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From the South Carolina Department of Archives and History
April 27 Dined at a private house (one Cochrans) about two miles farther [from the North Carolina/South Carolina line]
James Cochran's house was Washington's first stop in South Carolina. It stood in what is now the town of Little River near the intersection of Minneola Avenue and Highway 17.
April 27 ...lodged at Mr. Vareens 14 miles more and two miles short of the long bay. To his house we were directed as a Tavern, but the proprietor of it either did not keep one, or would not acknowledge it. We were therefore en[ter]tained (& very kindly) without being able to make compensation.
The house of Jeremiah Vereen, Sr., stood about sixteen miles from the state line near the intersection of Highway 17 and Lake Arrowhead Road in Myrtle Beach. The elder Vereen kept a public house for many years "near the Long Bay, and a little out of the road." It appears that Jeremiah Vereen, Jr., occupied the house in 1791 when Washington called, and that by this time it was private residence.
April 28 Mr. Vareen piloted us across the Swash (which at high water is impassable, & at times, by the shifting of the Sands is dangerous) onto the long Beach of the Ocean; and it being at a proper time of the tide we passed along it with ease and celerity to the place of quitting it which is estimated at 16 miles...
A swash is a tidal creek. The swash referred to by Washington would have been Singleton's Swash, which enters the ocean just north of Myrtle Beach City limits off Highway 17 at the Dunes Golf and Beach Club. Ebenezer Hazzard crossed the same swash in 1778 and wrote. "The Swash is a creek which runs up from the sea, and, it is dangerous, if not impossible to cross it at high water, but when the tide is out there is not the least danger. Immediately upon crossing this you enter upon Long Bay..."
As in Washington's day, the road (Highway 17) still runs parallel to the beach south of Singleton's Swash and continues to do so for some sixteen miles before it swings west after Garden City Beach. Through Washing gave no details of beach travel, other contemporaries described the scene he saw. Johann David Scoepf wrote in 1784, "Here for sixteen miles the common highway runs very near the shore. Lonely and desolate as this part of the road is, without shade and with no dwelling is sight, it is by no means a tedious road. The number of shells washed up, sponges, corals, sea-grasses and weeds, medusae, and many other ocean products which strew the beach, engage and excite the attention of the travellor at every step..." Hazzard, in 1778, recorded his impression of Long Bay, known to us as Myrtle Beach, "On the left is the open sea from which the surf comes rollin in with great noise, and often frightens the travellor's horse unless he is very gentle. On the right is a disagreeable sand bank. The best time for travelling is about half or three quarters ebb, for then you have a hard surface to ride upon and may get off the beach before the tide rised so as to incommode you."
April 28 Five Miles farther we got dinner & fed our horses at a Mr. Pauleys a private house, no public one being on the road...
Five miles past Singleton's Swash, Washington stopped at George Pawley's house. George Pawley was born on 22 May 1726 and was the son of George and Mary Allston Pawley. Pawley represented St. David's Parish in the First and Second Provincial Congresses (1775, 1775-6) and in the First General Assembly (1776). He served as justice of the peace in 1765 and 1774. He also served as a colonel in the militia ca. 1775.
April 28 ...being on the Road, & kindly invited by a Doctor flagg to his house, we lodged there; it being about 10 miles from Pauleys & 33 from Vareens.
Dr. Henry Collins Flagg (1746-1801 married Rachel Moore Allston, the widow of William Allston of Brookgreen Plantation on Waccamaw Neck, in 1784. Flagg was the son of a Newport, Rhode Island, shipping merchant. He was an officer in the Continental Army, a member of the Order of the Cincinnati, and chief of the medical staff under General Greene during the Revolutionary War.
The site of the house in which Washing stayed is now occupied by the "Alligator Pool" fountain at Brookgreen Gardens. The house burned in 1901, and another structure, which served as a clubhouse, was built on the old foundations. That structure was pulled down in 1931. The site is surrounded by the remains of a boxwood garden and stands at the end of a drive lined by live oaks.
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From the South Carolina Department of Archives and History