SPARTANBURG — It is 30 years after the Civil War. The county is in an economic and industrial boom. Cotton mills and accompanying villages are rising. People are flooding in from across the Southeast.
And crime is ever so rampant.
Betsy Wakefield Teter’s new book, “A Carnival of Crime: Murder, Mischief, and Malice in 1890s Spartanburg,” brings these stories to the present.
At the end of the 19th century, journalists across the country travelled to Spartanburg to cover the county’s shootings, postal conmen and hangings. Newspapers including The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Cincinnati Enquirer mention Spartanburg during this period.
The book is a collection of 10 intertwined true crime stories. Teter says she chose them because they were the most interesting and felt they told a wider story about life as it was in Spartanburg.
“You know, it’s fascinating to me that all this activity took place on a stage that we still move around in today,” she said.
After working as a journalist across the state, including business editor and Sunday columnist for the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, Teter co-founded Hub City Writers Project. She served as the executive director and publisher for 22 years, before retiring in 2020.
In 2024, she co-wrote the Spartanburg Black history book “North of Main” alongside Brenda Lee Pryce and Jim Neighbors.
While researching for the book, she found a large gap in newspaper records during and after the 1890s. After The Post and Courier and The State newspapers went online with their archives through the South Carolina State Library, she learned why.
The Spartanburg Herald-Journal building caught fire in 1918 and burned down. The Herald had bought out local papers, including The Carolina Spartan and Piedmont Headlight, reducing their collective archives to ashes.
“I love resurrecting people, even small players, who have disappeared from history,” Teter said. “And they get a new life 125 years later in a history book.”
Take Charles Barrett, a Spartanburg attorney who ran a sprawling postal scheme.
Or George Turner, owner of Valley Falls Mill, who shot and killed his own brother-in-law.
“A Carnival of Crime” features dozens of photographs, primarily sourced from the Kennedy Room in the Spartanburg County Public Library, bringing to life a Spartanburg long since gone.
“There are very few things that are the same as they were back then,” Teter said. “On the cover you can see the Daniel Morgan statue. You can see the little turret on top of what is now Starbucks, which was the bookstore where Tom Trimmier was murdered by Dr. Sidney Bivings. So, most everything in that photograph on the cover is gone.”
Newspaper reports of the time were often sensationalized, so Teter primarily relied on other first-hand accounts. That included coroner’s reports, trial transcripts and letters governors asking for pardons or documenting denials.
“I just think that it gives you a three-dimensional view of the place we’re living in,” Teter said. “It acquaints with people who were central to this town and its growth. And somehow through covering the crimes we can learn more about what day-to-day life was back then than we can perhaps by learning, you know, who started what textile mill and that kind of thing. I think it’s a whole different way of looking at history.”
The book launch for “A Carnival of Crime” is 6-7 p.m. Oct. 27 at the Spartanburg Headquarters Library’s Barrett Room. There will be a discussion with English professor Erin Templeton, dean of Converse University’s School of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Copies are available for purchase at the Hub City Bookshop.