page_title: Greenville, South Carolina
section_title: Latter 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Greenville, South Carolina / History / Latter 19th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Swamp Rabbit train in Greenville in 1890s.
context_page_description: Greenville is a city in and the seat of Greenville County, South Carolina, United States. The city's mayor is Knox H. White, who has been in that position since December 1995. With an estimated population of 70,635 as of 2019, it is the sixth-largest city in the state. The population of the surrounding area was 400,492 as of 2010, making it the third-largest urban area in South Carolina as well as the fastest growing. Greenville is the largest city in the Greenville-Anderson-Mauldin Metropolitan Statistical Area. The MSA had a population of 920,477 in 2019, making it the largest in South Carolina and the third largest in the Carolinas.
  Greenville is the largest city in the Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson Combined Statistical Area, a 10-county region of northwestern South Carolina known as "The Upstate". According to United States Census Bureau, the CSA had a population of 1,475,235 as of 2019, making it the largest CSA in the state. Greenville is located approximately halfway between Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina, along Interstate 85, and its metropolitan area also includes Interstates 185 and 385.
context_section_description: In December 1860 Greenville supported a convention to debate the issue of secession for South Carolina. The Greenville District sent James Furman, William K. Easley, Perry E. Duncan, William H. Campbell, and James P. Harrison as delegates for the convention. On December 20, 1860, the South Carolina state convention, along with the Greenville delegation, voted to secede from the Union. Greenville County provided over 2,000 soldiers to the Confederate States Army. The town supplied food, clothing, and firearms to the Confederacy. Greenville saw no action from the war until 1865 when Union troops came through the town looking for President Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy who had fled south from Richmond, Virginia. In June 1865 Andrew Johnson appointed Greenville County native Benjamin Franklin Perry as Governor of South Carolina.
  In February 1869, Greenville's town charter was amended by the S. C. General Assembly establishing Greenville, the town, as a city. Construction boomed in the 1870s such as the establishment of a bridge over the Reedy River, new mills on the river and new railroads. The Greenville News was established in 1874 as Greenville's first daily newspaper. Southern Bell installed the first telephone lines in the city. The most important infrastructure that came to the city were cotton mills. Prominent cotton mill businesses operated near Greenville making it a cotton mill town. By 1915 Greenville became known as the "Textile Center of the South." From 1915 to 2004, the city hosted an important textile manufacturing trade fair, the Southern Textile Exposition.
caption: The Greenville and Northern Railway in the 1890s which was converted into the Swamp Rabbit Trail in 2010.
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