Located in Anderson, South Carolina, are likely the last standing slave houses in an upstate South Carolina town. Four houses sit along an alleyway in the Anderson Historic District. Architectural historians determined three houses are antebellum, with the other one built after the Civil War.
These houses were up for demolition in 2009 when The Palmetto Trust for Historic Preservation stepped in and purchased them. According to the newspaper searches, people lived in these houses until 2008. They were condemned after complaints to the city.
It is suspected that the slave alley was tied to an in-town estate, likely the Caldwell-Johnson-Morris Cottage. According to the 1860 Slave Census, Margaret Morris enslaved two women. Her house is on the same street and one block down from the slave alley.
Below is the 1918 Sanborn map, which shows the four houses in a row. Unfortunately, previous Sanborn maps do not go east enough to show the houses.
In 2011, Joseph McGill of the Slave Dwelling Project stayed in one of the houses.
