Hamburg

Overview

Augusta's rival across the river

Henry Shultz had built a bridge over the Savannah and a bank in Augusta, and lost them both in the Panic of 1819. In 1821 he answered by founding a town of his own on the South Carolina bank, opposite Augusta, and named it after Hamburg, where he was born. The state lent him money to improve inland navigation to Charleston and freed the town's property from taxes for five years. It worked. By the 1830s Hamburg was one of the state's main inland markets, and wagons hauled about 60,000 bales of cotton a year into town.

In 1833 the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road ended its line at Hamburg, 136 miles from Charleston. The 1962 marker calls it the longest railroad in the world at the time. Augusta struck back. Its canal opened in 1848, and in the 1850s the railroad crossed the river to Augusta itself. The wagon trade dried up. Hamburg also had a slave market: Georgia banned the trade until 1856, so Georgia planters crossed the river to buy people here.

After the Civil War, freedmen rebuilt and ran the town. Prince Rivers, Samuel J. Lee and Charles D. Hayne were among its leaders and among the founders of Aiken County. In July 1876 Hamburg became the scene of one of the most notable incidents of racial and political violence in South Carolina during Reconstruction, told below. Many Black families left afterward. The town sat on the floodplain without a levee, and floods in the late 1920s drove out the last residents in 1929. Displaced families built Carrsville on higher ground to the north.

North Augusta has since grown over the site. Wikipedia's article on the massacre says no visible remains exist and that a golf course covers much of the town. The 2018 Aiken County Historical Society marker says "ruins remain," as the 1963 marker it replaced did. Both may be true of different parts of a large area; we found no recent report describing ruins on land.

Timeline

Port, railroad, freedmen's town, flood

1. 1821Henry Shultz founds Hamburg on the South Carolina bank of the Savannah, across from Augusta, as a rival market. Born Klaus Hinrich Klahn in Germany in 1776, he named it for his home town.
2. Mar 24, 1825Lafayette visits. His secretary calls the town, not yet two years old, "a sort of prodigy," its port already full of boats.
3. Dec 19, 1827Hamburg is incorporated.
4. 1833The South Carolina Canal and Rail Road reaches Hamburg, 136 miles from Charleston. The 1962 county marker calls it the world's longest railroad at the time.
5. 1840sAt the town's height, wagons bring about 60,000 bales of cotton a year, worth $2,000,000, to go on by boat to Charleston or Savannah. The population peaks at about 2,500 in the 1840s.
6. 1848The Augusta Canal opens and pulls river traffic to Augusta. In the 1850s the railroad extends across the river into Augusta.
7. Until 1856Georgia bans slave trading, so planters cross the river to buy enslaved people at Hamburg, until Georgia repeals the ban in 1856.
8. 1861–1865Wikipedia says Hamburg is a ghost town by the time of the Civil War.
9. After 1865Freedmen resettle and govern the town, among them Prince Rivers, Samuel J. Lee and Charles D. Hayne. The population passes 1,000 in the 1870s.
10. July 8, 1876The Hamburg Massacre. White rifle clubs attack the town's Black militia company. One white man and six Black men are killed, most of the Black men after capture, per Wikipedia.
11. 1911After a flood, Augusta begins a levee. Hamburg, on the floodplain, is left unprotected.
12. 1927–1929Floods drive out the last residents. Wikipedia's town article dates the end to 1929.
13. 1930Families displaced by the floods settle Carrsville, on higher ground to the north, on lots given by Charles W. Carr of the American Red Cross and William Carpenter.

July 1876

The Hamburg Massacre

On July 4, 1876, two white men in a carriage met Hamburg's Black militia company drilling on Market Street. After an exchange of words they passed through, then charged the militia with blocking a public road. The case came before Trial Justice Prince Rivers on July 6 and was put off to the afternoon of July 8. That day more than 100 armed white men from Edgefield and Aiken counties came to the hearing (the 2010 marker says about 200). Matthew C. Butler, the planters' lawyer, demanded that the militia give up its guns to him, though he had no authority to take them. The militia, perhaps 25 men with about 15 others, refused and took refuge in its armory near the railroad bridge.

Shooting broke out, and a local white farmer, McKie Meriwether, was killed. The militiamen slipped out of the building in the night; the town marshal, James Cook, was shot and killed in the street. White men captured about two dozen Black men, took them to a spot near the railroad, and shot prisoners one at a time. Others were wounded. The counts differ by source. Wikipedia names five men killed as prisoners and gives one white man and six Black men killed in all; the state Attorney General's report it quotes says five prisoners were shot. The 2010 marker says two Black men were killed trying to escape and four were executed. A coroner's jury indicted 94 white men, the marker says 87 were charged, and none were tried. Benjamin Tillman, one of those indicted, later boasted of the events on the floor of the US Senate.

The killings were part of a campaign of violence by white Democrats to stop Black men from voting in the 1876 election. A larger massacre followed at Ellenton, also in Aiken County, that September. Democrats won the legislature and, narrowly, the governor's office.

In 1916 the state put up an obelisk to Meriwether alone in Calhoun Park in North Augusta. Its inscription praises "the supremacy" of the "Anglo-Saxon" ideal. In 2024 three panels were installed beside it on Hamburg, the massacre and the monument. The 2010 marker on Barton Road, put up by the Heritage Council of North Augusta, gives the account summarized above.

What's left

Markers, bridge piers and a golf course

Start at Barton Road and Boylan Street in Carrsville, where three markers stand together: "The Hamburg Massacre" (2010), "Carrsville" (2014) and Providence Baptist Church, beside a Hamburg Massacre memorial. The white frame building behind them is the Society Building, built in 1930 for the Young Men's Union Society and owned since 1988 by Simmons Lodge No. 571. Boylan Street was first called Red Cross Street, for the aid the Red Cross gave the flooded families.

About 0.6 mile southeast, at RiverNorth Drive and Jefferson Davis Highway (US 1/78), a 2018 "Hamburg" marker stands beside the refurbished 1962 marker for the western terminus of the South Carolina Railroad, moved there from its first spot. An older Hamburg marker of 1963, on US 1 by the river, has been missing since 2004; the state confirmed it missing in 2009.

Below the town, three stone piers stand in the river. They carried the South Carolina Railroad bridge from 1854 until a flood took it in 1908, per the description of a photo taken from the Augusta riverfront in December 2003; we found no newer report of them. The 1921 Augusta sheet below prints Hamburg at a rail junction and yard at the foot of the bluff, east of the river bridges. The 1965 Augusta East sheet still prints the name near ponds north of the river, with a drive-in theater on the hill above. Today's aerial shows a golf course, ponds and riverside houses where the town stood.

• Marker 2-45, The Hamburg Massacre (2010), and a memorial
• Marker 2-56, Carrsville (2014), and the 1930 Society Building
• Marker 2-62, Hamburg (2018)
• Marker 2-2, Western Terminus South Carolina Railroad (1962)
• Stone piers of the 1854 railroad bridge in the Savannah (photographed 2003)

Historic maps

Hamburg on USGS maps, 1921–1995

Crops from the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection, centered on the townsite. Each sheet shows what surveyors mapped that year; compare them with today's topo and aerial on this page.

19211:62,50019431:62,50019651:24,00019951:24,000

Map & directions

Getting there

The map marks the townsite at the USGS point on the floodplain. The routes go instead to the markers at Barton Road and Boylan Street, about half a mile north, where the story is told on public streets. From downtown North Augusta it is 1.5 miles; from Columbia, take I-20 and I-520 to US 1. The second pair of markers is at RiverNorth Drive and Jefferson Davis Highway (US 1/78), about 0.6 mile southeast of Barton Road.

Base map: USGS The National Map (public domain). Routes: OSRM on © OpenStreetMap contributors data (ODbL), computed October 2026. Times assume dry roads.

Directions go to the historical markers at Barton Road and Boylan Street in North Augusta, where the drive ends, not to the townsite.

Photos

Hamburg in photos

Piers of the 1854 railroad bridge below the Hamburg bank, from Augusta, December 2003The Hamburg Massacre marker and the Society Building, Barton Road (NPS photo, undated)

Visitor reports

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Nearby

Other sites near Hamburg

Straight-line distance from the townsite to other mapped sites in our South Carolina index.

• Ellenton22.2 mi SE · Aiken
• Meyers Mill29.9 mi SE · Barnwell
• Dunbarton31.1 mi SE · Barnwell
• Celestia36.3 mi N · Saluda
• Corinth46.8 mi NE · Saluda
• Bethel50.3 mi NW · Abbeville
• Alston64.3 mi NE · Fairfield
• Bookman66.0 mi NE · Richland

Sources

Sources and credits

1. ghosttowns.com, Hamburg: fact sheet (Aiken County, 2WD, hot summers, no visible remains of the original town), the 1821 founding, the cotton trade, the Augusta Canal, the 1840s and 1870s population, Lafayette's visit, the railroad of 1833.
2. Wikipedia, "Hamburg, South Carolina" (revision of August 30, 2026): Shultz's origin, bridge, banks and the Panic of 1819, the state loans and tax exemption, Lafayette, the slave market until 1856, the canal and railroad, the freedmen's town and its leaders, the 1911 levee, the 1929 floods, coordinates.
3. Wikipedia, "Hamburg massacre" (revision of August 31, 2026): the events of July 4 to 8, 1876, the five prisoners shot and the Attorney General's report, the deaths of one white man and six Black men, the 94 indictments, Tillman, the Ellenton massacre, the floods of 1927 and after, and "no visible remains" with a golf course over much of the site.
4. HMDB, "The Hamburg Massacre" (marker 2-45, 2010) and "Carrsville" (marker 2-56, 2014), photographed December 31, 2023: the marker texts (2-45 erected by the Heritage Council of North Augusta: about 200 rifle club men, 38 militiamen, two killed escaping, four executed, 87 charged), the Society Building, Red Cross Street, the memorial, the Barton Road location.
5. HMDB, "Hamburg" (marker 2-62, 2018), photographed December 31, 2023: erected by the Aiken County Historical Society; incorporation on December 19, 1827, the 1929 flood, "ruins remain"; with "Western Terminus South Carolina Railroad" (marker 2-2, 1962, Aiken County Historical Commission, refurbished and moved 600 yards south; the world's longest railroad in 1833) and the 1963 "Hamburg" marker, missing since July 2004 and confirmed missing by the state in 2009 ("only ruins remain").
6. SC Humanities, "The Story of Hamburg: South Carolina's Lost Town", June 2, 2021: Hamburg as part of today's North Augusta, the largest inland port in the state, the murders of six Black men.
7. Wikipedia, "Meriwether Monument" (revision of March 8, 2026): the 1916 obelisk in Calhoun Park, its inscription, and the three panels added in 2024.
8. Wikimedia Commons, "HamburgFromAugusta.jpg", December 2003: the railroad bridge piers of 1854 to 1908 and the 1932 highway bridge.
9. USGS GNIS, "Hamburg", feature 1231359: coordinates.
10. Historic maps: USGS Augusta 1921 and 1943, Augusta East 1965 and 1995 sheets. Elevation: USGS 3D Elevation Program point query. Routes: OSRM on OpenStreetMap data, October 24, 2026.

Photo and map credits

• Piers of the 1854 railroad bridge below the Hamburg bank, from Augusta, December 2003: Hughespj, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
• The Hamburg Massacre marker and the Society Building, Barton Road (NPS photo, undated): NPS, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
• Thomas Nast, "Declaration of Equality: Justice. Five More Wanted," Harper's Weekly, August 12, 1876, drawn after the killings at Hamburg: Justice's scales weigh one white man against six Black men: Thomas Nast, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
• Topo map, area base map and aerial imagery: USGS The National Map (public domain).
• Historic maps: USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection (public domain): Augusta 1921, 1:62,500; Augusta 1943, 1:62,500; Augusta East 1965, 1:24,000; Augusta East 1995, 1:24,000.