Greenville mule got a Yankee's goat

The 200-year-old Rock House was built by Capt. Billy Young, a hero of the American Revolution

Some of the Union cavalry crossed the 1820 Poinsett Bridge in the mountains of Greenville County

GREENVILLE, S.C.

 The Union cavalry who invaded Greenville on May 2, 1865, came from Asheville, and their routes would have brought them past two rock-solid monuments of 19th-century craftsmanship: the Poinsett Bridge on the State Road and the Rock House on the Buncombe Road.

 The Rock House was built some 200 years ago by Capt. Billy Young, a hero of the American Revolution. It once was the largest house in Greenville, but it is so secluded that I never knew about it during the decades I lived there. I looked it up during the 150th anniversary of Stoneman's Raid, because the most prominent local victim of the raid was listed by historians as "Capt. Choice of the old Rock House."
 Josiah Choice was 62 years old when the raiders came down Buncombe Road. There are varying accounts of what happened to him. He may have been killed for shooting at a cavalryman who confiscated his horse. The Choice family had a home nearby, so it is possible that "of the old Rock House" described the locale where he was killed, rather than the actual house where he lived.
 About 150 Union cavalry from Stoneman's rear guard were dispatched from Asheville in late April to pursue Jefferson Davis, the fugitive president of the Confederacy.  They rode together through Saluda Gap to the foot of the Blue Ridge, where they fanned out. Some of them followed the State Road across Poinsett Bridge and entered Greenville on the Rutherford Road. Click here to read our 150th anniversary story about the havoc they caused in Greenville. 
 The rest of the Yankees came down Buncombe Road, took Josiah Choice's life, and left us with a great story. It's too good to be true, but The State newspaper in Columbia reported it Aug. 23, 1959, after reporter Virginia Oles visited her Aunt Em, Emily Rosamond Thackston, the great-granddaughter of Capt. Young. Aunt Em's father, William Thackston, had inherited the house from his wife Katherine, the captain's granddaughter. 
 Capt. Young (1759-1826) was known as That Terror To The Tories during the Revolution. Yankees were sometimes called Tories, too, and at least one of the Union soldiers at the Rock House probably was sorry he met Capt. Young's daughter Emily Young Rosamond (1812-1888). This Emily was the great aunt of the Aunt Em who told the story to the newspaper.

Here's Your Mule was a
 popular Civil War song

 As the story goes, by the end of the war, a mule named Susie was the last livestock on the Rock House plantation. All the men were working in the fields, so only Emily was home when a Yankee rode up on a worn-out horse.
 Without so much as a good morning, the soldier went into the barnyard, unsaddled his horse, saddled Susie, and rode off. Emily was especially fond of Susie, so she wept with grief.
 Early the next morning, there was a sudden commotion in the yard. The whole household rushed out to see what was going on. There stood old Susie at the barnyard gate, wearing the Yankee's saddle. However, there was no rider.
 Emily threw her arms around Susie's neck and kissed her. She whispered into the mule's ear, "Susie, you threw that Yankee and came back home!"
 Later that day, the Yankee returned with a noticeable limp. He went to the barnyard, saddled his own lame horse, and rode off without a word of explanation.
 Susie, of course, became a war hero whose story was repeated for generations.


 Old Buncombe Road is a landmark between downtown Greenville and Furman University.  The original wagon road was built in the years following the Revolution. The road reached the North Carolina line in 1797 and finally connected in 1827 with Buncombe County, N.C. That opened up a trade route into the western frontier of Tennessee and Kentucky. In Greenville County, the road followed the Reedy River and the North Fork of the Saluda River before intersecting the State Road from Columbia, which crossed the Blue Ridge at Saluda Gap. This is the old route of U.S. Highway 25, which now passes through the Greenville watershed.
 Capt. Young was born in Loudoun County, Va., grew up on a large farm on the Pacolet River in Spartanburg County, and enlisted in the 2nd Spartan Regiment at age 16. He fought in the "Snow Campaign" of 1775 (which included the Battle of the Great Cane Brake in lower Greenville County), Musgrove Mill and Kings Mountain in 1780, and Cowpens, Augusta, and Ninety Six in 1781. After the war, he was appointed in 1785 as the first sheriff of Spartanburg County.
 In 1789, at age 30, Capt. Young married 15-year-old Mary Salmon from Virginia. They settled on farmland about four miles northwest of the village of Greenville (which was originally called Pleasantburg) and had at least 14 children. (Emily was born in 1812 and married James Rosamond in 1833.) Capt. Young and his brother acquired large tracts of land northwest of Greenville along the Buncombe Road. Some of their acreage eventually became part of Furman University when the campus was relocated from downtown Greenville in the 1950s.
 It was about 1792 when Capt. Young began building the Rock House, using granite quarried from nearby Paris Mountain and brought down by slave-driven ox carts. The stone walls are 36 inches thick outside and 26 inside.  It's likely that he employed some of he same stonemasons who built the Poinsett Bridge in 1820. The house has eight rooms, a central hallway, and a secret compartment in the attic where the family hid heirlooms and food to protect them from the Union raiders.
 The Rock House may have still been under construction when the captain died in 1826. The house eventually served as a stagecoach stop and a post office on the Buncombe Road.
 After the Civil War, the Rock House was owned by Benjamin Franklin Perry Jr., whose father was the post-war governor of South Carolina. The younger Perry had married one of the captain's granddaughters. Thackston, a widowed Confederate veteran, inherited the house and lived there until his death in 1909. Then the house was passed down to his daughter Emily (1875-1958) and her brother Henry (1866-1943), who farmed the land until his death. In 1956, "Aunt Em" vacated the Rock House at age 81, and the place fell into disrepair. 
 In 1958, lawyer Harry J. Haynsworth III and his wife Jean bought the Rock House for $7,500 and renovated it into a formal home. Haynsworth (1923-1994) was the brother of Clement F. Haynsworth Jr. (1912-1989), a Supreme Court nominee in 1969. The taxable market value in 2020 is assessed at $326,420.

Robert Mills' 1820 Atlas shows Capt. Young's Rock House between Greenville and Paris Mountain. Buncombe Road is labeled as From Saluda Gap to Greenville 28.00 (miles).

RELATED GREENVILLE STORIES

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➤ Greenville dodges last bullet of Stoneman's Raid 
➤ 'Prepare to meet your God'