1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Orangeburg

ORANGEBURG, a city and the county-seat of Orangeburg county. South Carolina, U.S.A., on the North Edisto river, 50 m. S. by E. of Columbia. Pop. (1890) 2064; (1900) 4455, of whom 2518 were negroes. Orangeburg is served by the Atlantic Coast Line and the Southern railways. It is the seat of Claflin University for negroes, and of the State Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural and Mechanical College. Claflin University, incorporated in 1869, was named in honour of Lee Claflin (1791–1871) of Massachusetts, and is under the control of the Freedmen’s Aid and Education Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1908 it had 25 instructors and 538 students (241 men and 297 women). The State Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural and Mechanical College was established here by the state in 1872 as the College of Agriculture and Mechanics’ Institute (for negroes), on property immediately adjoining the campus of Claflin University, and the two schools were under one management (although otherwise distinct and separate) until 1896, when the present name of the state college was adopted. Among the city’s manufactures are cotton-seed oil, cotton (yarn and cloth), lumber, bricks, concrete and turpentine. The municipality owns the water-works and the electric-lighting plant. A trader and trapper settled on the site of what is now Orangeburg in 1704. In 1735 a company of Germans and Swiss established the first real settlement and named it Orangeburg, in honour of the prince of Orange. Orangeburg was incorporated as a town in 1851, and was first chartered as a city in 1883.