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  • A Plan of the Village of Greenville, South Carolina.

A Plan of the Village of Greenville, South Carolina.

  • ARTIST: John Barrillon

  • MEDIUM: Pen and ink on drafting linen,

    DATE: 1830. (1909).

  • EDITION SIZE: Image size 44 3/4 x 27 3/4" (113.8 x 70.4 cm).

  • DESCRIPTION: <strong>A manuscript plan of the city of Greenville</strong><br><br> Drawn on a scale of one hundred feet to the inch, the plan is quite detailed. It shows the old portion of the town, area bounded by the Reedy River to the south, Spring Street to just east of McBee Street to the east, College Street to the north, and Richardson and Jackson streets to the west. It identifies Mc.Bee’s Mills on the Reedy river, the courthouse, jail, two churches and the female academy.<br><br> The city of Greenville is on land that was once Cherokee hunting ground. In 1770 Richard Pearis, an Indian trader from Virginia, received about 100,000 acres of hunting lands from the Cherokees and set up a plantation on the banks of the Reedy River in what is now downtown Greenville. His Great Plains Plantation included a saw mill, grist mill, stables and a trading post. Pearis lost the land after the Revolutionary War due to his being a Tory.<br><br> After the Revolution, South Carolina claimed the land and began distributing it to soldiers as payment for their wartime services. The first owner of the land that became city of Greenville was Thomas Brandon. Soon after, Lemuel Alston purchased all of Brandon’s holdings and additional acreage, amassing over 11,000 acres.<br><br> In 1786 Greenville was founded on the banks of the Reedy River. In 1797 the state formed a committee to choose a permanent site for the county seat. Lemuel Alston offered the committee land on the north side of the Reedy River and agreed to survey the acreage and lay out the town lots.<br><br> The General Assembly sited the county’s courthouse on Alston’s property in 1794. Three years later he platted 60 lots for a village he called Pleasantburg, with a log courthouse surrounded by a court square. Alston’s lots did not sell well, and since the settlement was already called Greenville Courthouse, his choice of name didn’t catch on. In 1815, Alston sold his acreage for $27,557 to Vardry McBee of Lincolnton, North Carolina. Although McBee was an absentee landlord, he understood community building, and he encouraged Greenville growth. He gave land for the first schools (the Greenville Male and Female Academies), for the first four churches (Episcopal, Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian), and he established a brick yard, rock quarry, and saw mill, in addition to corn and grist mills, a tannery, and a large general store.<br><br> This map shows the well laid out village centered on the Court House. Many of the street names are still in use today, Main Street, Broad Street. On the map is Main Cross St. with is today’s Court Street etc. The manuscript map was drawn in 1909 by William D. Neves who signed the map as City Engineer, Greenville So. Ca. January 1909. Neves copied the map from the original drawn in 1830 by John N. Barrillon, a surveyor from Columbia, SC.

  • ADDITIONAL INFO:

  • CONDITION: Good condition save for some minor surface soiling.

  • REFERENCE:

  • CATEGORIES: Maps

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