Pioneer Information
Born in Montreal, Canada, to a British army officer, Rion moved with his mother to Savannah, Georgia, as a young child, following the death of his father. His mother, Margaret, found employment at the Pulaski Hotel, owned by Captain Peter Wiltberger. An entrepreneur and landowner, Wiltberger looked after Rion from childhood and encouraged his education. While still a student at South Carolina College in Columbia, Rion was hired by Wiltberger to survey and lay out lots for the 70-acre Bonaventure Cemetery, part of a 600-acre tract of land Wiltberger acquired in 1846. Completed in 1850, Rion’s plans for the rural cemetery sensitively conformed to the natural formation of land along the Savannah River and included recommendations for cultivating allées of oaks draped with Spanish moss, as well as palmettos, magnolias, and cypress trees.
After graduating in 1850, Rion moved to Winnsboro, South Carolina, and became a professor of mathematics and history at Mount Zion College. He married horticulturist Mary Catherine Weir, with whom he would go on to have nine children, including the gardener and writer Hanna Rion. Rion ultimately became a respected lawyer and entrepreneur, investing and quarries and railroads, and during the Civil War served as a Colonel in the Confederate Army. During Reconstruction, Rion and his wife pursued agricultural development, including experimenting with cultivating the tea plant, camellia sinensis, in South Carolina. Rion died suddenly of a heart attack at age 58 and is buried in Sion Presbyterian Cemetery in Winnsboro.
