In St. Matthew’s Parish, Orangeburg District, was Totness, a small but, "much frequented," summer watering place on the north side of High Hill Creek, about three miles from the Congaree River and twenty miles from Orangeburg Court House. The Totness Academical Association was chartered in 1833; in 1850, the village was incorporated, its limits marked by a circle with a radius of a half mile from the village church. Mrs. L. A. Taveau, of Charleston and her daughters, Mrs. Thomas Waring and Mrs. William Haskell, stopped at Totness on the way to the Up Country in 1838 and 1839. In 1865, the town was burned by Union soldiers.