History : 

The date at which a town's history should begin is difficult to determine. If the year that the site was selected for the new courthouse (1799) is chosen or the time that Marion received its official charter (1847), many years of a fascinating period would be omitted, years when a small number of pioneers increased slowly until the little settlement evolved into the village of Gilesborough.

Let us begin, then, in the 1730's and 40's, when the white settlers began to move inland along the rivers from Charles Town and Georgetown, building rough cabins and clearing land for farming and grazing close to the only easy means of transportation, the navigable streams.

One "adventurer", as he was called in Bishop Gregg's History of the Old Cheraws, traveled a bit further up the Big Peedee River and settled on Catfish Creek near the present city limits of Marion. Historians give 1754 as the earliest date that official documents locate a permanent settler at this site; however, tradition suggests a much earlier date. At any rate, John Godbold, an Englishman, is generally credited with being the first white resident of what many years later became known as the town of Marion.

At the beginning of the American Revolution, most of the sparse population of the locality was still clustered in the southern part and at several points along the two Peedee rivers. The southern area became widely known as the location of General Francis Marion's swampy retreat, Snow's Island (now in Florence County).

There is an old saying in Marion that anyone who drinks water from Catfish Creek becomes infatuated with the area and wishes to remain there.