Editor’s note: This is part of a continuing series of columns, stories and photos by Greenville County Historical Society examining the history of Greenville and the Upstate.
In today’s political world, immigration is often discussed negatively, mostly in terms of what it costs. Greenville’s history makes the opposite case. The storefronts, the churches, the neighborhoods and the downtown we brag about were built by people who came here from somewhere else, and they built them while being told they did not belong. Unless you were Cherokee, someone in your family immigrated here.
The story begins in 1768, when Richard Pearis established a fur trading business on the Reedy with 12 enslaved people. He married a Cherokee woman to get around the rule that only Cherokees could own land. Through his son, he took nearly 100,000 acres, and lost it in court in 1773. Greenville’s first acknowledged newcomer was an opportunist. That belongs in the record before we celebrate anyone else.
The farmers who followed were Scots-Irish, German and English, most of whom were driven from their countries by high rents and religious discrimination. They came mostly through Philadelphia and down the Great Wagon Road. From corn and hogs, hides and tools, a town grew on land with prior claims.
Greeks arrived in Greenville around 1905 with fruit carts and shoeshine chairs. Within a decade, they ran the town’s restaurants, including the Sanitary Café, then Stax’s, Pete’s and The Clock. Jewish families opened stores on Main Street and built the first synagogue.
Latino workers came in the 1980s and after. They framed the houses, staffed the plants, opened businesses and filled the schools. Vietnamese families rebuilt here after the war. DJ Rama’s family started with one motel and went on to build JHM Hotels, the predecessor to today’s Auro Hotels. Vivian Wong came from Hong Kong in 1963 and gave this city decades of leadership. Edvard Tchivzhel defected from Russia in 1991 and grew the Greenville Symphony. Refugees from Congo, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan and Burma came more recently.
Talking about immigration is not always easy. Language barriers, high housing costs and fear about documentation are real. They are not the reasons to leave people out of the conversation, but the reasons to include them. People take care of what they helped build.
So ask it plainly. What would Greenville be without our immigrants? Without the Greeks in the diners, the merchants on Main, the crews who built our neighborhoods, the families who started over?
Immigration is not a sidebar to Greenville’s history. It is the history. They did not merely settle here. They made the place what it is today.
Next: Greenville’s leaders learned that a city could sell more than hotel rooms. How the Poinsett Hotel and civic boosters helped market a confident new image of Greenville to visitors and investors.
Russell Stall is a Greenville native, former at-large Greenville City Council member, and certified city planner. He serves as executive director of the Greenville County Historical Society. For more information, visit greenvillehistory.org.
