City Directories and History: In 1844 the owners of land adjoining this town site were Dr. John Johnson, William May, William T. Bowen, George P. White, Sam McNair, Sam Henry, John Campbell, and William White. In 1851, when the town was laid out, the adjoining landowners were Isom Kirkpatrick and widow Ann White, whose husband George had died in 1849 of pneumonia while supervising the work on the railroad at the point where it came through his plantation. (City Without Cobwebs, Summers – 1935)

Section of Heritage Map by Mayhugh. See ENLARGEABLE MAP under the primary image.
The original trustees of this, the first school in Rock Hill within the town limits, were William P. Broach, Joseph H. Steele, and Isom Kirkpatrick.

Free Blacks in York Co., S.C. – 1830 by courtesy of the L. Pettus, 2022
On October 8, 1863, Mr. Kirkpatrick parted with his farm, selling to Thomas Kirkley Brown for the remarkably inflated sum of $13,500 (Confederate currency). Finally, on August 6, 1869, Brown sold the place to Dr. Thomas Lynn Johnston of Lancaster County, S.C., for $2,500 (Federal currency). Doctor Johnston then moved his family to this place. The house he lived in on his newly acquired farm was situated on the highest point of ground located along the rail line from Charlotte, N.C., to Columbia, S.C. To mark this site, the railroad surveyors erected a large boulder CHI the high ground about 1848-49. This stone remained in place until well after World War II. Dr. T. L. Johnston’s granddaughter Annie Luckey (“Jenks”) Johnston (Mrs. John Wesley) Anderson, wrote once that she could stand in her bedroom in the house her father, Thomas Luckey Johnston, built on the same spot where Doctor Johnston’s house had once stood, look out the window with the southern exposure, and plainly see in the distance the trains passing through the little community of Ogden several miles below Rock Hill. Information courtesy of YYGHS – March, 93
R&R Notes: Note that Isom Kirkpatrick was housing several African American “free” families who listed their occupations as furniture makers, Watt or Watts families including Mr. George Watts, who later became a fireman in Rock Hill. R&R has also found them working as carpenter – mechanics.
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