The Greenville Enterprise Archive

The weekly Greenville Enterprise captured the city of Greenville, located in the Piedmont region of South Carolina, at an especially dynamic stage in its history. Over the course of its lifetime, railroads and telegraph lines reached Greenville, public buildings were constructed, and banks, civic groups, and schools were established. By the 1870s, Greenville had positioned itself as the region’s leader in textile manufacturing.

The Greenville Enterprise began in 1854 as the Greenville Southern Enterprise, a partisan paper "devoted to progress, the rights of the South, and the diffusion of useful knowledge among all classes of working men." In the inaugural issue, dated May 19, 1854, editor and proprietor William Pierce Price aligned his views with those of states' rights advocates John Caldwell Calhoun, John McPherson Berrien, James Buchanan, and James Kirke Paulding, leaving no room for doubt on his political outlook. While pro-secessionist sentiments were hardly unusual in late antebellum-era South Carolina newspapers, Greenville had the reputation at that time of being a stronghold of Unionist sympathies (Benjamin Franklin Perry, the state representative for Greenville District, had opposed the doctrine of nullification so strongly that he fought a duel with Turner Bynum, the editor of the Greenville Southern Sentinel, over the issue). During the Civil War, the Enterprise ran articles like "Are Confederate bonds a safe and profitable investment?"

In the mid-1860s, George Franklin Townes assumed the duties of editor, and John Crooks Bailey took over as proprietor. On April 14, 1866, the Walhalla Keowee Courier approvingly noted, "This sprightly journal has been much improved in size and appearance by its energetic proprietors, Messrs. J.C. Bailey & Co." On February 9, 1870, John Bailey and his brother Edward Bailey renamed the newspaper the Greenville Enterprise, announcing, "It gives us pleasure to be able to fulfill our promise of enlargement this week ... we wish to entertain the politician, the farmer, the mechanic, the preacher, the ladies, and all classes ..." Later that year, the Bailey brothers ran advertisements in the Charleston Daily News claiming the Enterprise had the highest circulation rates of all newspapers in Greenville County.

In June 1873, John Bailey acquired the Greenville Mountaineer, which he merged with the Greenville Enterprise to establish the Greenville Enterprise and Mountaineer. The Enterprise and Mountaineer continued under different names through the early 20^th century. The last issue of the Greenville Enterprise appeared on June 11, 1873.