Judith Bainbridge

It began as “Stradleyville,” a vaguely defined but often lawless area beyond the West End.

For 50 years or more after the Civil War, most of the land belonged to merchant Samuel Stradley, but by the turn of the century, he was dead, and Stradleyville was becoming something of an embarrassment to the more upright landowners and merchants who now lived near Brandon and Woodside mills.

Many residents were African-American who had moved in years earlier. After 1900, increasing numbers were white, some employed at the mills, others merchants and tavern keepers. A few manufactured moonshine — on which they resolutely avoided paying taxes — in hidden stills.

Outside the city limits and policed by a single “rural policeman,” Stradleyville was a place where illegal activities flourished.

By 1910, it was considered a “notorious section,” a place were “soiled doves” practiced their trade until they were (regularly) arrested for vagrancy, and where unlicensed liquor was sold at “blind tigers” and "half-beer" saloons.

(“Blind Tigers” flourished everywhere after prohibition became law. They were illegal saloons where tickets were sold to see a non-existent “blind tiger,” and while patrons supposedly “waited for the tiger,” they were served “free” drinks.)

“Half-beer" saloons patrons were served spiked drinks along with knife and gun fights.

By 1914, though, law-abiding residents had had enough. Fifty “freeholders” (both black and white property owners) signed a petition requesting incorporation. In November 1914, voters (about 300 male poll tax payers) approved.

The center of the new town was the intersection of Pendleton and Traction streets. Partially bounded on the west and north by railroad tracks, it extended from Queen Street to Easley Bridge Road and included much of Perry Avenue, as well as streets edging the Woodside and Brandon mills villages. Its east boundary was the Greenville city limits.

At that first election, voters approved town officials: J.M. Phillips, a merchant and real estate dealer would be mayor; “wardens,” later called “aldermen,” were Professor (he was head of Greenville City Schools) E.L. Hughes, landowner (and ice and coal plant owner) T.A. Honour, J.W. Godfry, D.C. Albertson, R.H. Huff, and J.A. Canup.

After some discussion about the name of the new municipality — “Branwood” was seriously considered, since the new town was between Brandon and Woodside mills -- aldermen settled on “West Greenville.”

Obviously, not everyone was pleased with the prospect of more law and order — the principal benefit of incorporation, according to the freeholders. On the night after the election, someone tried to burn the ballot boxes housed in J.M. Phillips’ store.

And toward the end of December, Alderman T.A. Honour found a heavy can assumed to contain a bomb together with a threatening note (“U stop now or we will stop u”) written in what the newspapers called “blackhand style” (European anarchism was much in the news) at his Perry Street home.

Town officials hired three policemen (including a “raiding deputy”), set up a jail, and enforced liquor, vagrancy (newspapers’ euphemism for prostitution), speeding, and assault laws.

They may have been too successful. At any rate, in the spring of 1916, 60 town residents signed a petition for a vote on revoking the charter. Honour declared that it was the “unlawful elements” of the town who were pushing the change, although others said that they just wanted to have their roads paved as a part of a Greenville City bond issue.

The petition failed, and the roads of West Greenville remained mired in mud for several more years.

And even with policemen, crime remained a problem. In fact, “Stub” Turner, chief of police in the early 1920s, was a one-man crime wave. First he was found guilty of speeding down Easley’s Main Street after drinking (illegal) alcohol. Then a 15-year girl at Camperdown Mill accused him of rape. Although he was found innocent in a widely reported trial, many people believed her.

He resigned his position soon afterwards, just before he was charged with operating a still. In reporting his arrest, the Keowee Courier identified West Greenville as “the town made famous by Stub Turner.”

(It wasn’t his fault, probably, that his wife murdered him in 1926.)

Then there was Police Chief Rueben Gosnell. He hit a flailing drunk over the head with his pistol. When that didn’t stop the drunk, he hit him again. The pistol went off accidently, killing the man. Gosnell was jailed briefly while local saloon owners attempted to find a lawyer to prosecute him for murder.

In 1924, another West Greenville police chief arrested his own daughter for passing a worthless check, and in the same year, several aldermen quit after violating prohibition laws. Then the mayor was jailed for forgery and breach of trust.

Nevertheless, the new town, linked by beltway trolley to all of Greenville’s textile crescent, flourished along with cotton mills. Authorities built West Greenville School for white children on Pendleton Street and the West Greenville Colored School on nearby Distler Street, arranged for sewers and running water, established a city hall on Perry Street, even put in a traffic light.

Local men founded Textile Bank there in 1920 (with only $150,000 in reserves, it failed in 1926). Parker High School, opened in 1924, served its children. Its own volunteer fire company responded when the alarm on top of Brandon Mill blared.

Residents attended movies at the Branwood Theatre, patronized Shoeless Joe Jackson’s liquor store on Pendleton Street, munched on Nelson’s hot dogs and enjoyed “West Greenville caviar” — gravy-laded French-fried onions and potatoes.

The Great Depression brought stretch-outs, strikes, and union activity; times were really tough in West Greenville. After World War II, though, its business district emerged as a vibrant place with grocery stores, barber shops, cafes, cleaners, hardware stores, gas stations and a popular ice-cream parlor.

But civic enthusiasm — and tax revenues — flagged. By 1947, grocery store owner E. E. Johnson was simultaneously town mayor, city clerk and treasurer — no one else wanted the jobs.

So West Greenville surrendered its charter, and in Nov

ember 1948, merged with the city of Greenville.

Then, slowly, the area slid downhill. As mills sold their villages, local life changed, and residents moved away. Mills sputtered and closed, and Pendleton Street businesses closed with them. Crime, held mostly in abeyance for decades, returned.

Today, art and city dollars are revitalizing the old Village of West Greenville, and the amazing renovation of Brandon Mill is adding hope for the future.