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SPC Charter Members: Ellison A. and Julia Smyth


Ellison A. and Julia Smyth 

  Ellison A. Smyth, his wife Julia Gambrill, their son James Adger, and daughter Margaret Smyth McKissick were all original members of Second Presbyterian Church when it was organized in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1892. During the organizational meeting it was recorded in the minutes that two motions regarding the church name and location in the West End along with the men selected deacons and elders were made by E. A. Smyth and adopted. In the minutes, the name is spelled “Smythe” instead of “Smyth,” but his grave monument inscription in Charleston is spelled “Smyth.”
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Joseph Ellison Adger Smyth was born in Charleston, October 26, 1847. He chose not to use “Joseph” and instead went by Ellison. His mother was Margaret (Adger) Smyth, whose family was involved in business enterprises associated with shipping, warehousing, hardware, and merchandising. Young Ellison was educated privately including studies in Columbia, and he must have been helped by the extensive library of his bibliophile, even bibliomaniac father, Rev. Thomas Smyth, D.D., who was the minister of the Second Presbyterian Church. Ellison attended South Carolina Military College, The Citadel, until 1864 when he left to join the Confederate army. He had seen the first shot fired on Fort Sumter in April of 1861.

            Following the war, E. A. Smyth’s interests led him not to become a minister like his father but instead he went into business as an entrepreneur and investor.  It was natural that with the experience and resources available through his connection to his mother’s family’s enterprises that he became a junior partner with the hardware establishment of J. E. Adger & Co.  It was while he was on a business trip to Baltimore that Ellison saw Julia Gambrill riding in a trolley car that he followed to her home where he asked her father’s permission for courting.  Ellison and Julia were married in 1869 and lived initially with his mother and father in their house on Meeting Street.  However, his sense of the future of business and technology and the changing situation at J. E. Adger & Co. led him to consider a new business venture.
            Maybe it was the processing machinery coming into the port of Charleston from industrial powerhouse cities such as Manchester, England, that grabbed his attention regarding the up and coming textile industry, or possibly it was the investment acumen, advice, and funding of the Adger family that led him into the business, but whatever the case, he was entering uncharted territory given that he had never been inside a textile mill.  So, Smyth and Francis J. Pelzer of Charleston formed a partnership to build a textile community that became Pelzer Mills.  “Captain” Smyth, as he was often called, was president and treasurer of Pelzer Manufacturing Company for 43 years until it was sold in 1923 to Lockwood, Greene, and Company.  In 1899, he had organized Belton mills and was also instrumental in the organization of a bank in the town.  The Smyths at one point moved from Pelzer to Greenville where he was involved in a number of enterprises including The Greenville News, which he controlled for seventeen years, until he sold his interest in 1919 to its manager at the time, B. H. Peace.  In 1920, he sold the majority of Belton mill stock to Woodward, Baldwin and Company for a substantial sum.  Captain Smyth served as president of the Cotton Manufacturers association of South Carolina for 14 years and at one time was president of the American Cotton Manufacturers Association.  He was instrumental in the enactment of compulsory education laws and registration of marriages and births in South Carolina.  Long before the enactment of labor laws, he set up a system in his mills to prevent the employment of children under twelve years of age while providing schooling up to that age.

            As noted at the beginning of this article, E. A. Smyth was an original member of Second Presbyterian Church, Greenville, when it was organized in 1892.  However, his interest in supporting the starting of new churches extended to other congregations in the area.  The Pelzer Presbyterian Church had its beginnings and organization with help from E. A. Smyth.  On November 20, 1881, in the meeting hall over the Brown, Williams, and Co. store, Rev. C. L. Stewart delivered the first Presbyterian sermon preached in the Pelzer community.  The service and the Bible passage for the exposition were requested by E. A. Smyth.  The text was Philippians 1:27, “Stand fast in one spirit, with one mind, striving together for the faith of the Gospel.”  From that first service and into 1882, the Presbyterians were able to have occasional preaching in Pelzer, but by the next year, the small group was of sufficient size to request Enoree Presbytery to organize the church.  The petitioners’ request was granted and on October 29, 1883, a commission consisting of Reverends J. B. Adger, J. O. Lindsay, and J. L. Martin, along with Ruling Elders Carver Randal and Thomas F. Anderson led the service of organization.  Included among the nine original members of the church were E. A. and Julia Smyth.  The Pelzer congregation was able to construct a church building that was dedicated in a service led by Rev. G. R. Brackett of Second Presbyterian Church, Charleston, on February 2, 1896.

            Two other churches that E. A. Smyth was involved in were Fourth Presbyterian in Greenville, and First Presbyterian in Hendersonville, North Carolina.  Fourth Church was near to the family home on Broadus Avenue in what was known as Boyce Gardens, but is currently designated the Pettigru Historic District.  The Smyths had been dismissed to Fourth from Second Church in November 1912.  He was a member of the presbytery committee that organized the church in 1913 and he donated the land upon which the facility was constructed.  In Smyth’s later life, which might be called his retirement years even though it seems he never really retired, he was a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Hendersonville.  The Smyths had purchased a home not far from Hendersonville in Flat Rock which served first as a summer residence but became in later years their primary home.  The house is known today by its name that was given to it by the Smyths, “Connemara,” which is currently open as a museum for the owner that followed the Smyth family, Carl Sandberg.  Ellison was largely responsible for funding the construction of a Sunday school building in Hendersonville which was built as a memorial to his son who died in 1928.

            There were other aspects of E. A. Smyth’s life that can be traced to his heritage as a Presbyterian and the son of a minister.  Not only did he follow in his parents footsteps in the church, but he also learned the love of books from his minister-theologian father.  Books have been an important part of ministers’ and Christians’ lives ever since the Apostle Paul asked Timothy in 2 Tim. 4:13 to bring him the books he left at Troas with Carpus.  However, Smyth's hobby was collecting old manuscripts and books of South Carolina history and not necessarily those a minister like his father might have preferred.  Over 200 of E. A. Smyth’s books were donated to and are held in the archives of Presbyterian College in Clinton.  He also served on the Presbyterian College board, 1913-1924.  In October 1924, E. A. Smyth was awarded an honorary doctorate at the dedicatory exercises of the Thomas Smyth Dormitory and Leroy Springs Gymnasium.

            Joseph Ellison Adger Smyth, member of the Presbyterian Church, ruling elder, supporter of new churches, and dean of South Carolina textile manufacturers died at Connemara on August 3, 1942 at 5:15 p.m.  Two funeral services were conducted in his memory with the first held at Connemara, which was conducted by Rev. L. T. Wilds, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Hendersonville, and the second service was presented at his family’s home church, Second Presbyterian, Charleston, where he was buried in the cemetery next to Julia who had died in 1927.  Ellison and Julia had twelve children together including eight daughters and four sons, but seven of the children died within the first seven years of their lives.

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C. L. Stewart, Historical Sketch of the Presbyterian Church of Pelzer, South Carolina, Delivered Sunday, Jan. 10, 1897, Printed by Order of the Session, 1897; F. D. Jones and W. H. Mills, History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina Since 1850, Columbia:  R. L. Bryan Co., 1926; E. A. Smyth’s obituary in The Greenville News, Tuesday, Aug. 4, 1942, and Julia’s obituary in The Greenville News, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 1927; Louisa C. Stoney, ed., Autobiographical Notes, Letters and Reflections By Thomas Smyth, D.D., Charleston:  Walker, Evans, & Cogswell Co., 1914; a copy of the program for the dedicatory exercises at Presbyterian College in which Smyth was given his doctorate was graciously provided by Assistant Archivist Sarah Leckie.





This post first appeared on The Corner Of River And Rhett, please read the originial post: here

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SPC Charter Members: Ellison A. and Julia Smyth

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