Steven Smith: Francis Marion and the Snow’s Island Community: Myth, History and Archaeology

The Horry County Museum and the AVX Foundation present a lecture by Steven Smith on July 23 on his book, Francis Marion and the Snow’s Island Community: Myth, History and Archaeology.

Loyalist Colonel Robert Gray described South Carolina as “a piece of patch work, the inhabitants of every settlement, when united in sentiment being in arms for the side they liked best and making continual inroads into one another's settlements.” One of those pieces of patch work, the people living on and surrounding Snow's Island, South Carolina, were ‘united in sentiment’ against the British crown. This community of partisans had joined the rebellion as early as 1775 and had stubbornly refused to surrender, even when Charleston fell in 1780. They had supplied food, forage and blood to the rebellion and, under the leadership of General Francis Marion, had become an obstacle to British control of the southern colonies. This is their story.

Smith is a Research Professor at the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of South Carolina. He is the former Director of the Institute, and has over 40 years’ experience in historical archaeology, largely focused on military sites of the American Revolution in the South. He has conducted excavations associated with Francis Marion and American Revolutionary War battlefields including the siege of Fort Motte, Parker’s Ferry, Black Mingo, Snow’s Island, Camden, the siege of Ninety Six and the battle of Williamson’s Plantation. He is the author or co-author of six books, including, Partisans, Guerillas, and Irregulars: Historical Archaeology of Asymmetric Warfare (2019, University of Alabama Press)  and Francis Marion and the Snow’s Island Community (2021, United Writers Press). His latest book, coauthored with Colonel Kevin Dougherty, is entitled Leading Like the Swamp Fox: The Leadership Lessons of Francis Marion (Casemate Publishers), was just published in June.

The program will begin at 1 p.m. in the McCown Auditorium, 805 Main Street in Conway. This event is free and open to the public. For more information, call (843) 915-5320 or email hcgmuseum@horrycounty.org.

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