
As usual, fellow explorer Alan Russell and I planned to a ramble on MLK Day, as we do each year. We brainstormed several options, and decided to head to upper Anderson County to the community of Slabtown.
I had actually visited these sites back in 2021 with the intention of writing a blog post about the community. I actually had made a good start on the post, but for whatever reason I never finished it. I think it’s because I found so much history that I had a hard time bringing it together. Regardless, I’m starting with that information and tacking our exploration onto the end of it, with a bit more history interspersed.
Historical Background
The following was from my original 2021 draft…
As with so many of my explorations, this one started with an unfamiliar name on a map. An 1888 USGS topographic map for Pickens showed a town named “Equality” in Anderson County, just south of the Pickens-Anderson County Line. My curiosity was piqued. Was this a freedman’s town like Liberia near Table Rock or Promise Land in Greenwood County? Or was it the attempt at a Utopian society like Equality Colony in Washington State or The Kingdom of Happy Land near Tuxedo?

I needed to so some digging and pay it a visit. I didn’t find Utopia, but I did find a town with a weird name and an academy that sounds like something out of Star Trek.
Slabtown and Equality
I had been aware of Slabtown, having passed through it many times on my way to Pendleton. I had even considered doing a blog post on it many years ago, but slipped right off the back burner and down behind the stove to fester. The appearance of this new map name brought it all back to the forefront.
I started my research with the name “Equality”. According to Carolana.com this was originally the site of a store owned by James McCann. The store was also designated as a post office in 1826 as “McCann’s Store.” Ten years later on May 23, 1836 the post office was renamed “Equality”, but it was still maintained at McCann’s Store, which stayed in business for many years afterwards.
I’ve not been able to find any reason why the name Equality was selected. It predates the Civil War, so it wasn’t associated with any notion of racial equality. Having now read some of the history of the McCanns, I believe it was quite the contrary, as many of the families in the area were strong proponents of the Confederacy. The add below appeared in the Anderson Intelligencer and mentions several prominent families from Anderson and Pickens, but is held in Greenwood.

Names in South Carolina has this to say about the origin of the name, but this should probably be taken with a grain of salt.
In South Carolina, the post office at Slab, or Slabtown, later took the name of Equality, because, as it was claimed, the citizens were all so nearly equal in their possessions and positions in life.
That is, at least, for the white citizens of the area.
Neither Equality nor McCann appear on Robert Mills’s 1826 map of the Pendleton District. The only name to appear on Twenty Three Mile Creek in the area is Rankin’s Mill. That name will figure prominently later on in this story.

Late 1800s maps do show Equality Post Office, but they also show Slabtown. The 1877 and 1897 von Hasseln and Brown maps of Anderson County show both. The 1877 calls Slabtown “Old Slabtown.”
From everything I could find, the post office was called Equality up until is closure in 1907, but the surrounding community was called Slabtown. While I couldn’t find an origin for the name Equality, there was a consistent story about the origins of the name “Slabtown.” According to Louise Van Diver in her 1928 book, Traditions and History of Anderson County…
Probably the most interesting part of the township [Garvin Township] from an historical point is Slabtown, a village lying on the public road between Pendleton and Greenville. It received its name from the slabs used in the construction of several of its buildings. The first structure erected “was a mill on Six-and-Twenty Creek, built by a man named Rankin. It was long known as “Rankin’s Mill.” For more than a hundred years it and much of the surrounding property remained in the Rankin family.
Across the creek was erected a store built of slabs from the saw mill, as were a number of cattle sheds and other places for rough use or storage. It is said that the name was given by a party of emigrants who, when passing through, were struck with the building material so much in evidence, and remarked, “We surely have reached Slabtown.” The bridge over the creek is known as “Slab Bridge.” Since the War Between the States there is only one store there where two flourished before. It was long owned by T. S. and J. M. Glenn; nearby is a steam saw and grist mill.
Laura asked why the name “Slabtown” stuck. Shouldn’t it have been an insult? Who knows? GNIS data shows that there are twenty-seven towns named Slabtown throughout the United States. Perhaps it’s more of wearing an insult as a badge of honor.
Rankin’s Dam and Environmental Concerns
So, Rankin’s Saw Mill is the source of the name “Slabtown” and was the earliest, and possibly only industry in the community. However, it was not without controversy and the site of one of the first environmental conflicts. In 1876, George Washington Rankin, a descendent of the original Rankin settler, continued to operate the saw mill and added a flour mill to his business. These were powered by a dam across Three and Twenty Creek. According to William Bryan’s book The Price of Permanence…
For years, Rankin’s dam had been a flashpoint for the community. Although Slabtown was initially renowned for being healthy, in the early 1870s it was swept by a series of malaria outbreaks, which a vocal group of residents blamed on the dam. Three years before Rankin’s mills were burned, citizens from Anderson County had petitioned the state legislature to have his dam removed, though another group of residents petitioned to keep it standing. By 1871 the dam was enough of a problem that Rankin was indicted for maintaining a public nuisance by impeding the flow of Twenty-Three Mile Creek, overflowing lands of other property owners, and causing air and water to become “corrupted”–spreading malaria and other dangerous diseases.
Local newspapers covered Rankin’s court case, calling it the “Great Mill-Dam Case.” This article from an 1872 article in The Intelligencer is typical from the era…

G. W .Rankin lost the case, but his conviction was overturned on appeal. Slabtown residents were divided, some stating that the mills provided a necessary service, and others maintaining that the dam was the source of malaria and other disease. This letter to the editor from 1873 expresses the latter view, signed by “A Refugee”…
Here’s an excerpt…
It makes the heart bleed, Mr. Editor, to review the terrible disasters that have befallen the old Slab town neighborhood in the last few weeks. It is useless to recount the losses and sufferings of that neighborhood for years past. Everybody knows it. And the prime causes of these terrible calamities are palpable. The type of fever pervading the locality of Rankin’s mill dam, was of the malignant type, and one of the physicians who waited on the sick and dying in that neighborhood, said that it possessed the symptoms and virulence of the yellow fever, even to the black vomit.
Another letter from 1874 stated that, “The public health has become seriously impaired, in this naturally healthy and salubrious region, by malarious exhalations from the large bodies of wet and sobbed bottom lands lying along the margins of our creeks and branches.” Whew! That’s a mouthful.
With Rankin’s conviction overturned and with the local Board of Health refusing to intervene, residents took matters into their own hands. In 1873 two African American brothers, James and Frank Babb, used “spirits of turpentine” to burn Rankin’s mill to the ground.

The Babb Brothers were arrested, convicted, and sentenced to ten years hard labor for the arson. It’s still unknown whether they acted alone, or if they were just scapegoats for other operatives.
In 1874 the state legislature got involved and ordered the removal of the dam. Later that year the dam was finally removed, and the Rankin’s were paid $2,850 as compensation.
Slabtown Stores
The McCann Store has already been mentioned. It continued through several generations at Slabtown. I was able to find lots of references to McCanns in local papers. They speculated in land, farming, and other endeavors in addition to the store. Interestingly, they never referred to the area as Slabtown, but always as Equality.


Records show that there was at least one other store in the Equality/Slabtown area by 1875.
The Presbyterians – Richmond, Carmel, and Slabtown
Presbyterians and Methodists were the dominant religious sects in the community, and three congregations stand out. These groups played musical chairs, merging and moving several times during the early history of the area. The earliest of these was Richmond Presbyterian, founded in 1785 on property owned by Captain Robert Pickens. In 1787 Richmond merged with another congregation to become Carmel Presbyterian.
Under the influence of Francis Asbury, Methodist philosophy started to creep into the Carmel congregation and there was a split. Dr. A.L. Pickens, in a book called “Skyagunsta” referred to the split at Carmel in this excerpt from the book: “At old Carmel the Methodists had drawn off a large part of the congregation, establishing a new church just far enough away for the shouting and book board thumping not to worry the more staid Presbyterians. Captain Robert’s family was invaded by the schism, and tolerantly he contributed more land, both churches using the same cemetery for years. He saw to it that it was one of the best kept anywhere near, and hence a little company of twenty-odd Revolutionary soldiers, with the captains and majors among them for good measure, lie here.”
The Presbyterians were on the Anderson side of the county line and the Methodists established a congregation to the north on the Pickens side. In 1802 Carmel moved to a spot closer to Liberty and the Methodist congregation moved into Carmel’s old spot. There, the Methodists built a wood frame chapel to replace the original log structure. The Carmel congregation built a much larger brick structure, complete with separate entrances for men and women and a slave gallery.
The Methodist congregation became known as Wesley Chapel. The current wood frame structure was built in 1888, and eventually took the name Pickens Chapel.
As the population increased, so did the need for more churches. In 1870 the Slabtown community established Slabtown Presbyterian Church. This church only lasted until the early 1900s, but its cemetery remains.
The Thalian Web (and Slabtown Academy)
The area was served by two schools. The first was the Thalian Academy, founded around 1832 by Reverend John L. Kennedy. The name of the school was taken from the Greek meaning, “Of or relating to Thalia, especially considered as the Muse of pastoral and comic poetry; comic.”
Kennedy’s school focused on a classical education, which included studies “in the various branches of Mathematics and other Sciences–in the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French or German Language,” according to an advertisement in Pendleton’s Farmer and Planter. The advertisement below from an 1862 edition of the Edgefield Advertiser describes the same courses.

The school claimed many prominent Upstate men as its alumni. One florid description in an 1877 article in The Intelligencer described it this way…
In the palmy days of South Carolina, Slabtown was the Athens of the upper part of the State. Many of the most eminent men in the Southern States owe most of their greatness to the knowledge and mental training which they received while at the old academy under Rev. John L. Kennedy. Since the, with one or two exceptions, the schools here have been of but little consequence.
A history of the region around nearby Liberty, SC has this to say about the school…
The main wooden building was about sixty feet long and twenty-five wide. The single story building, boarded up and down with plank, contained only one large room without any dividing partitions. This room was occupied by the little girls and boys who belonged to the reading writing and arithmetic department.
The sleeping apartments of the pupils were cabins located near residences in the community. These two-room framed cabins were furnished by the owners of the property. Each cabin would accommodate from four to eight boys. Meals were furnished at the family table.
The school did not survive the Civil War. So many of its pupils joined the Confederate Army and went off to fight that the Thalian Academy was forced to close.
But the area didn’t go without a school for long. After the war a new academy was established at Slabtown. As with the Thalian Academy, Slabtown initially was a private school charging tuition, and like Thalian, Slabtown ran ads in local papers seeking students.

Like its predecessor, Slabtown gained a reputation for academic excellence. In 1886 the SC Legislature authorized the Slabtown School District as a public school.

SECTION 1 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina now met and sitting in General Assembly and by the authority of the same That a new School District is hereby established in the County of Anderson to be known as the Slabtown School District and at Slabtown shall be embraced in the following described area Taking the thereof Slabtown Academy as a point of departure let four lines be run toward the cardinal points of the compass each of said lines to the distance of two 2 miles then let lines be drawn at right angles to the four lines above given touching the extremity of each and extend until they cut each other thereby forming a square and the area thus enclosed shall constitute the said School District.
Slabtown Academy lasted until the early 1900s. Here is a photo of Slabtown students taken in 1896, as included in South Carolina Postcards, Volume IX.

I had the coordinates for the Equality Post Office and Slabtown Academy. I had visited Slabtown, Slabtown Cemetery, Richmond Presbyterian (aka Wesley Chapel, aka Pickens Chapel), and Carmel Presbyterian back in 2021, so I had those locations. It was time to revisit the area and finally finish this blog post.
Continued on the next page…
I really enjoy learning more about South Carolina from your blogs. My dad grew up in Greenwood, but he joined the Army, so naturally we did a lot of traveling. Every summer we spent time visiting family in the area. Even now, my favorite trips are to visit family still in the area. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Hope things are going well for you and your wife as you continue to recover from the storms in the fall.
Regarding the portion of your article concerning Jasper “Jap” Davis, is it possible that his behavior was the result of what we now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD? Could he have suffered some trauma during the Civil War which led to his later ill behavior? One can only speculate.
That’s what I thought while reading this.