The Africans escaped and joined members of the indigenous Cofitachequi chiefdom in the area, people of the late Mississippian culture.

By 1721 the colonial government granted the English residents' petition to found a new parish, Prince George, Winyah, on the Black River.

In 1729, Elisha Screven laid the plan for Georgetown and developed the city in a four-by-eight block grid.

During the final years of the conflict, Georgetown was the important port for supplying General Nathanael Greene's army.

Planters often had chosen to import slaves from rice-growing regions of West Africa, as they knew the technology for cultivation and processing.

Their relatively leisured lifestyle for a select few, built on the labor of thousands of slaves, was disrupted by the Civil War.

Afterward the abolition of slavery and transformation to a free labor market in the South so changed the economics of rice production as to make the labor-intensive process unprofitable.

The soft silt soil of the South Carolina low country required harvesting rice by hand.

With profits from rice, planters bought products from Charleston artisans: fine furniture, jewelry, and silver, to satisfy their refined tastes.

Georgetown's thriving economy long attracted settlers from elsewhere, including numerous planters and shipowners who migrated from Virginia.

[16] During the Civil War, the Confederate army built a fort and installed two camps near Georgetown at Murrells Inlet.

[19][page needed] Additional fortifications were built at Battery White, located south of the town to protect the harbor and Winyah Bay.

Construction during 1862-1863 on the cannon emplacement resulted in a well-built and situated set of fortifications which did not see action until 1864 when it was captured by Union Forces.

[citation needed] Several African Americans from Georgetown represented Georgetown County in the state legislature during the Reconstruction era including Joseph Haynes Rainey, Bruce H. Williams, Charles H. Sperry, Charles Samuel Green, and James A. Bowley.

By the time the Reconstruction period ended, the area's economy was shifting to harvesting and processing wood products.

In 1900, a Georgetown constable's efforts to arrest barber John Brownfield for refusing to pay a poll tax resulted in a scuffle and his death in a shooting.

[21] White supremacists called for lynching and a tense period followed including appeals of Brownfield's murder conviction by an all-white jury with ties to the deceased and his family.

[23] Jim Crow laws excluded African Americans from taking part in elections and from holding office.

[24] As the twentieth century dawned, Georgetown under the leadership of Mayor William Doyle Morgan began to modernize.

The city added electricity, telephone service, sewer facilities, rail connections, some paved streets and sidewalks, new banks, a thriving port, and a new public school for white students.

Its extremely hard winds and an intense storm surge along the rivers flooded and damaged Georgetown and nearby areas.

As Georgetown was under Hugo's northern eyewall, it suffered winds more severe and damaging than in Charleston, which was in the hurricane's weak corridor.

Due to the influx of cheap foreign steel into the United States, the plant closed its doors again in August 2015.

The fire raged for hours while over 200 firefighters from ten departments and the United States Coast Guard fought to contain the blaze.

In addition, many retirees have chosen to settle in this area of beaches, plantations redeveloped as residential communities, and pleasant climate.

The City of Georgetown has always elected Democratic mayors, even as the make-up of the major parties has realigned since the late 20th century.

[citation needed] As of 2019, brackish water incursions into the Waccamaw River near Georgetown due to rising sea levels are increasing the risk of exposure to toxic vibrio bacteria.

On October 31, 2024, International Paper announced the closing of their Georgetown plant by the end of 2024, causing the loss of 526 hourly jobs and 148 salaried employees.