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Elias Earle was one of the two most important residents of the Greenville District at the beginning of the nineteenth century along with Lemuel Alston. He was born on a plantation in Virginia in 1762. He inherited that plantation when he was seven years old, and when he was twenty-five he moved to South Carolina. Once Earle got there, he immediately began to buy property in the Greenville area, starting with five hundred acres along the Saluda River. In total, he purchased 4, 476 acres in Greenville County between 1787 and 1816. This area included 700 acres along Richland Creek, which is a branch of the Reedy River about two miles away from the center of Greenville. Earle died in 1823 after a long and painful illness. Twentieth-century floods washed away the remains of Earle's houses. Today his thousands of acres have disappeared under the waters of Lake Hartwell. |
