The names of Sullivan and Markley feature prominently in the late 19th- and 20th-century Greenville business landscape. Both families had hardware businesses — the Sullivans in Anderson and Markley in Greenville. Locally, Henry Markley came to Greenville and joined the existing business of the Gower & Cox carriage company. He became a partner in 1853 and the firm operated a hardware retail store along with their repair shop and wagon and buggy manufacturing operation.
With the advent of automobiles and a reorganization in 1905 under George W. Sirrine, the longstanding carriage company stopped wagon production and focused solely on hardware retail. The newly organized Markley Manufacturing & Hardware Co. was formed and constructed a new building on South Main next to its old carriage factory next to the Reedy River.
In 1885, when Greenville’s carriage business was still thriving, James M. Sullivan started up Sullivan Hardware Co. in nearby Anderson. After expanding with a retail branch in Belton in 1909, Sullivan Hardware purchased the majority of the stock of Markley Hardware and Manufacturing Co., which was re-organized into a wholesale and retail firm named Sullivan-Markley Hardware Co. W.F. Goodrich, who had been with Poe Hardware for a number of years, was named the manager. In 1915, Sullivan-Markley bought the stock of the James T. Williams Hardware Co., another name long linked with the hardware business in the Greenville area.
Expansion continued in 1923 when Sullivan Hardware Co. purchased the business of Wood-Mendenhall of Greer and organized a retail store, Sullivan-Eskew Hardware Co. Things changed in Greenville in 1928 when W.E. Freeman became a major stockholder and Sullivan-Markley Co. became Sullivan-Freeman Hardware Co.
World War II proved to be too difficult for the firm to continue as they had, so in 1945 they discontinued the retail operations in Greenville and continued to operate exclusively from their wholesale warehouse located in the old P&N Warehouse on West Washington. Freeman-Babb Hardware bought out the retail store and continued the hardware retail business in their old store at 125 N. Main St.
The following decades saw continued growth in other markets with new warehouses added in Biltmore in 1947, Asheville, North Carolina, in 1949 and Spartanburg in 1950. The largest warehousing operation came back to Greenville in 1959 with an 85,000-square-foot facility at the Pleasantburg Industrial Park.
During its 101 years of business, Sullivan Hardware was at one time the largest supplier of farm equipment in northeast Georgia and South Carolina. They sold their last remaining Anderson and Belton retail stores in 1986.
John M. Nolan is owner of Greenville History Tours (greenvillehistorytours.com) and author of “A Guide to Historic Greenville, SC” and “Lost Restaurants of Greenville, SC.”
