William Gregg Jr., 1834-1895

Quick Facts

Significance:

Rock Hill/Connemara Owner 1889 - 1900

Date of Birth:

1834

Date of Death:

1895

The details of the life of William Gregg Jr., the second owner of what is now Connemara, are sparse and fragmented. He was the eldest son of the much better-known William Gregg Sr.  

Gregg Sr. was one of the early supporters of Southern industrialization. He built a textile mill called Graniteville Mill near Aiken, South Carolina (S.C.) in 1847. It was one of the largest mills in the South during the antebellum period and included a factory village. The original mill, canal, schoolhouse, and houses still exist in a National Historic Landmark Community.   

William Gregg Jr. was born in 1834 into this wealthy, slaveholding family. He spent much of his youth at the family estate Kalmia, overlooking the Graniteville Mill. Kalmia was a plantation-style estate of around 5,000 acres outside of Aiken, S.C.  

After college, he went into the family textile business. When he was only 23, he became treasurer of the company and later became a director. He appeared active in the textile for many years. However, by 1867 Gregg Jr. was no longer a director of the mill. When he fully separated from the factory is unknown. He likely inherited at least a part of the Graniteville Mill operation when his father died in 1867. The years following Gregg Sr.’s passing were uncertain but also filled with changes for Gregg Jr. In December 1869, The Charleston Daily News reported a case of “Lynch Law in South Carolina.”  

“Samuel Jefferson, one of the hands on the plantation of Mr. William Gregg, was detected in a theft of cotton by his fellow laborers. They were justly indignant at his depravity, and held a Lynch court, when it was decided that the culprit should receive twelve lashes on the bare back. They were laid on by muscular arms and justice was appeased, as all concerned were colored and they conceded that they had a perfect right to whip each other.” 

 – December 2nd, 1869. The Charleston Daily News. 

The incident took place on Seabrook Island which Gregg Jr. had only owned for roughly a year. It revealed that Gregg Jr. was hiring Black workers, something Gregg Sr. had refused to do in his mills. If the newspaper report is accurate, it also shows post-war social and racial developments as the U.S. established new cultural norms.  

By 1872 William Gregg Jr.’s prospects failed, and he declared bankruptcy. Gregg Jr. sold his Seabrook property and with his younger brother James sold Kalmia. The brother’s relationship was rife. The most likely cause of tension was a debt that William owed James. They also had legal skirmishes with each other and other family members. William spent the next decade in business and real estate ventures. His ventures eventually led him to a fraud charge in 1878, over-inflated real estate, and an organized theft of $5,000. Gregg Jr.’s consequences for the fraud are unknown but by 1883 he was working in the booming phosphate mining industry. Gregg Jr. used his connections with wealthy former Confederate families often in business. His investment in phosphate mines finally stabilized his income. Years later, he bought the furnished Rock Hill property in 1889. He used it as a summer retreat while maintaining permanent residency in Charleston, where he died in 1895. His widow, Mary Fleming Gregg, owned Rock Hill for another six years. She rented out the famous house as a summer home until selling it to Ellison Adger Smyth in 1900.