Monaghan Mill and village were established in 1900 by cousins Lewis Wardlaw Parker and Thomas Fleming Parker and were named for their grandfather’s native county in Ireland. Located on 325 acres along the Reedy River and designed by Lockwood, Greene, and Co., the mill opened in 1901 with 25,000 spindles, expanded to 60,000 spindles by the end of the decade, and employed 700 workers, many of whom lived in the surrounding mill village. From the beginning, the Parkers aimed to make Monaghan a model of enlightened paternalism and self-sufficiency by providing water, electricity, schools, and a medical clinic. Thomas Parker became nationally known for employee programs intended to support the intellectual, spiritual, and physical well being of the community, and these programs were widely recognized and copied throughout the South. In 1904, at a cost of $18,000, he built a Young Men’s Christian Association at Monaghan, the first chartered in a southern mill town. Dr. Lawrence Peter Hollis, director of the Monaghan Y.M.C.A., traveled to Springfield, Massachusetts, to learn the new sport of basketball from inventor Dr. James Naismith, and on the same trip met Lord Robert Baden Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts. After returning home, Dr. Hollis introduced basketball and the Boy Scouts to Monaghan and also founded the Southern Textile Basketball Tournament, hosted annually in Greenville from 1921 to 1996. After operating for 100 years, Monaghan Mill closed in 2001 and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.