Pioneer settlers came to the Greenwood area as early as the 1850s. Local tradition holds that the Greenwood and Hart families were among the first settlers, that the community was named for the Greenwood family, and that the creek was named for the Hart family. As Greenwood grew, businesses, churches, a cemetery, a school, and a Masonic Lodge were established. A post office opened in 1877, and John Karr Berry dug a town well in the early 1890s. At its peak, the town had two saloons, four grocery stores, two drug stores, a hotel, bank, hardware store, barber shop, blacksmith shop, cotton gin, and the Greenwood Gazette newspaper. The Greenwood Male and Female College, though it operated for less than twenty years, provided quality education for the community's young people. This small settlement has served as a supply center for surrounding farming communities for over one hundred years and has also been a center of social and religious activity. Three churches serve the area: Greenwood Baptist Church, founded as Hart's Creek Missionary Baptist Church about 1872; Greenwood Methodist Church, founded about 1880; and Greenwood Church of Christ, founded in 1896.