(soft music) - Today's adventure is really special for a few reasons.

For starters, we are in Greenville, South Carolina, which is where I grew up.

I love coming to visit my old stomping grounds and spending time with family.

And speaking of family, my dad is here with me today.

I get to bring him along with me as we take a very special family history lesson.

You know, when you travel across South Carolina's upstate, you're probably gonna see some towering smokestacks, skeletons, and even restored old mills from Oconee to Pickens to Spartanburg and beyond.

These mills once put the Palmetto State at the very top of the textile industry.

My family has deep roots within the textile mills and villages here that are such a major part of Greenville's history and I'm super excited to trace those routes today.

So let's go for it.

(soft music) Y'all, we are here with John Nolan of Greenville History Tours.

John, what kind of tours can people have and experience with you around Greenville?

- I started the tour business 16 years ago and I offer a variety of historic tours.

I have a couple of that are walking tours downtown, and then I have some driving tours that cover various aspects of our city.

- I actually brought my dad here with me today.

You're gonna take the tour with us, Daddy.

Don't we have, like, a significant textile mill history?

- We do.

- Yeah?

How often do you get people like us who have that kind of history come on your tours?

- Yeah, every once in a while.

And I love it when people that have worked at these mills come on the tour 'cause I learn so much from them, personal stories.

It's just a thrill to have them and very nice to meet you today and I hope to learn more from you.

- Great.

Well, what do you think, Dad?

You ready to take a walk down memory lane?

Let's go for it.

- Let's go for it.

(soft music) - We're here at the Woodside Mill.

This is a mill that was right at the turn of the century and it started out smaller than it is now but it was continued to be added onto in the first decade of the 1900s, and by 1912, this was the largest mill in America.

(soft music) - So why are there so many textile mills in the upstate of South Carolina?

- Before the Civil War, the cotton was being grown down here in the south, but be sent up to factories in New England, and there was a huge fire in Boston in 1872 and burned down the city and a lot of the cotton merchants had offices there and when they kind of had to reset, they looked here to the south to build new mills.

So after the war, there was a lot of cheap labor down here and it was close to the cotton rather than shipping it up to New England.

So after the war, most of the mills started to be built down here and Greenville had a lot of good water sources 'cause the first mills had to be water powered.

The Reedy River downtown was a great spot, so our first mills were down there.

So coming up here again to the Mill Village, I'm gonna show you a few pictures here.

This is the original size of the mill.

So we're actually driving right there where that stage coach is in that photo, right here.

And this corner is where the main intersection was.

In this postcard, you can see the trolley coming down the street right here, and the trolley went out to all the mill villages and would bring workers back into downtown Greenville.

Workers didn't get paid very much, maybe $1 to $1.50 a day was the typical wage for a worker.

Gary, I imagine this looks awfully familiar to you coming up here in front of us.

- [Gary] It does.

Spent many a day in Dunean.

- This is in the style of the Judson Mill.

So it's, you know, two story mills spread out.

So this was the new style in the 1910s.

So is this where you worked over on this side?

- Yeah, see the add-on here, the brick to the left of there, that was the shipping.

That was where the trucks backed up.

They loaded up the product to ship out.

- So Gary, I imagine you have so many memories right in here, so how about we get out and take a look around and you can tell us a little bit about it.

- Let's go for it.

- Let's go for it.

(soft music) - So Dunean was really a innovative mill.

When you look at this building, the bricks on it are tan color.

No other mill in Greenville used tan bricks.

So that was kind of a special thing.

They were more expensive and they shipped in millions of bricks to build this.

This was called the Million-Dollar Mill in fact.

It was the first mill in Greenville to cost a million dollars to build.

Ellison Smyth, who is called the "Dean of Southern Mills," he's the one who started this up.

Smyth Street is just right over here.

- Didn't you grow up on Smyth Street?

- That is the street I grew up on.

- Yeah?

- Yep.

- [Devyn] So cool.

- Now that's the Methodist church that, where I went to church as a kid and all the way up 'till, in fact, your Uncle Bob and Aunt Jean got married there, 1969.

(soft music) - So this is where the company store was back in the day.

Looks like there's a little bit of a remnant of a wall right there.

You probably have a, maybe some memories of this building being here, right?

- I do, I remember the building, but when I was coming up, it was Riddle's Grocery Store.

- Okay.

- It wasn't the company store anymore.

It's my understanding years ago they used company money that they could use to purchase their everyday goods.

- Okay.

- I just happen to have some mill money with me here.

So this is some paper money from Dunean store.

This is a little more rare to see and this is an unused coupon book.

You know, there are different denominations here.

10 cents, five cents, two cents.

You know, workers would use this borrowing against their next paycheck.

You know, it could only be used at this store and get their everyday goods.

- Gosh, that is just so cool.

This whole tour has been so cool.

Thank you so much, John.

It's been really neat to get to experience this with my dad and you guys probably have a lot more that you could be talking about, so- - That's for sure.

- I'm gonna leave you to it.

(soft music) I knew today was gonna be special but it definitely exceeded all my expectations.

I feel like I'm seeing all of the stories and experience I had as a kid through a whole new lens.

There really is always something new to discover in South Carolina, even in your hometown.

So if you're looking to make some new memories out of the old, just go for it.

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