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Greenville South Carolina Manufactures
When the first white citizen of Greenville SC made his way through the real estate and wilds of upper South Carolina more than a century and a half ago, and struck his camp at a picturesque little fall on a small mountain stream, he established the first "industrial center" of the upstate of South Carolina, and around that spot has grown in the fifteen or sixteen decades since a mammoth beehive of humming wheels.
Greenville SCs first citizen was Richard Paris, a "canny Scot", who settled among the Indians and became a pioneer "captain of industry" by establishing a waterpower grist mill and a trading station near what is now the center of Greenville South Carolina. The little colony that grew there in the years following the Revolution was officially christened "Pleasantburg" in 1797.
Early in the century a "great educational move" is recorded among the 400 inhabitants of the village, which resulted in the establishing of the "Male and Female Academy" and laid the foundation for a great educational structure that was to rise in later years a long with the industrial and commercial growth. Located at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Greenville South Carolina was for decades a popular summering place for lower-state people, and these early tendencies have come into new being in the last decade with the development of pleasure grounds and resort centers in the mountainous parts of Greenville County, within an hours motor ride from Greenville over smooth highways.
In 1831 Pleasantburg came to be known as "Greenville". Two busy but uneventful decades were followed by a new era with the opening of the Columbia and Greenville SC railroad, the first railway into the upstate, in 1853. Furman University, Baptist, was transferred to Greenville in 1851. In 1854, citizens gave the old academy lands to the Baptists for the "Greenville Female College," and a new civic spirit flourished. After the destructive period of Confederate War, the citizens of Greenville SC started to rebuild anew their social and commercial fabric; cotton manufacturing became a definite asset with the erection of one of the first mills shortly after the war near the original site of Paris grist mill. The Charlotte and Atlanta Air line, now Southern Railway, completed its line to Greenville SC in 1874 and thereafter industrial and commercial growth went forward at a phenomenal rate.
In the city of Greenville SC today there are 13 large cotton mills, one of them the largest under a single roof in the world, are clustered around the city, with over 600,000 spindles, making several thousand varieties of cloth, from heavy fabric to filmy cottons, rayons and silks. The industrial interests in Greenville Sc are diversified with a variety of other enterprises, the annual payroll, with that of the railroads, running close to $10,000,000. Besides the Southern Railway lines, the Greenville South Carolina is served by the Charleston SC and Western Carolina railroad, and the Piedmont and Northern, electric. Greenville South Carolinas population growth has been remarkable. Greenville Scs population increased 123.4 percent from 1870 to 1880. In 1910 Greenville SCs population was 15,741; by 1920 Greenvilles population increased 68.6 percent to 23,127 in the incorporate limits; today Greenville SCs population is estimated at 27,000 with t a suburban residential and industrial population of 35,000 to 40,000 more, making Greenville a community of about 65,000 people.
Greenville South Carolinas educational and civic growth has kept pace. Greenvilles city school system embraces 16 grammar schools and a $250,000 modern high school, the total enrollment being about 6,500. Parker School District in Greenville SC, adjoining the city of Greenvilles District, embraces the industrial area, operating schools for the 14 communities, with a central high school, the enrollment totaling above 6,000. The physical plants of Furman University and Greenville Womans College real estate are valued in excess of a million dollars. Among other institutions in the Greenville Sc area is Sacred Heart Academy, conducted by the Roman Catholics.
Greenville South Carolina was the site of an army encampment during the Spanish-American war. During the World war, Camp Sevier was located here, and here the famous Thirtieth Division, which helped to break the Hindenburg line, received final training on this side.
Greenville SC city water supply, drawn for many years from Paris mountain, five miles northeast of the city of Greenville, has been augmented by a new source In the heart of the Blue Ridge, where a reservoir of six billion gallons capacity has been constructed at a cost of $2,000,000. The real estate of Greenville city and Parker School Districts has been organized as a sewer district and has authorized a bond issue of $3,000,000 for building a sewage disposal plants and sewerage system for the whole District.
Greenville South Carolina today has 52 churches; two large modern public hospitals; four public parks aggregating 350 acres of real estate; free public library with annual circulation for 200,000 volumes; well managed curb market; modern country club with 18 hole golf course; one of the larges auditoriums in the state of South Carolina wihich houses biennially the southern Textile Exposition; three "skyscrapers," the largest chamber of commerce in the South among cities of Greenvilles size, with more than 2,000 members and owning its own home, a ten story office building; Greenville has four life insurance companies; Greenville Sc has four national and five state banks, with total resources of over $22,000,000 and deposits over $17,000,000; and Greenville Sc has the largest cut underwear plant in the South. Greenville South Carolina is a jobbing center for the Piedmont section of the state of South Carolina, has a retail trading area embracing a population of about half a million people; Greenville SC is the larges inland cotton center east of the Mississippi, excepting Memphis and New Orleans, and Greenville Sc is the center of a rich and diversified agricultural region.
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