Badham House
This Neoclassical Revival
house, called "one of the
finest" in S.C. in 1920,
was built in 1912 for
Vernon Cosby Badham (1856-
1947) and his second wife
Leila Johnston. Badham, a
native of N.C., moved to
S.C. in the 1880s and sold
sawmill machinery in this
area. In 1901 he built the
Dorchester Lumber Company
across the highway and on
the Southern Railway. The
sawmill cut 50,000 - 100,000
feet of timber a day,
hauling it from the swamps
by a narrow-gauge railroad.
Dorchester Lumber
Company
???The sawmill, in operation
from 1901 to 1938, employed
500 men at its peak. A
large complex here included
a company office, company
store, worker housing, a
school, and a church. The
post office active here
1901-1945 was called
Badham. Dorchester Lumber
Company shut down during
the Depression, and all
that remains of the old
mill across the highway is
the brick ruin of the
vault from the mill office.
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