Hamburg

Basic Information

Type of Place

Independent City or Town

Metro Area

Politics c. 1860?

Don’t Know

Unions, Organized Labor?

Don’t Know

Sundown Town Status

Sundown Town in the Past?

Possible

Was there an ordinance?

Don't Know

Sign?

Don’t Know

Year of Greatest Interest

1876

Still Sundown?

Don’t Know

Census Information

The available census data from 1860 to the present

	Total	White	Black	Asian	Native	Hispanic	Other	BHshld
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
2020

Method of Exclusion

• Violent Expulsion

Main Ethnic Group(s)

• Unknown

Group(s) Excluded

• Black

Comments

Opposite Augusta on the Savannah river, Hamburg
was founded in the 1830s as a railroad terminus. It
eventually became virtually all black before being
subsumed by the town of North Augusta in the 1890s.
An Aiken resident writes:
Hamburg was also the site of a racial battle, in July
1876. Ben Tillman’s accounts of these events makes
chilling reading. (“The Struggles of 1876”).

Another resident writes about the Hamburg
Meriwether Monument:
Here’s more info on the location of the Hamburg
monument. I’m not sure if there’s a marker for the
town itself or not. It might be in that book of SC
markers. I think the best, and most up to date,
account of the Hamburg Massacre (and it’s interesting
to trace the change of terminology in the historical
literature) is Steve Kantrowitz’s new book on Ben
Tillman on UNC Press. I don%u2019t know what other
sources he might have cited (Joel Williamson, After
Slavery, and Richard Zuczek, State of Rebellion, come
to mind, maybe also George Tindall, South Carolina
Negroes, 1877 1900).

Also re: the Meriwether monument of 1916:
The Merriweather monument is still standing and is
located in John C. Calhoun Park at the intersection of
Georgia and Carolina Avenues in downtown North
Augusta.