Burroughs & Chapin

Burroughs & Chapin began when Franklin Burroughs started a turpentine and mercantile business in Conway, South Carolina. After service in the Civil War, Burroughs returned to Conway and formed a partnership with Benjamin Grier Collins, a native of nearby Georgetown County. The two men expanded the company's commercial interests into timber, farm credit, consumer goods, riverboats and, eventually, the first railway through the swamps of Horry County to the beaches of what are today Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand.

F.G. Burroughs foresaw that the Grand Strand would be developed similarly to northern resort destinations of Coney Island and Atlantic City. Burroughs died in 1897. Collins' and Burroughs' sons completed the railroad and built the Seaside Inn in 1901, the first oceanfront hotel in Myrtle Beach. The Seaside Inn was followed by a bathhouse and a wooden pavilion around which beach houses were constructed. By 1907, "New Town" by the sea, as Myrtle Beach was then called, had become a popular vacation spot. When a contest was held to name the new beach resort, Burroughs' widow suggested "Myrtle Beach" for its proliferation of wild wax myrtle bushes.

In 1912, Simeon B. Chapin, a New York stock broker and son of a prominent Chicago merchant, joined with the Burroughs brothers to form the Myrtle Beach Farms Company. Chapin's financial resources and business experience along with the Burroughs' vast real estate holdings provided for a period of sustained economic growth. The landmark Myrtle Beach Pavilion was expanded, a downtown shopping district took shape around The Chapin Company General Store and housing needs were met by Myrtle Beach Farms residential real estate developments.

In 1990, Myrtle Beach Farms Company joined with Conway-based Burroughs & Collins Company to form Burroughs & Chapin Company.