Richburg: The Town Founded by a Failed Prophecy

Richburg, South Carolina has a famous local legend about a preacher who predicted the end of the world.

Local legend says that in the early eighteen forties, a New York minister attracted a large following with his prophecy that the world would end on March fifteenth, eighteen forty-three. His believers in Chester County chose a high elevation from which to watch the event, built temporary shacks, and waited on the appointed hill with enough food to last until the end. Only the wealthy could afford to stop working and wait, so the skeptical poor called the settlement Rich Hill.

Historians have found no record of this, and the name Rich Hill was already in use by eighteen thirty-eight. But the legend says that when the appointed night came and went without incident, the followers found they rather liked the location. They built permanent homes on Rich Hill. The post office opened as Rich Hill in eighteen fifty-five. In eighteen seventy-nine, because South Carolina already had a Rich Hill over in Lancaster County, the name became Richburg, and the town that doomsday built has been quietly going about its business in Chester County ever since.