Betty Scott Kilgus, Longtime Bamberg Resident, Laid to Rest in April

Betty Scott Kilgus, a longtime resident of Bamberg, South Carolina, passed away in late March 2026. Visitation is scheduled for this evening, April 2, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. at First Baptist Church in Bamberg, with funeral services to follow Friday morning, April 3, at 11:00 a.m. at the same location. Burial will take place afterward at Bamberg County Memory Gardens.

The family asked that memorial contributions be made in lieu of flowers to First Baptist Church or the Cheez and Cracker Box, a local food pantry serving residents of Bamberg County.

Bamberg, the county seat of Bamberg County, recorded 3,607 residents within city limits at the 2010 census, and the county itself counted just 13,311 people in the 2020 census, making it the fourth-least populous county in South Carolina. In a community of that scale, the death of a longtime resident carries particular weight. Generations of Bamberg County families have attended Richard Carroll Elementary School, Bamberg-Ehrhardt Middle School, and Bamberg-Ehrhardt High School, consolidated under the Bamberg County School District since 2022, and many of those same families have long held membership at First Baptist Church.

The city takes its name from early settler William Seaborn Bamberg, and the county's roots stretch back to the Edisto tribe of the Muskhogean Indians, followed by German, Swiss, Scots-Irish, English, and Huguenot settlers who arrived in the mid-18th century. Margaret Spann Lawrence documented that history in her 1970 volume "History of Bamberg County, South Carolina," the county's most authoritative local record.

The family's choice to direct memorials toward the Cheez and Cracker Box reflects the kind of community-rooted giving that has long defined civic life in Bamberg County.