Brutontown

Front inscription

Brutontown, an historic African-American community, grew up around the intersection of Paris Mountain Rd. and Rutherford Rd. Benjamin Bruton, a mulatto freedman, bought 1.75 acres here in 1874. He built a house and blacksmith shop, labeled “Bruton’s Shop” on Kyzer’s 1882 map of Greenville County. Other blacks, a few of them tradesmen like Bruton but most tenant farmers, soon moved to this area. By 1880 sixty African-American families lived here.

Reverse inscription

The community, on both sides of Rutherford Rd., was known as “Brutontown” by about 1900. In 1921 farm land was subdivided into town lots, in an are 2 blocks deep and 6 blocks wide. Bruton Temple Baptist Church, the first church here, was founded in 1921. By 1930 Brutontown numbered about 300 residents. The three-acre “Society Burial Ground” on Leo Lewis St., dating from before the Civil War, includes many graves of slaves, free blacks, and freedmen.