Jane McClain is so dedicated to preserving the resting place of the saints of Piedmont that Governor McMaster, Preservation South Carolina, and the State Office of Preservation presented her a State Stewardship award for her thirty-five years of service and care for Rose Hill Cemetery in Piedmont.  The ceremony was held at the South Carolina State House on Thursday, June 18th , at 2 pm, with a reception following at Smoked on Main Street, Columbia.

By the late 1980s, Rose Hill Cemetery, already over one hundred years old, was in a state of disarray, and the community was concerned.  Jane McClain stepped up and did what was necessary to save this cherished resting place of Piedmont’s loved ones. It now belongs to the community of families still in the area and families who visit from afar.

Historic Rose Hill Cemetery dates to 1878 two years after Piedmont Manufacturing Company finished the new, modern mill on the banks of the Saluda River in Greenville County.  This cemetery belonged to the mill and was for the use of the operatives, and now over two thousand five hundred interments are recorded on Find-a-Grave.  The mill was purchased by J.P. Stevens in the late 1940s and was closed in the early 1980s.  At that point the company was West Point Pepperell. 

Jane contacted West Point Pepperell in 1990 and began negotiations with them to have the cemetery transferred to a non-profit that Jane formed, Rose Hill Cemetery Association.  Pepperell wanted to sell it to her, but she convinced the company that it was in their interests to transfer the cemetery to the association.  The board elected Jane as chairperson, and in 1995 the historic textile mill cemetery was deeded to the association.  Jane has led this work for thirty-five years.

Rose Hill Cemetery Association, under Jane’s direction, has maintained the seven-and-a-half-acre site by mowing around all the 2,500 graves and curbing monthly each summer, by keeping up the trees as needed, by restoring stone markers with no known relatives, by repairing vandalism numerous times, by repaving internal roads once, by occasionally selling new grave sites to relatives at a nominal fee, by placing a SC State Historical Marker, and by providing an elegant entrance sign.

All of this is funded by family donations, community churches, and fundraisers, and sometimes by volunteers.  Jane periodically sends letters to family donors to remind them of the need, and the community churches that were formed by the mill donate small amounts annually, because they have no burial ground of their own.  In the past couple of years two community efforts brought in a couple of thousand dollars each.  When money gets low, Jane knows who to go to, and the whole community respects the work she has done for them.  They step up to support her.

Speaking for Piedmont and Rose Hill Association, we are so proud of her!  Thanks for everything, Jane! 

Anne Peden, PhD
Greenville County Historic Preservation Commission
Fork Shoals Historical Society
Piedmont Historical Preservation Society●