Brutontown

Front: 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: 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.