The Bigham Family Murders: Three Trials and a Family History

Join us for the Horry County Museum to learn about South Carolina's sensational murder trial of the 20th century and the family behind it. The Bigham Family was a prominent family in Marion and Florence Counties often whispered about and feared by their neighbors. Throughout 6 generations of the family living in SC, a number of the members were accused of circumventing the law, murdering family members and workers, and general unpleasantness, culminating in the events of January 15, 1921 where 5 members of the family were killed. The surviving member of the family, Edmund Bigham, was put on trial for the murders and was tried three separate times, once in Florence County and twice in Conway, SC, all while maintaining that it was his brother, Smiley, who had killed his family then taken his own life. This talk will detail the family history of the Bighams and the trials of Edmund Bigham.

Abigail Geedy was born and raised in south-central Pennsylvania and moved to South Carolina for college in 2012. She has both an Anthropology Bachelor's and Master's Degree and a Graduate Certificate of Museum Management from the University of South Carolina. She began volunteering in museums in 2011 and had worked in curation at the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology. In 2020, she joined the Horry County Museum as a Technical Assistant and moved into the Curator position in 2022.