Category: DigitalNC

Mayodan’s Washington Mills Disappearing Brick by Brick

Photo of Washington Mills Pressing Department
Pressing Department, Washington Mills Co., August 1931. Image courtesy of Rockingham Community College Foundation, Inc., Historical Collections, Gerald B. James Library.

Word reached these parts today that workers have begun dismantling the old Washington Mills in Mayodan. The mill’s origins date to 1896 when Colonel Francis Fries and W.C. Ruffin built a dam on the Mayo River in Rockingham County and set up a factory to spin uncolored yarn. The town of Mayodan soon formed around the mill and blossomed as demand for products from the Mayo Mills Company grew. In 1911 the company built a knitting factory, which manufactured men and boy’s underwear in the “long-handled” and “red-flanneled” styles. During World War I, the company supplied underwear for troops serving in Europe. In 1921, the mill owners consolidated their Mayodan plants with those in Fries, Virginia and created Washington Mills Company. After World War II, Washington Mills expanded its line to include the manufacture of “sportswear,” including polo-style shirts for men and women. Eventually, Washington Mills was sold to Tultex, which ran the factory until it closed in 1999.

According to the Greensboro News & Record, a development group bought the old mill after its closure and planned to turn it into a gospel hall of fame and events center. But those plans didn’t materialize. The plant is on the National Register of Historic Places, but such a listing does not prevent a property’s owner from changing or destroying it.

Our colleagues at the James Library of Rockingham Community College have done a great job of preserving some of the mill’s history with an online collection that includes mill badges, an ad for Mayo underwear, a stock certificate and plenty of photos. They’ve also put up a Flickr site with lots of images of Mayodan and the mill.

More NC City Directories Online

We’ve been working steadily on the North Carolina City Directories digital project and now have well over 300 volumes online, representing 44 different cities and towns. The collection includes every directory from the North Carolina Collection published prior to 1940, as well as a few from the Durham County Library and Forsyth County Library.

Strange bedfellows of the ’30s: Hemp and yeggs

What caught my eye on the 1935 front page of The Pilot of Southern Pines — thank you, NC Digital Heritage Center — was this headline:

YEGGS CRACK SAFE

IN POSTOFFICE AT

HEMP, GET LITTLE

Yeggs? Hemp?

The Google Ngram Viewer charts the abrupt rise and fall of yegg as slang for safecracker or burglar. First known usage 1903, peaked in the ’30s, origin unknown. Dashiell Hammett called on it frequently, as in “I don’t know why you keep talking about the Senator like he was a yegg…” (“The Glass Key,” 1931).  So later did Bugs Bunny (“Easter Yeggs,” 1947) and Daffy Duck (“Golden Yeggs,” 1950). What a loss to the idiom of insult!

According to the North Carolina Gazetteer, the Moore County town of Hemp bore that name only from 1935 to 1943. Before, it was Mechanicks Hill, Mechanicsville and Elise. Ever since, in honor of the local textile mill owner, it has been Robbins (although Hemp Street survives). In recent years the town has been most prominent as a pottery center and as the hometown of John Edwards.

If you don’t mind the design resemblance to the Dr. Bronner’s label, antiquecannabisbook.com provides an entertaining and informative history of North Carolina’s industrial hemp trade.

 

North Carolina Newspapers on Twitter

If today’s headlines have you down, trying reading old news instead. The NC Digital Heritage Center makes its first foray into Twitter with @ncnewspapers, where we’ll be tweeting a historic headline every day from that day in history. The stories we feature will span the full range of North Carolina history from the 19th and 20th centuries. It’s a fun way to peek into our state’s past, and a great introduction to the wealth of material available in these historic papers.

Occupy Charlotte, circa 1840s

Does this sound familiar?

The most odious feature in this system is that it robs the MANY, imperceptibly, to enrich the FEW;–It clothes a few wealthy individuals with power not only to control the wages of the laboring man, but also at their pleasure to inflate or depress the commerce and business of the whole country–exciting a spirit of extravagance, which it terminates in pecuniary ruin and too often the moral degradation of its victims. This system must be thoroughly reformed, before we can hope to see settled prosperity smile alike upon all our citizens.

It’s not from a modern Occupy movement or from some 1960s radical group, but from the first issue of the Mecklenburg Jeffersonian, published in Charlotte in 1841. Issues of the Jeffersonian from the 1840s are now online as part of the North Carolina Newspapers collection on DigitalNC.org.

The Jeffersonian was a Democratic paper, printing long excerpts of speeches from prominent politicians such as James K. Polk and John Calhoun, but also including the usual fascinating array of advertisements and announcements.

Caro-Graphics: Do You Know Your State?

Many of the issues of the Southern Pines Pilot from the mid-1930s include a cartoon by Murray Jones, Jr. called “Caro-Graphics,” featuring odd and interesting facts and legends from North Carolina history. Here’s an example, from the October 15, 1937 paper:

I thought I’d see if any Miscellany readers knew any more about these. I haven’t looked at any other papers from that period, but this seems like the kind of series that would have been syndicated. And is there any chance that these have been collected? While some of the claims seem a bet far-fetched, the facts and trivia they present would be fun even for a modern audience.

Early Charlotte Newspapers Available Online

We’ve just added two early Charlotte newspapers to the North Carolina Newspapers digital collection. The Catawba Journal (1824-1828) and the Miners’ and Farmers’ Journal (1830-1835) document life in a town that was very different from today’s thriving metropolis.

The Catawba Journal covered news of national and local importance, and printed some of the early discussions about the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. The Miners’ and Farmers’ Journal included news of a more practical nature, especially for those active in mining what was then known as the “gold region” of North Carolina. Both titles include a wealth of fascinating information: the articles, reprints, and advertisements give a rich impression of life in Charlotte in the early 19th century.

“Old Slave Day” in Southern Pines, 1934


I found this fascinating photo in a November 23, 1934 issue of The Pilot, from Southern Pines, N.C. Apparently the inaugural Spring Blossom Festival, held in Southern Pines in April 1934 featured an “Old Slave Day.” The newspaper description reads:

The Festival was featured by Old Slave Day, a day set aside for those of the colored race who lived during slavery days. These old timers came from far and near, spent a day in the Municipal Park telling of their experiences and recollections to the thousands that gathered about to see and hear them. A program of entertainment was provided, in which both white and colored participated, and the day was one long to be remembered throughout this section. Old Slave Day will be repeated this year.

I don’t recall seeing anything like this before. Were “Old Slave Days” common at public events in the early 20th century?

There are now more than 600 issues of The Pilot, ranging in date from 1929 to 1942, available on DigitalNC.org in the North Carolina Newspapers project.

North Carolina City Directories Available Online


Over 200 city directories from 34 different cities and towns are now available to search and browse on DigitalNC: http://digitalnc.org/collections/north-carolina-city-directories.

Most of the directories in the digital collection are from the North Carolina Collection, with a few contributed by the Durham County Library and the Forsyth County Public Library. We are planning to add more directories over the next year.

City directories are fantastic resources for studying family and community history, with a surprisingly rich amount of information. Not only do they include names and addresses, most contain information about each person’s occupation, place of employment, and spouse. In many directories published in the early twentieth century, the race of the resident is also noted.