Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a continuing series of columns, stories and photos by Greenville County Historical Society examining the history of Greenville and the Upstate.
By the time Greenville began to take shape as a place on the map, the most violent part of its story had already happened.
One of the clearest examples came on Feb. 1, 1760, during the Anglo-Cherokee War. A Cherokee war party attacked a wagon train of settlers fleeing the Long Cane Creek settlement in what is now Abbeville County, about 50 miles southwest of present-day Greenville. Around 150 settlers were trying to reach Augusta as violence spread across the backcountry. When the attack ended, at least 23 people were dead, most of them women and children…