Emancipation: Freedmen & Freedwomen

At the death of Andrew Pickens Calhoun in 1865, before the end of the Civil War, his widow Margaret, and their children occupied Fort Hill. A surviving written account mentions Rasmus, an young enslaved boy, who hid with 8-year-old Patrick Calhoun when Union soldiers came to Fort Hill.

After 1866, Floride Calhoun recovered Fort Hill through foreclosure, willing it to her daughter and sole remaining child, Anna Maria Calhoun Clemson. There are surviving employment contracts that Thomas Green Clemson signed along with many of the former enslaved persons — who were freed during the Civil War — as wage hands.  These were standard work contracts from this period; however, they were restrictive and prevented freedmen and freedwomen from experiencing their newly won freedoms.    

One of the Clemson family’s employees was William "Bill" Greenlee, who was 17 years old when Thomas Clemson died in 1888. During the last years of Clemson’s life, Bill Greenlee worked as a stable boy and carriage driver at Fort Hill. He was later employed by the college and town of Clemson.

The Stories Don’t Stop There

Families who worked at Fort Hill, such as the Greenlees, Frusters and Reeds, have numerous descendants who are still living in the Clemson area. Many were interviewed as part of the “Black Heritage in the Upper Piedmont Project,” and their stories — told through oral recordings — are deposited in the Clemson University Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections unit. 

Clemson’s Department of Historic Properties conducts ongoing research to study black history and incorporate the stories about African-Americans in the narrative of the total life experience at Fort Hill.