Laurens County

At the beginning of the 1770s, the Commons House of Assembly was embroiled in the latest in a series of fierce power struggles with royal officials, known as the Wilkes Fund Controversy. Coupled with new imperial initiatives, these clashes convinced the colony’s elite that if it wanted to control the political destiny of South Carolina, then separation was the only answer.

According to legend, Cunningham developed a relentless animosity for all patriots in 1778 after the murder of his invalid brother by backcountry Whigs.

Laurens has been frequently cited by historians as one of the few citizens in the lower South who expressed opposition to slavery in America as early as the 1770s.

Cotton was the basis of the state’s agricultural economy at the end of the antebellum period, employing more than eighty percent of the slave labor force.

On returning to South Carolina after a summer visit with her daughter in Philadelphia, Louisa Byrd Cunningham observed the dilapidated state of George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon. From her sickbed Ann Pamela Cunningham immediately penned an appeal to the “Ladies of the South!” to raise funds to purchase and renovate Mount Vernon.

The South would have to remain under federal control until it was deemed safe to leave matters to the southern state governments. This probationary period of federal control was termed “Reconstruction.”

The Ku Klux Klan was a paramilitary organization formed during Reconstruction to oppose the Republican Party and restore white supremacy in the South. Another organization called the Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1915 after the success of the film Birth of a Nation, which glorified the Reconstruction Klan.

From the late nineteenth century through most of the twentieth century, the textile industry dominated South Carolina manufacturing. It employed…

Originally known as Clinton College, the institution became the Presbyterian College of South Carolina in 1890, when oversight of the college was increased to include all presbyteries in the Synod of South Carolina.

When deposits of the mineral silica, important for glassmaking, were found a few miles north of Laurens, a group of local businessmen organized Laurens Glass Works in 1910.

Michelin and South Carolina made a successful match. The company was not secretive about its conservative character and dislike of unions, and in South Carolina, Michelin found a base that suited its corporate values and business objectives.

Milliken & Company has been tight-lipped about its operations and, especially, sales figures.

Spartanburg County won a major recruiting battle over BMW’s first non-Bavarian factory on June 23, 1992, when the company chose Greer over approximately 250 other localities around the world. BMW’s decision was hailed both locally and internationally as the crowning achievement of the South Carolina Piedmont’s campaign for international industrial recruitment.