The McKinney Family

As far as I know, the first McKinney to come to the Glendale area was John Thomas (Jack) McKinney. He was my paternal, great grandfather. He and his family lived in the Hillcrest and Glendale area.  I don’t know how or why Grandpa Jack made his way to the Glendale/Clifton area. He acquired a good bit of land between Hillcrest and the Glendale/Clifton road. He had a large farm near the intersection of the Glendale/Hillcrest road and the Sloans Grove road. He also bought land on the Glendale/Clifton road from Mr. Thomas. He farmed most of the land and always grew cotton, I was told by a relative.

There were other members of the McKinney family associated with the Glendale area. One of these is the family of John Henry McKinney and Gladys Chaffin McKinney.

(Click on this link to see the biographies of John Henry McKinney and Gladys Chaffin McKinney, with photos.)

Jack was not born in Glendale but in the area of Cherokee Springs in northern Spartanburg County. He was born July 4, 1853. He came to the Glendale vicinity as an adult around 1880. It is my belief that he relocated to Glendale to farm and grow cotton to sell to the Glendale Mill. As far as I know, he never worked in the mill himself.  He was married to Susan Cannon of the Cannon’s Camp Ground Cannon’s. Jack and Susan had seven children. All of these children settled in the Glendale and Spartanburg area.

(Click on this link to see the biographies of John Thomas McKinney  and Susan Cannon McKinney, with photos.)

Andrew Jackson McKinney, youngest son of John Thomas (Jack) and Susan Cannon McKinney, was my Grandfather. He was born on October 10, 1890. I am not sure where he was born but it was probably on the family farm on the road to Hillcrest. He married Addie Lee Corn 1908. (Click this link to read about the Corn Family.) The story goes that Addie slipped away from the house on Clifton/Glendale road and met Andrew in a buggy just down the road toward Glendale.  They had to pass her house to get to Spartanburg where they were getting married.  When they passed the house, her mother, Charlotte Corn, was on the porch shaking her fist at them.

They either came to live with her parents or at least she came home to have her first child in the Glendale/Clifton Road house in 1909.  Andrew was working in the mill when their second child, my dad, William Andrew, was born, on February 12, 1911, because they were living on 16 Street.  Andrew and Addie had five boys and two girls. One of the girls, Margaret, died at age five of diphtheria. The names of the children that survived are:
John Leroy married Ruby Gilmer from Glendale
William Andrew married Hilda Olive from Columbus, Georgia (My Parents.)
(Click on this link to see biography of William Andrew McKinney and Hilda Olive McKinney with photos.)
Robert Russell married Muriel O’Daniel from Columbus, Georgia
Helen Ruth married William Moore from Drayton
David Miller married Louise Belcher from Spartanburg
Samuel Houston married Jean Cobb from Greenville

When the older children were in their teen years, they lived in the house up from the Iron Bridge where the road divides and goes to Ben Avon and around Rothrock curve.  There are probably several other houses they lived in, but these are the ones I have heard stories about. 

Andrew did not work in the mill for his entire life. He went on to many other jobs and adventures.

(Click on this link to see the biographies of Andrew Jackson McKinney and Addie Corn McKinney, with photos.)
Click on this link for more information on the Corn Family.

For more information about the genealogy of the family of John Thomas McKinney, his ancestors and his descendents, go to this web site (http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~teaster/).

(Contributed By Mary McKinney Teaster)