South Carolina Genealogy

On June 14, 2008 the Oconee Heritage Center will be staging the Newry Folk Festival in Newry, SC. (West of Greenville, SC near Lake Keowee.) There will be crafts and music throughout the day as well as a fiddle, banjo and guitar competition at the old mill store. The date of the festival marks the 114th anniversary of the first time one of the wheels was turned by water at this water powered mill. Newry sprung up as a textile town around the first mill there which was founded by William Ashmead Courtenay in 1893. Courtenay had located his mill along the Little River and named the location Newry after the Irish place that his ancestors had come from.

The area was sparsely settled when he established the mill here, they needed to bring in quite a bit to support the operation, but “On June 14, 1894, water first turned one of the mill power wheels. The mill was in full operation by the end of that year. The plant was originally operated by hydro power, but c.1905, steam engines and boilers increased production.”

A town with simple houses was built around the mill to support the workers that were needed to keep operations going. By the time things were completed there were 115 houses. (Most of these had been designed to host two families each.)

The Banjo, Fiddle and Guitar competition will be at 2PM the afternoon of June 14th. More information should be available from the Oconee Heritage Center.

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