SPC Charter Members: The Allen Brothers’ Families, Part 3
The Brothers’ West End Businesses
R. E. Allen & Brother Grocery Store, May 1898. After the brothers left Ferguson and Miller they became involved in the retail grocery business according to their listings in the Greenville city directory for 1896-97. Their store was located at 608 Pendleton and two doors down at 612 was their bakery. Currently, there are six connected buildings on the west side of Pendleton that date to the nineteenth century. Judith Bainbridge has described the collection of storefronts as “Greenville’s Rainbow Row.” It is not certain which extant building if any in the row was the Allens’ store, but it may be the first in the row as one heads south down Pendleton. Regardless of the doubt concerning the exact store location, the store was in the heart of the West End business district. By 1898, the bakery had been closed and replaced with a millinery shop, and by about 1900, the Grocery Store was sold.
Wholesale Grocery Warehouse, December 1902. Free of their retail grocery store, the brothers entered the wholesale grocery business a few hundred yards toward the river on the east side of South Main. The move took place sometime around 1901. On the Sanborn Map for 1902 the frame warehouse building they occupied covered a footprint of about 9,000 square feet which was sizeable when compared to their brick store at 608 Pendleton. By 1907, the brothers had moved their warehouse to the site that is currently occupied by River Place at the corner of Camperdown and South Main. According to the city directories, sometime after 1915, Henry left the wholesale grocery business because the directory of 1921 lists only Eagle Roller Mills as a family enterprise.
Eagle Roller Mills, July 1913. The date of the Allen brothers’ entrance into the grain milling business could be as early as 1901, but it could not be earlier than 1898 because the mill is not shown on the map for that year. The business was listed as operated by the Allen brothers in the 1901-1902 Greenville directory and first appeared on the 1902 edition of the Sanborn Maps. It was located on the east side of the railroad tracks that currently pass Fluor Field. The mill continued operation under Henry’s leadership after Robert’s death in 1909, but sometime between 1923 and 1926 it ceased operation. Henry had tried to interest his sons in taking over Eagle Roller Mills, but it appears that he was unable to convince them to continue the business. Henry Allen died in 1929. Following Robert’s death, Henry had continued to call the company “R. E. Allen & Brother” which reminded Greenvillians of Robert’s contributions to the West End.
Eagle Roller Mills was in a brick building with its own railroad siding to facilitate the delivery of coal for fuel. The text on the 1913 Sanborn Map describes its operation as including several items of machinery distributed on three floors. The grinding of grain was accomplished on the first floor, purifying on the second, and bolting on the third. Of concern to a fire insurance company was the fact that the brothers did not have a night watchman. The building had electric lights, was powered with steam heated by a coal fire, the heat in the office was an open grate, and for extinguishing fires there were water barrels and pails distributed throughout the facility. The details of a facility’s fire-causing sources was information that concerned insurance companies as they developed bids for coverage. In the case of the grinding and processing of grain, fires and explosions sometimes occurred due to the fine dust distributed in the air by the grinding of grain into flour.
Conclusion—As Greenville’s West End grew with the increase in the textile industry,
the business interests of Robert E. and Henry W. Allen prospered with the population growth. From a grocery store, to a wholesale grocery warehouse, and then also a substantial mill processing grain, the Allens were successful entrepreneurs. While managing their business enterprises the two brothers continued to be involved in Second Presbyterian Church in various ways.
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Sources—The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of Greenville along with those of many other South Carolina cities are available in the digital collection of the South Caroliniana Library at, http://library.sc.edu/digital/collections/sanborn.html. The city directories are available in the South Carolina Room, Hughes Branch, Greenville County Library, which also has microform images of the Sanborn Maps. The city population statistics are in A. V. Huff, Jr., Greenville, USC Press, 1995. Greenville being said to have its own “Rainbow Row” is from Judith Bainbridge’s book, Greenville’s West End, West End Association, undated. A very helpful book is John M. Nolan’s coat-pocket sized, A Guide to Historic Greenville, South Carolina, The History Press, 2008.
