Originally known as the Black Swamp Baptist Church and established at Robertville, South Carolina, in February 1786 by eight dismissed members of the old Pipe Creek Baptist Church, this historically significant congregation was at the center of a thriving, backcountry market village and seemingly connected to every important Beaufort County historical event of the early nineteenth century. The village was occupied by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's men in late January 1865, who subsequently burned the church and the entire village in early February. After the conclusion of the war, parishioners purchased the old Ascension Church building from nearby Gillisonville and reassembled it on the site of the former church building. The village and the church both languished for much of the next fifty years until it was reconstituted as the Robertville Baptist Church in the mid-twentieth century.

This privately commissioned history recounts Black Swamp's compelling and often difficult history, its resurgence in the mid-twentieth century, and its efforts to hang on in rural Jasper County as the twenty-first century dawns. The project is presently in progress and is expected to be complete in 2018.