For several thousand years, there was little
human activity along the little waterway that was to eventually be known
as Lawson's Fork Creek. Hunting parties of Native American Indians passed
over and around the area. There was an abundance of wildlife. The Indians
lived lightly on the land. They left little to mark their thousands of
years living in the Piedmont except an occasional stone arrowhead.
The area along the creek was part of a vast wilderness that changed
little over the centuries until the coming of the Europeans. The first
time that the creek was seen by one of the white Europeans was about the
year, 1567, when a party of Spanish explorers under the command
of Captain Juan Pardo passed nearby. In 1934, a stone marked with the date
"1567" and direction markings was plowed up on a farm near Inman, close
to Lawson's Fork Creek. This stone is thought to be left by Pardo's expedition
and is now in the Spartanburg Museum.
This was the first contact with the Europeans but it was only the
beginning. It started slowly at first. It was almost another 200 years
before the white men came to the area of the creek in any numbers. In all
this time, the area near what would eventually be called Lawson's Fork Creek
and the Pacolet River remained a perfect wilderness. Around 1750, more white
men came to the area. These men brought their families and started to make
settlements. For the most part, they came down from the north, particularly
the state of Pennsylvania. They first settled on the branches of the Tyger
River, on Fairforest Creek and along the Pacolet River. They came in increasing
numbers and changed the Piedmont forever.
The settlers worked hard to make a living and raise their crops,
particularly corn. They used the corn for food for themselves and their
animals. They needed to have the corn ground into meal. Some of the settlers
built small water powered mills using the creeks that provided a ready
source of water power. It was during this time that Lawson's Fork Creek
got its name. The origin of who and where Lawson was has been lost to
time but evidently, the "Fork" name was given because it flowed into and
was a fork of the Pacolet River.
For about the next 20 years or so, after 1750, only an occasional
family settled along Lawson's Fork and there was probably a small corn
grinding mill or two using the water power of the creek. But the year, 1773,
was the beginning of using the water power of Lawson's Fork that eventually
led to what we know today as Glendale.
