Brutontown History

Society Ground: Dignity in Death (1818)

In 1818, land encompassing what would later become known as Brutontown was purchased by Domingo Ladson, a free man of color, purchased land in Greenville County, South Carolina to establish what became known as Society Ground. This purchase represents one of the earliest documented acts of African American institutional land ownership in the area. 

At a time when African Americans—both enslaved and free—were systematically excluded from white burial grounds, Society Ground ensured that Black people could be buried with dignity, prayer, and community recognition. The land was intentionally acquired and used as sacred ground, reflecting self-determination and collective responsibility within a racially restrictive society. 

Society Ground was not incidental or informal. It was a deliberate act of protection, asserting the right of African Americans to honor their dead according their faith, culture, and community values. 

Brutontown: Dignity in Living Space (1874)

Following Emancipation, African Americans across the South sought stability, safety, and autonomy through land ownership and community formation.

In 1874, Benjamin Bruton purchased land and founded what became known as the Brutontown community. Brutontown developed as a residential settlement that allowed Black families to live near one another and in proximity to Society Ground, physically and spiritually linking daily life with ancestral memory. 

Settlement and burial together formed a unified Black geography of belonging—where dignity in death and dignity in life reinforced one another. Brutontown was not merely a place to live; it was a community shaped by land stewardship, kinship, and shared responsibility.

Survival Under Jim Crow: Faith, Leadership, and Continuity (Early 20th Century)

In the early twentieth century, Jim Crow laws imposed severe restrictions on African American life throughout the South. In Greenville County, Rev. John Henry Smith emerged as a central regional leader during this period of enforced segregation and economic constraint. 

While working for Southern Railroad for over forty years, Rev. Smith pastored Mountain View Baptist Church (Newtown), Bruton Temple Baptist Church (Brutontown), Jubilee Baptist Church (Taylors, SC), St. Paul Baptist Church (Laurens, SC), and Jefferson Grove Baptist Church (Fountain Inn, SC). Through these institutions, he coordinated churches, mutual aid societies, housing initiatives, social welfare efforts, and Black newspapers. 

These faith-based institutions served as stabilizing forces, ensuring that Society Ground remained a living burial and memory anchor even as African American communities faced systemic exclusion and displacement pressures. 

Continuity, Responsibility, and the Present

Taken together, these eras reflect an unbroken commitment within the Brutontown community to: 

• Dignity in death (1818)

• Dignity in life (1874), and

• Dignity in survival (through Jim Crow)

Brutontown Society Ground stands today as the place where these commitments converge. Protecting and restoring this site is not solely an act of remembrance—it is the fulfillment of an ongoing responsibility to truth, memory, and justice. 

The history of Brutontown is not concluded. It continues to shape present-day questions of stewardship, accountability, and preservation.

Despite this continuity of care, the land surrounding Society Ground would later be subjected to repeated redevelopment decisions that failed to recognize—or actively disregarded—its historic and sacred status.