Grave of the Swamp Fox

In a small cemetery tucked off a back road near Pineville rests General Francis Marion, the Revolutionary War partisan the British called the Swamp Fox. Operating out of the Santee swamps, Marion led small bands in lightning raids on British supply lines and outposts, then melted back into terrain the redcoats could not follow. His hit and run tactics tied down forces the Crown badly needed elsewhere, and helped turn the tide of the Southern campaign.

He is buried here on the grounds of Belle Isle Plantation, which belonged to his brother Gabriel. Later, his crumbling original tomb was replaced with a granite monument. His own plantation, Pond Bluff, lies a few miles upriver, now drowned beneath the waters of Lake Marion, the reservoir that carries his name.