Places

Willowbrook Cemetery is the second most historic cemetery in South Carolina, and is overflowing with “residents” who carved their place in local, state, and national history. The oldest marked grave in Willowbrook belongs to Pierre LaBorde who was a native of France and died in 1820, aged about 50 years.

There are also soldiers from every major war fought by the United States, including the American Revolution, War of 1812, 2^nd Seminole War, Mexican War, War Between the States, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, buried here. Four of Edgefield’s Ten Governors (Francis W. Pickens, John Gary Evans, John C. Sheppard, and J. Strom Thurmond), numerous SC and US Senators and members of the House of Representatives, 150 Confederate soldiers (including four Brigadier Generals of the Confederacy), and many editors of The Edgefield Advertiser rest in this cemetery.

 Some of the notables interred here include Lucy Holcomb Pickens (the Queen of the Confederacy), Reverend John Lake (who was a missionary to China and started a leper colony in the South China Sea), Chancellor Francis Hugh Wardlaw (who was the author of the Ordinance of Secession adopted by South Carolina), and Preston Smith Brooks (who served during the Mexican War as captain of Company D, Palmetto Regiment and became famous for caning Charles Sumner on the floor of the National House of Representatives). You can visit the cemetery by yourself or call the Tompkins Library to schedule a guided tour.