South Converse Neighborhood
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During the late 1800’s Spartanburg was developing more and more away from the city center. Union Street (known as Prince Street at that time) was a main road out of town and many people had farms along this road. In 1900, the 56 acre area between Ridgewood Avenue and Winsmith Ave was sub-divided by John Wilson Alexander (1864 - 6 Dec. 1927, obituary below) of Charlotte. N. C. and named Winsmith Place (Book VVV, pg 260 & 261).
The Winsmith Place sub-division land was originally owned by John Winsmith. John Winsmith (13 Jan. 1802 - 29 Nov. 1888) was a Glenn Springs, S. C. planter, South Carolina politician and physician. In 1871 John Winsmith sat for the South Carolina Bar and became an attorney in order to assist his son in law. In 1875 John Winsmith sells and gifts his 900 + acre plantation, Camp Hill, to his daughter, Catherine Winsmith Moore (5 June 1839 - 1 Jan. 1929). About this time he moves to his town house located on Union Street between Marion Ave. and Alexander Avenue.
Take from the bird's eye view of Spartanburg dated 1891
In his book Entrepreneurs in the Southern Upcountry, Bruce W. Eelman follows the evolution of an entrepreneurial culture in nineteenth-century Spartanburg S. C. Counter to the view that the Civil War and Reconstruction alone brought social and economic revolution to the South, Eelman finds that antebellum Spartanburg businessmen advocated a comprehensive vision for modernizing their region. Although their plans were forward looking, they still supported slavery and racial segregation.
By the 1840s, Spartanburg merchants, manufacturers, lawyers, and other professionals were looking to capitalize on the area’s natural resources by promoting iron and textile mills and a network of rail lines. Recognizing that cultural change had to accompany material change, these businessmen also worked to reshape legal and educational institutions. Their prewar success was limited, largely due to low country planters’ political power. However, their modernizing spirit would serve as an important foundation for postwar development.
Although the Civil War brought unprecedented trauma to the Spartanburg community, the modernizing merchants, industrialists, and lawyers strengthened their political and social clout in the aftermath. As a result, much of the modernizing blueprint of the 1850s was realized in the 1870s. Eelman finds that Spartanburg’s modernizers slowed legal and educational reform only when its implementation seemed likely to empower African Americans.
John Winsmith was one of Spartanburg's driving forces for change during the Reconstruction period The Biographical Directory of the South Carolina Senate 1776-1985 Volume III gives us much insight on his life. “John Winsmith, son of William Smith and Mourning Bearden, was born John Winn Smith in Spartanburg. He changed his mane to Winsmith sometime after 1831. A student at Pennsylvania Medical College in Philadelphia, he graduated circa. 1830. Returning to South Carolina, he settled as a physician and planter in Spartanburg. According to the 1860 slave schedules, he owned sixty-one slaves. Late in life, he was admitted to the bar to assist his son-in-law’s practice (1870). During the 1830’s, he was on of several men who received a charter for the development of Glenn Springs. Spartanburg chose him for the House for the Twenty-ninth General Assembly (1830-1831); he was on the committees on medical (1830-1831) and vacancy offices (1830-1831). Although an advocate of nullification and a member of the State Rights and Free Trade Association (1832), Winsmith opposed secession in the 1850s and was a delegate for Spartanburg to the Southern Rights state convention (1852). Once again elected to the House, he served Spartanburg in the 40th (1852-1853), 41st (1854-1855), 42nd (1856-1857), an d44th (1860-1861) General Assemblies; however, he was elected to the 41st General Assembly in a special election and qualified 15 December 1854. He was a member of the House committees on medical (1852-1853, 1856-1857), way and means (1852-1857, 1860-1862), and lunatic asylum (1860-1861). As a delegate for Spartanburg, he attended the state constitutional convention of 1865. Elected to the state Senate, he represented Spartanburg in the 47th General Assembly (1865-1866) and served on the committees on commerce, manufactures, and mechanic arts (1865-1866); finance and banks (1865-1866); and lunatic asylum and medical accounts (1865-1866). While in the Senate, he opposed the so-called “Black Code” which attempted to exert control over freedmen (1865). Although previously a Democrat, he joined the Republican Party in 1870 and was subsequently attacked and seriously wounded by the Ku Klux Klan because of his cooperation the Radical government (1861). The Carolina Spartan (9 July 1874), however, described him as having “kept his skirts clear of all the infamy which has disgraced the Senate under Republican rule. The Dr. is a Republican, a man of ability, and we believe, strictly honest.”. An unsuccessful candidate for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 1874, Winsmith afterwards remained affiliated with the party but ceased to be active. Other offices and memberships he held included director of the Spartanburg and Union Railroad (1854-1859), member of the Glenn Springs Democratic Club (1868), warden and representative for Calvary Episcopal Church at the state diocesan convention (1850, 1871), state Republican executive committeeman (1874), commissioner of elections for Spartanburg (1874), delegate for Spartanburg to the state Republican convention (1874, 1876), delegate to the national Republican convention (1876), and Republican presidential elector (1876). He and his wife Catherine Elizabeth Faber, were the parents of at least two children: John Christopher and Kate (m. Baxter H. Moore). Survived by his wife and daughter, John Winsmith died 29 November 1888 in Spartanburg and was buried in the Church of the Advent Cemetery.”
The South Converse Street neighborhood is made up of four different sub-divisions. They are Winsmith Place 1900, Belleview 1910 (Princeton, Andrews and Winsmith Streets, plat book No.4 p. 150-151), Candun sub-division 30 August 1939 (Harvard, Cambridge and Duncan Park Drive, plat book No. 14 p. 167-168) and Bellemont 1948 (Duncan, LaSalle and Hanover Streets, plat book No. 23 p. 424-427). Plat for the Candun (DUN CAN) subdivision Plat for the Belleview subdivision 
Candun, built to provide needed housing for the post-depression era and Bellemont provided post World War II housing were originally part of the David Duncan farm. David Duncan purchased a large tract of land in 1859 and built a grand country house on this site. Mr. Duncan used Andrew Jackson Downing's "Country Houses" pattern book of 1850 for his inspiration. (David Duncan's book remains in a private Spartanburg collection)
David Duncan was a Confederate Major during the Civil War. Duncan served as a trustee for both Wofford College and Converse College after the war, and he also served as a board member of Spartan Mills and president of the Spartanburg-Asheville Railroad before his death in 1902. |
