PLBtoday doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it? Don’t worry, GVLtoday isn’t going anywhere. We’re just imagining what it would be like if GVLtoday started in the 1700s — when Greenville, SC was originally named Pleasantburg, SC.
Let’s take it back.
- 1770 — Richard Pearis was gifted ~100,000 acres of land from the Cherokees and built a saw mill + grist. During the Revolutionary War, it was burned down and he left Upstate.
- 1784 — Lemuel Alston purchased ~11,000 acres of Pearis’s former land.
- 1786 — The state legislature formed Greenville (formerly Greeneville), named for General Nathanael Greene.
- 1794 — The Greenville county courthouse was built on Alston’s property. A few years later, Alston made a map of 60 lots for a village he called Pleasantburg. The lots didn’t sell well and the name Pleasantburg didn’t stick. Since the courthouse already had the name “Greenville...”
The rest, as they say, is history.
