Pomaria, South Carolina

Pomaria, in Newberry County, has one of the more distinctive names in South Carolina, derived from the Latin word for apple orchard. German and Dutch immigrants settled this part of the Midlands in the middle of the seventeen hundreds, and one of the community's early enterprises was a nursery business that grew and sold fruit trees across the region. The Barre and Summer nursery at Pomaria became one of the largest commercial nurseries in the antebellum South, shipping apple, pear, and peach stock to planters across multiple states.

The Latin name the settlers chose for their post office reflected both their classical education and the agricultural trade that defined them. Today Pomaria is a very small unincorporated community, but its German-Dutch heritage is still visible in the surnames on church rosters and cemetery stones. The community sits just off what is now Interstate Twenty-Six in the rolling Midlands landscape between Columbia and Newberry.