Piedmont

By Bonnes Amies Club

Astride a mighty river separating Greenville and Anderson Counties in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Piedmont is a place divided divided by a river, a county line, and school district lines. But, more importantly, it is tied, connected, and bridged together by its enduring story. Swift and deep, the Saluda River attracted Native Americans, Revolutionary War soldiers, and early settlers to the ford at the shoals. Called Big Shoals of the Saluda by the Cherokee and Garrison Shoals by the settlers, the ford supported a British garrison, an early gristmill, and a venture into textile manufacturing. In fact, Piedmont Manufacturing Company was one of the earliest and largest mills in the South. Today, still spanning the Saluda and linking the mill sites to allow swift crossing, the footbridge connects today s residents to the souls these waters have affected for hundreds of years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Aug 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781439646915

Bonnes Amies Club

The Bonnes Amies Service Club presents a moving pictorial dialogue bonding citizens to a vital force. This is the story of ambitious folk harnessing a dynamic river and coming together to craft lives in a great Southern place�a place to be preserved by keeping its history as alive as the Saluda.

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1921

One

EARLY TIMES

Although Piedmont’s train station no longer serves the community, many remember riding up or down the line to shop in Greenville or visit family in Pelzer or Williamston. On The Line Road follows the tracks just east of where the station stood on Bessie Road. In Piedmont’s heyday, this station was vital to the mill and the citizens. It is sorely missed. (Courtesy of the Bonnes Amies Club.)

Native Americans crossed at The Big Shoals of the Saluda, shown above from below the dam. According to Maj. Samuel Hammond’s account of 1780, Tory soldiers supported a small fort here at Hoil’s (Hoyle’s) old place during the Revolution. Patriot forces approached the garrison, pursuing the Loyalists south to Rutledge’s Ford in Abbeville County, where a skirmish took place. In November 1797, Sheriff Robert Maxwell of Washington County (Greenville, Anderson, Pickens and Oconee) came to the shoals for passage to court in Old Pickensville. Here, he was ambushed and killed, probably by his adversary Dr. Joshua Kennedy. Later, settlers called it Garrison Shoals, possibly for David Garrison, who built a gristmill here about 1843. During this pre–Civil War period, the area was principally agrarian. As pictured below, a log cabin and small plantation house overlooked Garrison Shoals from atop a knoll east of the river now known as Hotel Hill. (Above, courtesy of the Bonnes Amies Club; below, courtesy of Margaret Payne.)

Still standing, this house was built by Ignatius Kattlet Ike Jenkins around 1880. He and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Few Jenkins, and 10 of their 13 children lived here (one child and a set of twins had died). He built the house with wooden pegs, evidence of which is present today. The house was in the area referred to as Grove Township during the time it was built. This area included territory between the Southern Railroad and Reedy River. (Courtesy of Virginia Agee