A Brief History of Easley

By R. Chad Stewart

Easley has a rare combination of a quaint Main Street and a thriving industrial presence. The city was a series of small farms and open land until residents convinced officials to make the area a stop along the Atlanta and Richmond Air-Line Railroad after the Civil War. Access to the railroad and the popularity of cotton spurred an era of rapid growth and expansion, culminating in the dominance of the textile industry throughout most of the twentieth century. While cotton drove textiles in the area, advances in agriculture and manufacturing brought dozens of companies, placing Easley at the center of the state's biggest industrial area. Author Chad Stewart details the history of a city that moved from sleepy train stop to vibrant South Carolina city.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Jan 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781625857620

R. Chad Stewart

Chad Stewart is a seventh-generation native of the Easley, South Carolina area. He is a graduate of Easley High School and Anderson University, and he is currently working toward a master's degree in history at Clemson University. He was one of the founders of Easley Area Museum, where he serves on the board of directors. He also serves as commissioner for the Pendleton District Historical, Recreational and Tourism Commission. He is employed with the school district of Pickens County and is a frequent contributor to local publications on topics related to Easley-area history.

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1

PIONEERS, EARLY WAGON ROADS AND THE OPENING OF THE UPCOUNTRY

My Estate was burnt and destroyed.

—Richard Pearis

The modern city of Easley can trace its roots to a predecessor forged from a rocky piece of terrain in the upcountry of South Carolina during the infancy of the new American republic. This community was originally to be called Rockville but became known as Pickensville by the time it actually began to take shape. The story of Pickensville and Easley begins in the shadow of some of Upstate South Carolina’s earliest pioneer settlers.

EARLY INDIAN TRADERS

Prior to 1783, relatively little is known about the appearance of the area now covered by the city of Easley. The only Europeans to occupy the region at the time were traders living and operating behind the Indian Line of 1763–65.¹ These traders were largely isolated from the developed population centers to the east by geographic distance, poor lines of communication and the lack of passable roads. Even though a small number of settlers had begun to move into the area behind the Indian Line by the 1760s, none settled to the west of the Saluda River until after the American Revolution.²

Indian traders living at the vanguard of western frontier settlement made their living trading with the native peoples of the region. In many cases, these individuals completely gave up white society and elected to totally assimilate themselves and their families into native culture. Others chose to conduct business with the native tribes while still maintaining ties to larger European settlements.

RICHARD PEARIS

The Indian trader who made the largest impact on the South Carolina frontier was Richard Pearis. Pearis was born to George and Sarah Pearis in Ireland in 1725.³ After immigrating to Virginia, George accumulated a significant amount of property in America. Richard would go on to follow in his father’s footsteps and made a business of buying and trading land, accumulating large holdings himself.

Through his property dealings near the Virginia frontier, Pearis began trading with the Cherokee Nation west of Virginia. He was so successful in this endeavor that he would go on to serve as an official Indian agent under Virginia governor Robert Dinwiddie.⁴ By 1754, Richard Pearis had extended his trading enterprise with the Indians south into South Carolina. Between this time and the outbreak of the French and Indian War, Richard Pearis fathered a son, George, with a Cherokee mother.⁵ The pedigree of Pearis’s son would prove very consequential in years to come.

Pearis’s relationship with the Cherokee became so strong that he, along with Major Andrew Lewis, led a company of 130 Cherokee warriors during the French and Indian War; he was also asked to serve as an Indian agent for the State of Maryland following the war and represented the state’s interests in negotiations with the native tribes over official boundaries and territory.⁶ Pearis’s rapport with the Cherokee had manifested itself in every aspect of his life, from his private business enterprises and military service to public office.

While the territorial negotiations in which Pearis was involved did not produce the outcome either side desired, Pearis; his son, George; and fellow representative, Jacob Hite, were rewarded by the Cherokees for their service and friendship with a large gift of land. This land was given in gratitude for past services, as well as future trade.⁷

PEARIS’S FIRST GRANT

On August 2, 1769, in the presence of fourteen chiefs and seventy other Indians, William Gist surveyed twelve square miles of land that would be deeded to Richard Pearis on July 29, 1770. This land encompassed much of the modern Greenville metropolitan area, extending into Pickens County and the Easley area.

Following the acquisition of his vast tract of land, Pearis arrived in Upstate South Carolina with three wagons loaded with goods for trade with the Indians as well as a number of guns, some of which he proceeded to trade to the Indians for even more land.⁸ These activities—the acquisition of Indian land by a European man and trading guns to the Indians—were illegal in South Carolina at the time.

The ambiguity surrounding the undetermined border between South Carolina and North Carolina fostered an environment in which it was difficult to police matters relating to frontier settlers deep in the backcountry. Without any clear state-level legal jurisdiction in the area, it was difficult to stop Pearis and others like him from illegally obtaining Indian land.

On April 24, 1771, the question about the border between the two Carolinas was referred to the Board of Trade in London. The Board of Trade then recommended to the Privy Council that representatives from the two provinces be selected to survey the line west of the Catawba River west to the barrier with the Indian land. This survey was conducted from May through June 1772.⁹ The boundary they drew remains the boundary separating South Carolina and North Carolina today, stretching from southwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, to the eastern boundary of Greenville County, South Carolina.¹⁰

Following the official survey and the resulting state boundary, Pearis and his grant fell under the jurisdiction of officials in South Carolina, whose Indian officials set about removing Pearis’s claim to Indian land. Using a 1739 statute forbidding private ownership of Indian land, Governor Charles Montague in Charleston prosecuted Pearis, forcing him to surrender his deed to the land granted him by the Indians in 1770.¹¹ However, Richard Pearis was not finished with Upstate South Carolina.

PEARIS’S SECOND GRANT

Using some creative legal maneuvering, Pearis had his half-Cherokee son, George, acquire the land from the Cherokee on December 21, 1773. This second tract of land was much larger than the original parcels obtained in Richard Pearis’s first grant. After acquiring the land, George took the oath of British citizenship, making it technically legal for his father to purchase the land from a fellow British subject. George Pearis then sold much of his grant to his father. The logic was that since George was Cherokee, it would be legal for him to have purchased Indian land and reduce the risk of the deed being challenged in Charleston.

Having essentially laundered this large tract of Indian land through his son’s ownership, Richard Pearis again found himself the owner of a large part of Upstate South Carolina. Even though Pearis’s legal claim to his newly acquired land was tenuous at best, his timing proved fortuitous.¹²

It is likely that South Carolina officials in Charleston would have found fault with Pearis’s claims of ownership of land in Indian Territory, even considering its laundering through George’s possession, had the build-up toward the American Revolution not diverted the officials’ attention away to more pressing business than backcountry settlers and land ownership technicalities. In this way, Pearis was fortunate. He took advantage of the battle for American independence by waiting until the middle of the war to register his deed, banking on a minimal chance of official interference. His bet paid off.

GREAT PLAINS AND PEARIS’S WAGON ROADS

Sometime after his second land acquisition, Pearis and his family settled permanently on his land holdings in Upstate South Carolina. At the site of the falls of the Reedy River, the present location of Greenville’s iconic Falls Park, Pearis constructed a plantation and trading post he called Great Plains. Here he built a substantial residence for himself and his family and constructed a store, gristmill and sawmill. Here the Pearises also owned twelve slaves; their labor made a plantation a viable enterprise in such a remote location in the South Carolina upcountry.

In most instances, Indian traders would situate themselves within or nearby Indian villages so that Indians could bring their goods to the trading posts in order to trade with Europeans. Here Pearis was unique in that he did not situate himself within or nearby any native villages and did not depend on Indians to find him at Great Plains; he and his associates would go to the Indians using wagons to collect skins and other goods the Indians had to trade and then pass these goods on to markets in Charleston and Augusta.

Today, the site of Great Plains, the compound from which Richard Pearis and his family operated their business in Indian trade, is covered by Falls Park in the heart of downtown Greenville, South Carolina. Photograph by the author.

This distinction in the way Pearis’s business functioned is important to note since the wagons he used to transport goods throughout the region required the use of passable wagon roads. The network of roads developed by Pearis would shape the development of upstate transportation routes through South Carolina into the modern era, including those to, through and away from Pickensville and Easley. To this day, some modern roads in the region still follow routes first laid out by Richard Pearis.

Pearis’s wagon roads included one that left Greenville, crossed the Saluda River at Pearis’s Ford,¹³ continued over George’s Creek and followed a ridgeline to the point it split into two different branches: one heading west to Esseneca Village¹⁴ and the other heading northwest to Eastatoe Village.¹⁵ Yet another wagon road left Greenville and headed downstate to the markets in Charleston and Augusta, whereby the goods procured from the Indians could find their way across the world.

This historical marker located on Greenville’s Main Street, above the falls