SOUTH CAROLINA: Anderson County housing development plans to pave over potential slave gravesite. Neighbors object
PENDLETON, S.C. — A 175-acre tract of land along S.C. Highway 187 is one of many in the area that developers are pursuing for housing development, but locals claim this former plantation site shouldn’t be touched until the Anderson County Planning Commission follows the law.
A lawsuit filed in May by two neighbors of the proposed Anderson Reserve claims they informed the commission there are unmarked graves of former enslaved people on the grounds of the former Rivoli Plantation that have not been addressed.
It also claims the planning commission violated open records laws by voting on Anderson Reserve when it wasn’t on the agenda and that adjacent property owners hadn’t been notified about the development’s changes.
Stanley Hix, one of the two named plaintiffs when the lawsuit was filed, started an online petition in March to stop Phase 2 of the development with concerns of overdevelopment, the hidden graveyard, its impact to Lake Hartwell, fire protection and school overcrowding around Fants Grove.
The land in question near the intersection of Fants Grove Circle and Highway 187 borders both Eighteen Mile Creek and Clemson University Experimental Forest land.
Part of the property has already been sectioned off for Phase 1 development, which should bring 150 houses to the eastern 72 acres of land. Phase 2 was proposed with more than 180 houses and multiple access points on Fants Grove Circle.
It’s the site of the former Rivoli Plantation, which Pendleton historian Jackie Reynolds said would have likely been around 600 acres at its inception as a cattle farm. In 1860, the U.S. Census indicated there were 30 slaves working on the property.
“The chances are there’s a cemetery of some sort there,” Reynolds told The Post and Courier. “It may not be large, but it should be there somewhere. They’d select property that was not arable, land that was not being used — that’s where they’d have a slave cemetery.”
Neither the developer nor the landowner, currently AnMed, has addressed the legal implications of dealing with burial sites, the lawsuit claims.
A hearing on the lawsuit is set for Aug. 21.
–postandcourier.com
