Thomas Sumter the "Fighting Gamecocks." Since 1903 the college's teams have been simply known as the "Gamecocks." Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, a fort planned after the War of 1812, was named for him. The fort is best known as the site upon which the shots initiating the American Civil War were fired, at the Battle of Fort Sumter. Counties in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Alabama are named for him. Thomas Sumter Thomas Sumter (August 14, 1734 – June 1, 1832) was a soldier in the Colony of Virginia militia; a brigadier general in the South Carolina militia during the American
Fort Sumter Hotel in 1946. In April 1947, Tennessee Williams and agent Audrey Wood met with Irene Selznick at the Fort Sumter Hotel to discuss her producing his newest play A Streetcar Named Desire (just recently renamed from the original title Poker Night). Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr, 2014, p. 127. In 1956, the hotel considered an expansion of 60 to 100 rooms to accommodate the increase in convention business seen in Charleston. In 1973, the hotel, then operated by Sheraton Hotels, was purchased for $850,000 with plans to convert the building into a condominium project with about