101 Mechanic Street

History:  Twenty-nine prominent men of Pendleton founded the Pendleton Farmer’s Society in 1815. Thomas Pinckney, Jr. was its first president. There were other organizations before this, but these men finished building the first permanent farmer’s society hall in the United States in 1828. The Society had bought the unfinished new courthouse whose construction was halted when Pendleton District was divided into Anderson and Pickens counties. The building is a handsome two-story structure of Greek Revival architecture with four massive two-story white columns on two sides. It is well preserved and is still used.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Farmers’ Society roll through the years reads like a “who’s who” in this area. Both John C. Calhoun and Thomas Green Clemson served as presidents of the organization.

The Pendleton Farmer’s Society became the main spring in the agricultural development of this area. It served to introduce and promote improved methods of farming and rural living. It was a social and scientific agricultural organization and has continued to be until his day. As early as 1816 it conducted the Pendleton Fair where different breeds of cattle and other livestock were shown and judged. At the fair all manner of produce and home-grown and home-prepared products such as home-woven cloth, bedspreads, clothing, preserves, cakes and handicrafts were displayed.

The Society has promoted production contests in many crops, trips, lectures and demonstrations on scientific agriculture and took part in the founding of Clemson Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1899, which institution of learning, having grown beyond all its founder’s dreams, in 1964 became Clemson University. (Source: Anderson County Sketches, The Anderson Tricentennial Committee, 1969.)