Coast of the United States, running from U.S. Route 1 (US 1) in Miami, Florida, north to the Houlton–Woodstock Border Crossing between Maine and the ...

, which provides access at Exit 122. I-95 leads northeast to

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

and southwest to Santee. U.S. Route 521 runs through Alcolu, leading south to Manning and northwest to

Sumter Sumter may refer to: People Given name * Sumter S. Arnim (1904–1990), American dentist * Sumter de Leon Lowry Jr. (1893–1985), United States Army general Surname * Rowendy Sumter (born 1988), Curaçaoan footballer * Shavonda E. Sumt ...

. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Alcolu CDP has a total area of , of which is land and , or 0.47%, is water.

Demographics

Education

The school district is Clarendon School District 2.
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Notable people

(Also known as George Junius Stinney Jr.) was an African-American teenager, who was born on Monday, October 21, 1929. He was wrongfully convicted at the age of 14 of murdering and raping two young girls in late March of 1944, and was executed by electrocution on Friday, June 16, 1944. He was the youngest person to be executed in the U.S. during the 20th century. His conviction was vacated by an appeals court in 2014 because he did not receive a fair trial. * Pressley Harvin III, punter for the

Pittsburgh Steelers The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh. The Steelers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC North, North division. Founded in 1933 P ...

(2021-23) and

Ray Guy Award The Ray Guy Award is presented annually to college football's most outstanding punter as adjudged by the Augusta Sports Council. The award is named after punter Ray Guy, an All-American for Southern Mississippi and an All-Pro in the National Fo ...

winner (2020).

References

* U.S. Geological Survey. Best Practices National Structures Dataset. https://web.archive.org/web/20090825115836/http://bpgeo.cr.usgs.gov/. 30-Jul-2008. {{authority control Census-designated places in Clarendon County, South Carolina Census-designated places in South Carolina Unincorporated communities in South Carolina Unincorporated communities in Clarendon County, South Carolina