By Russell Stall
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 late 19th-century Greenville, men held the visible power: mills, railroads, banks, churches, schools, government and the historical record itself. Women occupied different ground, excluded from politics and expected to shape the world through home, church, family and charity.
But limited power did not mean powerless. Women built Greenville’s civic life from the margins, organizing schools, literary societies, clubs and church networks. Men built the economic framework; women built the community’s culture and conscience.
Mary Camilla Judson, namesake of M. Judson Booksellers, helped create that conscience. Born in Connecticut in 1828, she received an education many women were denied. Yale refused to admit her because she was a woman, deepening her belief that women’s minds deserved cultivation.
Judson came to Greenville in 1857 and became Lady Principal of Greenville Woman’s College, teaching English, French, art, astronomy, botany and elocution. She also introduced calisthenics, likely a first for a Southern women’s college. Her Judson Literary Society gave students a place to write papers, debate, and build the college library through 25-cent dues, practicing public speech a society discouraged.
That impulse shaped the Thursday Club, organized in 1889 in a Greenville of unpaved streets, no telephones and roughly 10,000 people. Some women slipped away quietly to meetings; others called it a tea or sewing circle. But they were sewing something larger: a study club to feed their minds.
The Club was never merely social. Members researched serious subjects, presented papers and discussed public issues. Mary Putnam Gridley gave it civic edge. She was a businesswoman who ran Camperdown Mill, signing her name “M. P. Gridley” since women were not seen as capable business leaders. She believed study should lead to action: education, libraries, public health, playgrounds.
This story also reaches beyond white college women. Black women sustained Greenville through churches, schools, homes and mutual aid, often with less recognition. Hattie Logan Duckett carried that work forward, founding the Phillis Wheatley Association in 1919 as a lasting institution for Black Greenville.
The Thursday Club still meets today. My mother and wife are members, part of a line of Greenville women gathering for more than a century to read, think and serve. Together, they gave Greenville memory, conscience, culture and voice, working inside limits while quietly proving them wrong.
Next: We ask why and how textiles came to Greenville, and how waterpower, cotton, railroads, cheap labor, capital and leadership remade the Upstate.
Dr. 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.
