A Short History of Willington  By Sara Covin Juengst

 In 1779, a group of Huguenots built a log church about a mile from the village of New Bordeaux in what is now McCormick County.   In 1801, they called as pastor Dr. Moses Waddel, who also supplied the Hopewell Presbyterian Church in the Scots-Irish Calhoun community nearby.  He had moved from Georgia to start a school at the village of Vienna (now under Lake Thurmond..) Pierre Gibert, the leader of the Huguenot colony, saw new possibilities for his community. If Dr. Waddel could be persuaded to move nearer, both Hopewell and Liberty churches would have their minister closer and the community would gain a remarkably good school for the youth. As a result of Gibert’s efforts, Waddel moved his school closer to the Huguenot settlement in 1804 and named the new academy Willington. The Willington Academy was described by one historian as a school of “plain living and high thinking which produced a host of luminaries who went out to serve society in a variety of ways.” The appeal of the school was not limited to local boys: by 1806 the sons of prominent and wealthy families from all over Georgia and South Carolina were attending. The academy was more than a high school and less than a senior college. The curriculum consisted primarily of Greek and Latin classics. Students were required to translate 150 lines a day. The record - 1212 lines - was set by George McDuffie, later governor of South Carolina. Dr. Waddel’s avowed purpose was to train leaders. It was said that the Willington Academy was to South Carolina what Eton was to England: the principal training ground for leadership. Dr. Waddel furnished more leadership to South Carolina than any man but John C. Calhoun, and since he taught Calhoun, too, that hardly counted.  Dr. Waddel left Willington in 1819 to become President of Franklin College, later the University of Georgia. He returned to Willington in 1830. The school in Willington continued until 1836 under his direction, although most of the teaching was done by his sons, James and John. After that, it never attained the success it had met with under the Waddels, and by the end of the Civil War it had disappeared completely.As cotton became more and more important as a crop, Willington prospered and became an important selling and shipping point. In 1886, Willington was given an important economic boost by the coming of the railroad which brought the possibility of shipping cotton much more efficiently. More and more cotton was grown in the area, and cotton was ferried across the Savannah River from Georgia farms to he sold and shipped from Willington. The new commerce led many of the local people to build homes closer to the town that was growing up around the Depot. The town was named in honor of the Willington Academy which had been located about a mile away. The town was chartered in 1897. The new prosperity created the need for more consumer goods, and a number of stores were opened. One of the unique features of Willington was that, during the thirty-six years that the town was chartered, no taxes were ever levied on the inhabitants.

 Willington Booms...In 1909, the community voted bonds to build a “nice, large and commodious” school building. These bonds were taken up by local people without calling upon outside capital for aid. The bank of Willington, a branch of the Bank of McCormick, was also funded by local capital. The school was a two-story frame building which housed the day school for the local white children. This building now belongs to the Mims Community Center, a local grassroots organization formed to promote community betterment. It is now used as a site for the school district’s after-school program, for educational and cultural programs, for family reunions, showers, and funeral dinners, for various other community events, and as a county polling place in all elections. African-American children were educated at schools associated with the African-American churches in the area until 1955 when the first public elementary school was built in Willington.On November 28th, 1911, a land auction was held and thirty-eight lots were sold. It was a big day with a band and a parade and all the excitement connected with a land auction. In those “good old” days there were twelve stores, a cotton gin, a railroad depot, the cotton and cotton seed warehouses, a bank, a post office, a doctor’s office, a blacksmith shop and even an automobile agency in Willington. There was a Baptist church, an Episcopal church and two Presbyterian churches within the town limits....

Declines The decline of Willington came in the decade of the 20s. First, the boll weevil ravaged the cotton crops, and then the great depression caused the price of cotton to fall from 40 cents a pound to 5 cents a pound. The bank closed, people moved away. Store owners lost their businesses, and farmers, in some instances, lost their land. Young people left home to find jobs, and as the older people died, there was no one left to take their place. The houses were left to fall into disrepair. The depot, gin and two churches disappeared. Several homes, stores, and a church were destroyed by fire since fire fighting equipment was not available. It is not surprising that, when the time came to renew the town’s charter in 1933, it just did not happen....

and Is Reborn For many years the town languished. But now something is happening to this little community of Willington….a community that is significant, not only because of its connections with South Carolina’s Huguenot history, and a prestigious educational institution, but  because it is a reminder of the role of the railroad in community development in rural South Carolina at the close of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.  This community is on the way to being reborn as a center for history buffs, book lovers, culture seekers and tourists! We think Moses Waddel would be proud!

 (Information about the life of Moses Waddel is taken from The Great Doctor Waddel: A Study of Moses Waddel, 1770-1840, As Teacher and Puritan, by James Lewis MacLeod F.S.A. (Scot.), Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1985.)