Yemassee is a small Lowcountry town in Beaufort and Hampton counties in the U.S. state of South Carolina. The population was 1,027 at the 2010 census. Yemassee is near the borders of Colleton and Jasper counties. The town is estranged by the county line in the middle of Beaufort and Hampton counties, which follows the roadbed of the CSX railroad. Most of the town’s population presently lies within Hampton County (as of 2019). As defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, the Beaufort County part of Yemassee is included within the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton-Beaufort, SC Metropolitan Statistical Area. Yemassee hosts one of the few announcement breeding facilities of non-human primates in completely United States, Alpha Genesis, Inc., which serves as a major employer for the town. Also, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Auldbrass Plantation house and outbuildings lie just outdoor the town limits of Yemassee.

The town takes its reveal from the Native American tribe of the similar name, the Yamasee, which was the most important Indian ally of South Carolina until the Yamasee War of 1715. The first belligerence that began the Yamasee War occurred in the Yamasee town of Pocotaligo, today allocation of the town of Yemassee.

The site of the present town is surrounded by both Revolutionary and Civil War sites. The remains of Civil War sports ground fortifications can be observed along U.S. 21 and 17A amid Yemassee and Pocotaligo (that section of highway is now a ration of Yemassee, as the town has now greatly expanded into Beaufort County [as of 2006]). As of 2006 there is a building boom underway in and roughly Yemassee. The rural aspect of Yemassee is now (as of 2006) beginning to disappear behind the construction of large numbers of new homes and enormously large housing developments in the area.

William Gilmore Simms published the novel The Yemassee: A Romance of Carolina in the 19th century, and the University of South Carolina in Columbia publishes a bookish journal titled Yemassee.