Jesse Cleveland
(1785 - 1851)
Page 2087, # 16067
Jesse Cleveland came from North Carolina in 1810, a founder of Spartanburg, prosperous merchant, possessor of large means, earned by his own enterprise.
Carolina Spartan, 1851 —
JESSE CLEVELAND
A large portion of our last week’s edition having passed through the press previous to his lamented death, we were only able to publish in that issue a hurried notice of the event. It is not our design to write a lengthened obituary, for the reminiscences of his virtuous life are impressed on the recollections of all. His epitaph is already written by good examples of the gentlemanly deportment of nearly half a century.
For more than forty years of his well-spent life he was engaged in mercantile pursuits in this town. He never engaged in politics so as to alienate his friends or embitter the feelings of others, but evinced in his whole life all those characteristics which adorn the life of a plain, unpretending man and good citizen. Simplicity of manners, benignity of feeling, and a rigid honesty in his business transactions were his ruling and active traits. Mr. Cleveland will be long and affectionately remembered.
Greenville Daily News, A. B. Williams, Ed., Jan. 26, 1884 —
Mrs. MARY B. CLEVELAND (Special to Augusta Chronicle), Atlanta, Jan. 24. There has been recently in Greenville the death of a lady, one of the old landmarks of Carolina, whose removal is as notable an event as the decease of Mrs. ex-Gov. Herschel V. Johnson. This lady was Mrs. Mary Blossingame Cleveland of Spartanburg. Her father was Gen. John Blossingame, who was raised on Pedee river, South Carolina, located in Greenville, and married, Mar. 23, 1794, Miss Elizabeth Smith Easley from Virginia. He was made general 1812, was very popular, and a member of the Legislature. The union of Jesse Cleveland and Mary Blossingame was a long and happy one, as well as a mating of the best blood of Carolina. Mrs. Cleveland was a noble Christian woman, revered and loved by all. In her last moments her mind wandered to the past and her old homestead in Spartanburg, and she would often say, ” I ought to go back and look after my poor negroes ; I know they need me.”