[ Provided by the South Carolina Room, Hughes Main Library, Greenville County Library System ]
The Pioneer
Leaving a Lowcountry hardware business for the Upstate, a minister’s son and Civil War veteran went on to become perhaps the central figure in Greenville’s rise to become “The Textile Center of the World.”
Born in Charleston on Oct. 26, 1847, Ellison Adger Smyth witnessed the first shot fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861 and later enlisted in the Confederate States Army. His mother, Margaret, was a member of the Adger family of Charleston who were involved in shipping, warehousing and hardware. His father was Rev. Thomas Smyth, minister of Second Presbyterian Church of Charleston.
After the war, young Smyth became a junior partner of the hardware business J. E. Adger & Co. He met Julia Gambrill and they were married in 1869. When the hardware business declined, “Captain Smyth,” as he was known for the rest of his life, decided to go into the textile industry even though he had never been in a textile mill. With his lifelong friend Francis J. Pelzer, he built Pelzer Mill in Anderson County in 1880. Thus began a long career of his direct involvement in organizing approximately 20 textile mills in the Upstate, including Belton, Dunean and Brandon Mills, and one in North Carolina. Smyth served as president and treasurer of Pelzer Manufacturing Company for 43 years.
William Plumer Jacobs titled his biography of Ellison Adger Smyth “The Pioneer” because Smyth was a man of vision who had a profound influence on the textile industry in the Upstate. In his Pelzer mills he used incandescent lights, and installed electric drive motors and automatic Draper looms. After successfully experimenting with these progressive ideas, he organized Dunean Mill in Greenville. Called the “Million Dollar Mill,” Dunean would be totally electric and produce the finest-quality cotton goods. The mill building, with its unique grey brick and black mortar, was also known as one of the most aesthetically pleasing textile mills. The success of Dunean made it the model for mill construction throughout the South.
The Smyths eventually moved to Greenville where they lived for 40 years. Captain Smyth was involved in many different business enterprises and was at one time or another director of more than 30 different banks and corporations. For years he was the majority shareholder in the Greenville News, which he sold to B. H. Peace in 1923. He served as president of the Cotton Manufacturers Association of South Carolina for 14 years and was also president of the American Cotton Manufacturers Association.
In addition to being an industrial leader, Capt. Smyth was also very civic-minded. He was instrumental in the enactment of compulsory education laws and the registration of births and marriages in South Carolina. He was a founding member of Pelzer Presbyterian Church and Second and Fourth Presbyterian Churches in Greenville. He served on the Greenville Board of Trade and on the first board of the Textile Hall Corporation. He was a board chairman of Chicora College in Columbia. Captain Smyth also helped organize the Greenville Rotary Club, the Poinsett Club and the Sans Souci Country Club
After selling most of his interests in Greenville in 1925, Captain Smyth retired to his mountain retreat, Connemara, near Flat Rock, N.C. (Poet Carl Sandburg would buy the property in 1945, and it is now open to the public as the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site.) He referred to himself as a farmer. Turkeys were his specialty, but he also raised livestock. However, his retirement from textiles was short-lived, as he soon organized Balfour Mills located near Hendersonville. Declining health prevented him from working the last year of his life, and he died on Aug. 3, 1942.
