Walterboro is a city in Colleton County, South Carolina, United States. The city’s population was 5,398 at the 2010 census. It is the county chair of Colleton County. Walterboro is located 48 miles (77 km) west of Charleston and is located near the ACE Basin region in the South Carolina Lowcountry. It is known as “The Front Porch of the Lowcountry”.

Walterboro (original spelling: “Walterborough“) was founded in 1783, as a summer retreat for local planters looking to escape their malaria-ridden, Lowcountry plantations. The indigenous settlement was located upon a hilly area, covered subsequently pine and hickory trees and named “Hickory Valley“. Two of the primordial settlers were brothers, Paul and Jacob Walter. The brothers were prosperous, plantation owners, in available Jacksonboro. Paul’s little daughter Mary, was taken sick with malaria; a common disease amongst the families who had plantations in the marshy areas of the Lowcountry, due to the grounds tolerability for rice production. To prevent Mary from succumbing to the deadly virus, the Walter brothers went looking for a healthier location in which to flesh and blood during the summer months, and came to harmonize the town; with it difficult being named in their honor.

In 1817, Walterboro was designated as the third county seat of Colleton County, and has remained such through present-day. This designation was followed by, the construction of a county courthouse and county jail in 1821. The courthouse was meant by Famous architect, Robert Mills. The town speedily spread from the original Hickory Valley location, after its population experienced a significant increase; this inborn fueled successively by, the town becoming the county chair in 1821, and the foundation of a railroad parentage that amalgamated the city with Columbia and Charleston in the 1880s.

In 1832, the Irish Catholic community in rural southern Waltersboro (at one lessening termed Thompson’s Crossroads) established a parish called St James the Greater Catholic Church, dedicated by Bishop John England. The community later was known as “Catholic Hill”. After the church was burned alongside in 1856, and the emancipation of the slaves with quotation to a decade later, the White community largely left the area. The Black Catholic community maintained their religion for decades without a priest, before a other church was built for them in the 1890s. They became notable in the media in the 21st century, and a documentary on the community was released in 2020.