Captain Courtenay served under Robert E. Lee in the Civil War before becoming Mayor of Charleston from 1879-1887. He went on to start Courtenay Manufacturing Company on the Little River and constructed a village of 50 cottages. He named the community Newry, thought to be after his father's native industrial town in Ireland. The mill (photo above by Bill Fitzpatrick) closed in 1975 and the area became a historic district, comprised of 250 acres and 118 buildings. View photos from Newry here.
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GLENDALE (Spartanburg County)
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Along Lawson's Fork Creek, a series of ironworks mark the site of disputes between the Cherokee and European settlers and later Patriots with Tories. Soon the town of Bivingsville sprouted up here with around 12 homes, 1 church and shops surrounding a cotton mill. Eventually it became Glendale, a mill village that produced swords, knives and uniform material for the Civil War war along with shoes & wooden soles. The mill and the town became bigger each year over the decades. One night in 1948, an $18,000 robbery from the mill office (still standing) was considered to be one of the largest robberies in history at the time. Glendale Mills immediately started to pay their workers with a check instead of cash. The mill ran from 1830 until 1961 before it burned to the ground in 2004. |
GRANITEVILLE (Aiken County)
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| In 1845, William Gregg built the South's first large-scale cotton mill. It became known as Graniteville, named after the blue granite material used for constructing the buildings. Graniteville had 90 homes (pictured above), several boarding houses, stores, churches and a store for the mill families. This network of mill life became a model for businessmen all over the South. Gregg also required the village children to attend school, with violators having to pay a fine. This is reportedly the first compulsory education system in the Southern United States. Images of Graniteville can be found here. |
