Share Your Memories of Pacolet

We invite you to send us your memories and photos for this website. The stories do not have to be elaborate. They can be in a letter, an email or as an attachment. We do ask that they be typed in some form as we can not provide typing services. Please send the information to gteaster@pacoletmemories.com via email or by conventional mail to the  address given at the bottom of this page.

The following stories have been received and we hope to add many others to these.

Janice Teaster Davis - Janice was born and grew up in Pacolet. About 1956, her family relocated to the Charleston area.



Dot Kirby Kimrey - Dot was born in Pacolet in 1923. She wrote the following in 1986 before she passed away. We want to thank Lindie Sullivan Wells and the Pacolet Museum for making this available.



Jim Turner - Jim grew up in Pacolet and graduated in the PHS Classs of 1942. Jim now lives in Lodi, California. He has previously furnished us a Sandlapper article about the 1903 Pacolet River Flood and also an article by Anna Black Brooks about the History of Pacolet. (We have learned that Jim Turner passed away in 2013. Read more about him from his nephew, David Lambert.)


Randy Mathis was a Chief  of both the Pacolet Mills Volunteer Fire Department and the Rescue Squad. He joined the Fire Department when he was just 14. He has furnished some of his recollections of time spent in the Pacolet Mills Fire House and on Fire Calls when he was younger.



Max Reeves and his dad, John, and brother, Gene, operated Reeves Dari Trete Drive In. He has furnished us the story and photos of this store.


Joyce Harmon Garner grew up in Pacolet Mills and graduated from Pacolet High School. She shares the story of her family along with photographs.


Mary Littlejohn Knox grew up in Pacolet 1930's, 40's and 50's as part of the black community. Because of the extreme segregation of the time, her experiences are different than that of most white people from the area. In spite of segregation, Mary has many fond memories of Pacolet and its people. Mary is retired and now lives in Detroit but she is thinking seriously about moving back home to the Pacolet area. She would like to help young people learn about their heritage and the contributions their ancestors made to the Pacolet Community. Many of the families that Mrs. Knox mentions are shown on the 1940 Pacolet Census for the Mayesville area.


Dennis Crocker - I recently received a very interesting email from Dennis Crocker. I am a few years older but he and I were in the Pacolet Mills Boy Scout Troop 317 together many years ago. In this email, he related several of his memories of his early life. His stories were very funny and brought back many memories of when I was young. I thought other folks from Pacolet would relate to Dennis’ stories and enjoy them also. I asked him if he would write some of his memories and share them with us on the Pacolet Memories website. He has graciously agreed to do this and the first of his shared stories can be read here. He has also agreed to add to these stories from time to time so the site will be periodically updated. You can read more about Dennis, his work career and his family at Dennis Crocker Bio.



James David Lambert - David has agreed to share some of his memories of growing up in Pacolet. Many of you will know and remember David's Dad, James "Pee Wee" Lambert, the former principal of Pacolet High School. He is a Pacolet institution and has affected the lives of many of us.



William Leo Kirby - William Leo Kirby, or Leo as he was commonly known, was a life long resident and prominant businessman in Pacolet. He owned one of the biggest and busiest service stations in the area. His station was located on what is now Hwy 150 very close to Dr. Hill's house just outside Victor Park. Leo took an active interest in the town and served as mayor for awhile. He was born in 1911 and died in 1995 at the age of 83.

Sometime around 1975, he wrote a story about growing up in Pacolet and some of the people he had known. Leo's story was found in the papers of David Smith Sr.who was the first mayor of Pacolet Mills. He titled his  story Remember the Long Day in the Mill .. The Kind Doctors.

In 1985, about 10 years after the first story, he revisited the subject and told how things had changed in the intervening years. That additional story is also  included.

(As I have said in other places on this website, it seems that almost everyone in Pacolet is related by blood or marriage. Leo was no exception. He was the brother of my aunt, Lois Kirby Teaster. She married my Dad's brother, Monroe Teaster.)


Judge Robinette was a member of the large and influential Robinette family of Pacolet. (Judge was his name- not a title.) His brother, Zach, owned and operated a garage in Pacolet Station. He also had a Kaiser - Frazier dealership after the War. Judge's brother, Oren, owned a hardware store across the street, the Spartanburg highway, from Zach's garage. Judge's nephew, James Robinette started and operated the Pacolet Grinding and Plating business next to the garage.

Judge was born in 1910 and grew up in Pacolet and worked there a number of years. Eventually, he moved to Bristol, Tennessee and went to work in the bag making industry. He became very successful in doing this and in time started his own company which is still thriving today. You can read about it at Robinette Bag Company. Judge passed away in Bristol in 2000 at the age of 89.

Judge read the story that Leo Kirby had written about Pacolet and decided to write his memories to supplement it. You can read this at Judge Robinette's Memories.

Leo's story also led Judge to write about some of the bosses he had during his life. You can read the part of this story that relates to Pacolet at Judge Robinette's Bosses.


Doris Jones Hogan was born and raised in Pacolet. Her ancestors lived in Tennessee and Virginia  and moved to the South Carolina Upstate before the First World War. With the aid and encouragement of her daughter, Amanda  Slusarczyk, Doris has written an account of her family and agreed to share it on this website. This is an interesting story that is similar to that of so many Pacolet families. It tells about the reality, triumphs and tragedies of the people who settled Pacolet. Doris came from a large family and many other Pacolet families have married into it. You might find one of your relatives in this story.

Hugh Jones was the father of Doris Jones Hogan listed above. Hugh served in World War 1 and is the ancestor of many folks in Pacolet today. Amanda  Slusarczyk, his granddaughter, has compiled the story of his life and his interesting army experience.


Judge Bruce LittleJohn was born in Pacolet in 1913 and grew up here. He had a long distinguished legal career before retiring as the Chief Justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court in 1985. At the age of 90, in 2003 he wrote a book about his childhood in Pacolet. It is titled Pacolets I Have Known. You can now read the book on this website.


Royce Dean Sullivan, was the first Pacolet soldier killed in action in WWII. Over 300 men from the Pacolet area served their country during WWII. All of the sons from the Pacolet Sullivan family were in the military. Dean's brother, James Carroll Sullivan, landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day and was badly wounded. Peggy Sullivan Shull is the daughter of James and the niece of Dean. She has shared the story about these brave soldiers to this website. Read their story at The Sullivan Story in WWII.
Ricky Smith grew up in Pacolet. He went on to achieve fame and success in the competitive field of shooting sporting clays. In 2018, he was inducted into the National Sporting Clays Association Hall of Fame in San Antonio, Texas.
The Glass Family – The large Glass family came to Pacolet from Virginia just before the First World War. Thanks to a member of the Glass family, Brooke Lundeen, we now have the story of the Glass family available on this website.


Mrs. Eloise Seay Mathis is 95 years old. She was born and raised in the mill house located right beside the ballpark on Brewster Street. She has a keen memory and remembers many things about the ballpark and Pacolet over the years. She and her granddaughter, Drenda-Michell Brennan, have been kind enough to share  stories about Pacolet in the past.
Karen Gossett Lucktenberg has many relatives with Pacolet connections. Recently, she was reading an article on this website about life in Pacolet Station from 1909 to 1915. This remarkable story was written by Mr. Joseph M. McLaughlin from memory when he was living in Alaska in 1962. In his story, Mr. McLaughlin mentions several of Karen’s relatives that lived in Pacolet at that time. This has inspired Karen to share pictures and information about her family with this website.



Otis S. McCollum was born and grew up in Pacolet. I first came into contact with Mr. McCollum during my search for information about Eastman’s Dry Cleaning establishment.  During our email conversations, I
asked if he would like to put his memories of growing up in Pacolet on this website. It just so happened that Mr. McCollum had been working on writing his memoirs since his retirement and during this Covid pandemic. He has graciously agreed to provide an excerpt from these memoirs to post on the website. Mr. McCollum graduated from B. E. Mays in 1964 and South Carolina State College in 1968. He retired after a distinguished career in Human Resources after working for major US companies like Exxon, The Southland Corporation, Ryder Systems Inc. and the New York Times. You can read his very interesting story at Straight Outta Pacolet.



Janet Spencer is a retired journalist who grew up and lives in Asbury, SC. Pacolet and Asbury have long had close connections. Janet has graciously agreed to provide articles and stories to this website about the Asbury community. She has a wealth of knowledge about the community and its people. You can read more about Janet and access her articles about at The Asbury Community.




Wade Harter contacted me through the Pacolet Memories website. He grew up in the textile town of Ninety Six, South Carolina. He has many fond memories of the town and his youth. Many of you will be familiar with his youthful activities. As an adult, he had a successful engineering career that included working in the textile industry. I asked him if he would be willing to share his memories on the Pacolet website and he graciously agreed. You can read his very interesting story at Wade Harter’s Memory of Ninety Six.
 

This web site has been started as a public service to share the story of Pacolet.

See more information about my Pacolet connection at Gerald Teaster.