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THE JACKSONS GROVE STORY
The earliest known history of the immediate land area of Jacksons Grove includes it in the Cherokee Indian Territory, in their hunting grounds. Since there was a known Indian Campground just about two miles up the Pacolet River where Wolf Creek empties into the river, it would seem likely that Indians were from time to time at the Jacksons Grove location. There have been found numbers of Indian arrowheads and other artifacts in the general area, lending credence to the belief that Indians passed this way before the white settlers came along.
Following treaties with the Indian chiefs, the Cherokee boundary was moved back to the present line between Greenville and Spartanburg Counties, and opened up a vast area of land to white settlement. It was during these years of settlement between 1755 and 1775 and the outbreak of the American Revolution that the Jackson family came from the Waxhaws settlement on the Catawba River south of Charlotte, N.C., to the North Pacolet River, where land grants to acreages were obtained. Some of this area’s land records were recorded in North Carolina, and some in South Carolina, since the state line was not definitely settled for some years. At least one deed to one of the Jacksons is recorded in Charleston, S. C.
According to the Jackson family records, the family, who were founders of the church, and the earliest settlers known to the exact site, were the grandparents, John and Elizabeth Jackson, a son named Samuel Jackson and his family, of whom we know two sons: Samuel Jackson, Jr., and Thomas. Thomas was the son who acquired the land where Jacksons Grove was established.
Both Samuel Jackson and Thomas were young men, probably unmarried when the hostilities preceding the American Revolution began to be felt even into the frontiers, as the North Pacolet settlements were. Thomas was a Captain of the local Militia before the outbreak of the War, and we are told by Dr. J.B.O. Landrum in his “Colonial and Revolutionary History of Upper South Carolina,” that the Indians had become quite troublesome in raiding the settlements and killing and destroying. One such raiding party had done much of the like, and were descending Pacolet River from farther back near the mountains, searching and destroying as they came. Captain Thomas Jackson with his company of Militia were hastily called and met the Indian marauders at the location of their former campground at the mouth of Wolfe Creek. There they were turned back and the other settlers protected. This was in 1776, possibly about the time of the Battle of Round Mountain which is