South Carolina Colony
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40 free South Carolina Colony trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
South Carolina began in 1670 as a business venture. King Charles II handed a vast stretch of the American coast to eight of his supporters, and their settlers built Charles Town into one of the richest ports in British America. That wealth came at a terrible human cost: for most of the colonial era, the majority of the colony's people were enslaved. This quiz turns the best fun facts about the South Carolina Colony into questions. It covers the first settlers and the plan drawn up to govern them, the crops that made planters rich, the pirates who menaced the harbor, wars and alliances with Native nations, and the soldiers and signers who carried the colony into the American Revolution. It is written for students, teachers and anyone curious about early American history, and it is pitched so that kids studying the thirteen colonies can play along. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which pirate blockaded Charles Town harbor in May 1718, holding citizens hostage until he was sent medical supplies?
Blackbeard
Blackbeard threatened to send the hostages' heads to the governor, then freed them once the drugs arrived, though he kept their valuables and fine clothes.
Q 02Logs from which spongy tree let a half-built Charleston harbor fort absorb British cannonballs in June 1776?
Palmetto
Palmetto wood quivered and swallowed the shot instead of splintering, which is why the tree now stands on South Carolina's state flag.
Q 03Which crop did teenage plantation manager Eliza Lucas begin testing in 1739, making it a leading South Carolina export?
Indigo
Indigo took her three years of failed attempts to master, and she then shared seed with other planters, lifting exports from 5,000 pounds to 130,000 by 1748.
Q 04Which grain, grown by enslaved Africans, made South Carolina one of the richest colonies?
Rice
Rice was the colony's main source of wealth, and the labor it demanded meant enslaved Africans were a majority of South Carolina's people from 1708 until the Revolution.
Q 05Where did the British lock up South Carolina merchant Henry Laurens after capturing him at sea during the Revolution?
Tower of London
Tower of London guards held Laurens for a little over a year, the only American ever imprisoned there, until he was exchanged for General Cornwallis.
Q 06Which animal appears on the yellow flag designed by Charleston patriot Christopher Gadsden during the Revolution?
A rattlesnake
A rattlesnake, coiled and ready to strike, fills the flag, which Gadsden gave to the Continental Navy's commodore to fly from his flagship in 1775.
Q 07Which English philosopher, secretary to a Lord Proprietor, helped draft a 1669 constitution for the Carolina colony?
John Locke
John Locke worked on the Fundamental Constitutions for his patron, but the plan, which invented a local nobility for Carolina, was never fully put into effect.
Q 08Which South Carolina militia leader was nicknamed the Swamp Fox for his hit-and-run raids on British troops?
Francis Marion
Francis Marion is said to have earned the name after Banastre Tarleton chased him 26 miles through a swamp and gave up, calling him an old fox.
Q 09Many of South Carolina's first planters arrived in the 1670s from which crowded English sugar island in the Caribbean?
Barbados
Barbados was running short of land, so its planters moved to Carolina and set out to copy the island's plantation system on the mainland.
Q 10Which South Carolina lawyer was, at age 26, the youngest delegate to sign the Declaration of Independence?
Edward Rutledge
Edward Rutledge had at first been told to oppose the vote for independence; he signed anyway and was later elected South Carolina's governor.
Q 11South Carolina changed from a proprietary colony to which type in 1729, when seven of its eight owners sold out?
Royal
Royal control had really begun in 1719, when colonists rebelled against the proprietors and the king answered their petition by naming a governor himself.
Q 12Which 1739 uprising led by a literate man called Jemmy was the largest slave revolt of the colonial South?
Stono Rebellion
The Stono Rebellion began beside a river near Charles Town, and its marchers were heading for Spanish Florida, which promised freedom to runaways.
Q 13Which culture and creole language grew up among enslaved West Africans on South Carolina's isolated Sea Islands?
Gullah
Q 21Which of Carolina's eight proprietors, whose family name was Cooper, is honored by both rivers that meet at Charleston?
Lord Ashley
Lord Ashley, born Anthony Ashley Cooper, was the chief of the eight owners, so one river took his title and the other his surname.
Q 22Which Charleston Harbor site was the first landing place for some 40 percent of Africans enslaved in colonial America?
Sullivan's Island
Sullivan's Island held the pest houses where captives were checked for disease before being sold in the city, and it has been likened to Ellis Island.
Q 23Which Native nation led a 1715 war that killed about seven percent of South Carolina's settlers?
Yamasee
Gullah speech and customs kept many African words and traditions alive because the island communities lived so cut off from the mainland.
Q 14Santa Elena, once the capital of Spanish Florida, stood on which part of South Carolina's coast, now a Marine base?
Parris Island
Parris Island held the Spanish town for about twenty years, on the very spot where a French fort had been abandoned only a few years earlier.
Q 15Which colony did Britain found in 1732, partly to shield South Carolina from Spanish attack?
Georgia
Georgia was planned as a garrison province guarding its older neighbor, on land that had been part of Carolina's original grant.
Q 16Which Spanish conquistador met the female ruler of Cofitachequi in 1540 while crossing what became South Carolina?
Hernando de Soto
Hernando de Soto was greeted by the Lady of Cofitachequi, who was carried to the riverbank on a litter draped in fine white cloth.
Q 17Which future US president was born in 1767 in the Waxhaws and later named colonial South Carolina as his birthplace?
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson said he was born on an uncle's plantation on the South Carolina side, though the Waxhaws straddles the border and North Carolina claims him too.
Q 18Which future Founding Father trained printer Lewis Timothy and sent him to Charles Town in 1733 to revive its newspaper?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin's protege died in 1738, and his widow Elizabeth Timothy took over the Gazette, becoming America's first woman newspaper editor and publisher.
Q 19Which Founding Father served as a pallbearer at the 1793 funeral of South Carolina planter Eliza Lucas Pinckney?
George Washington
George Washington helped carry her coffin in Philadelphia, where she had gone for medical treatment; two of her sons were later nominated for national office.
Q 20Charleston's Library Society helped found which kind of institution in 1773, now called the oldest in the United States?
A museum
A museum was founded in Charleston that January, on the eve of the Revolution, though it did not open its doors to the public until 1824.
The Yamasee and their allies drove settlers to flee into Charles Town, where food ran short, in one of the bloodiest wars of colonial America.
Q 24Which mountain nation, long a trading ally of South Carolina, fought the colony in a bitter war from 1758 to 1761?
Cherokee
Cherokee leaders had been British allies for decades, and their warriors had just fought the French alongside British troops, before each side came to suspect the other of betrayal.
Q 25Early Charles Town was the hub of a trade with Native hunters in which animal product, used for European leather?
Deerskins
Deerskins were in demand because cattle plagues in Europe had cut the supply of cowhide, and the trade boomed until the deer themselves grew scarce.
Q 26Which religious refugees came to Charles Town after France revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685?
Huguenots
Huguenots formed a congregation in the 1680s that survives in Charleston today as the only independent church of its kind in the United States.
Q 27Which taxed cargo did Charlestonians confiscate in protest of a 1773 act and lock inside the Exchange and Custom House?
Tea
Tea seized in 1773 sat in storage at the Exchange, and a later shipment was dumped into the river in 1774, much as Boston's had been the year before.
Q 28Which wealthy landowner known as the Gentleman Pirate was hanged in Charles Town in 1718 after begging for mercy?
Stede Bonnet
Stede Bonnet had bought his own ship and paid his crew wages, and he wrote to the governor pleading for his life before he went to the gallows.
Q 29Which 1781 battle in upcountry South Carolina saw Daniel Morgan trap Banastre Tarleton's army in a double envelopment?
Cowpens
Cowpens was a surprising American victory after the disaster at Camden, and it is remembered as a turning point that lifted spirits across the South.
Q 30By about 1800, Charleston's religious tolerance had given it North America's largest community of which faith?
Judaism
Judaism has had an organized congregation in Charleston since 1749, begun by Sephardic families and still one of the oldest in the United States.