the small cotton and wool factory

Against this national backdrop the small cotton and wool factory near Charlottesville, Virginia, began its struggle for existence. At first glance, one might deny that the Charlottesville company existed before the War Between the States. Legally, its corporate history dates only to December 19, 1868, at which time its charter was granted. But the mill of 1954 is the direct outgrowth of the money and men behind an ante-bellum enterprise operating on the same site, a thirteen-acre tract of land commonly known as "Pireus" at the junction of Moore's Creek and the Rivanna River one mile east of Charlottesville. It is the product of the efforts of a small group of local people, and one family in particular, aided by an accretion of northern capital following the War.

The present woolen mill can be linked to the ante-bellum factory by three threads: location of the business, changes in ownership, and the varying products of the old mill. Together, they indicate that historically there was only a single enterprise, one undergoing an evolution very similar to the national pattern of growth in wool manufacturing. To trace this gradual development, one must follow the sometimes dim line of these threads to the birth of the company in 1868.--Harry Poindexter

Woolen Mills dam

Annie Marion, c. 1930, picnic on Sand Island

high water

Rivanna River

38 01.209N 78 27 280W looking up-river

In the matter of marketing their products, mills passing through their infant stage demonstrated exceptional similarity, also. As we have noted, these enterprises were designed to supplement home production of cloth in a limited section. A common device was the exchange of the finished material of the mill for raw wool from the farmers of the surrounding countryside-- often the only real source of that essential commodity. Between 1830 and 1870, commission houses located principally in Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, and Boston, and having both selling and financing functions came into being and began to dominate the industry but once again the effect of a national trend reached the outlying areas only slowly. As late as 1870, many western mills were exchanging up to 70,000 pounds of wool cloth each year for raw wool directly from farmers.--Harry Poindexter

Woolen Mills dam

In the 1830's, the principal types of cloth produced in American mills were broadcloths, cassimeres, flannels, satinets, and blankets. Of much lower quality, such fabrics as jeans, linseys, and kerseys also comprised much of the total production, especially among the younger mills. While style changes following the War altered this situation, many mills in economically retarded areas, especially in the South and West, made the low quality goods named above as late as the 1870's. Not until the period between 1868 and 1875 did the Charlottesville Woolen Mills make the transition from the coarse goods which characterized mills dependent on a very local market to the finer grades of the type manufactured by older, expanding mills.--Harry Poindexter

Woolen Mills dam

Wednesday

Woolen Mills dam

Tuesday

Woolen Mills dam

Monday

Woolen Mills dam

a record rainfall of 1.48" was set at Charlottesville yesterday. This breaks the old record of 0.92" set in 2005--Weather Underground

Behind these small, wide-spread mills during the early period in their history were several common forces. Available water power, local wool supply, and a local market sufficiently isolated from both imported or domestic fabrics were the necessary ingredients. Of particular importance were transportation facilities. Before about 1850, even areas near the coast could be supplied with cloth only after paying high transportation costs. Thus homemade cloth or the crude products of early mills filled a very vital need. But for the gradual expansion of these mills in the years after 1830, the means of transportation had to be improved, as we have noted. An eminent authority on American wool manufacture, explaining the growth of the industry, has flatly declared: "The status of transportation facilities was the most important factor in the earlier decades."

Another force at work in these early years which has to this day remained a topic of debate was the tariff system. The tariff of 1816 with its twenty-five percent duty on wool and woolens was not enough to stem the tide of foreign competition. Nevertheless, following the panic of 1819 woolen manufacturing had revived and was on the way to a factory basis when in 1828 substantial protection was received for the first time by a forty-five percent ad valorem duty on woolen goods. Beginning in 1832, the rate tended to decline until the tariff act of 1867 again raised significant barriers to foreign cloth. That the effect of duties on wools and woolens was great among the multitude of small mills dotting the South and West is doubtful, for those factories largely used locally grown wool and sold to a restricted community.--Harry Poindexter

Woolen Mills dam

August 16,2007, 7:00AM

This generally was the pattern growth for the American wool manufacture. Yet, like the spread of civilization on the frontier, that development was re-enacted at successive periods in various sections as economic immaturity yielded to local and sectional desires to be as self-sustaining as possible. In New England, fumbling beginnings in wool manufacturing had preceded the Revolutionary War, but not until the War of 1812 emphasized the necessity of becoming more independent of English industrialism did that section receive a real impetus to wool manufacturing. The South was years behind New England, continuing even today to draw its first quality goods from the North. Still later as the frontier advanced farther from the Atlantic seaboard during the nineteenth century, small mills sprang up in the rural West to supply local needs in much the same fashion as those of the 1815 period in the East.--Harry Poindexter

Woolen Mills dam

Relatively little cloth was actually woven at the mill. Gradually, improved roads and canals gave rise to better modes of transportation and this in turn enabled an industrious mill owner here and there to broaden his market. Further, there was a growing market for the crude cloth which such mills could weave.

As the volume and variety of production in cotton and wool manufacturing increased, there was a concurrent change in the typical unit of ownership of textile mills. Prior to 1815, individuals, families, or small partnerships characterized the proprietorship of the average mill. While this continued for many years after that date, the trend was toward the formation of joint-stock companies with their increased capitalization, shared risks, and more detailed management. By 1830, the manufacture of cotton and woolen cloth on a factory basis, though still crude in many respects, had replaced the family spinning wheel and loom as the primary source of cloth production in the United States. Eventually, a further tendency would appear: the concentration of large-scale firms in sections where proximity to sources of raw material, marketing facilities, and trained employees offered economic advantages.-- Harry Poindexter

Woolen Mills dam

disassembly of Woolen Mills dam beings. The dam was built to last, estimated date of construction (of this iteration) 1870

The development of wool manufacturing in the United States followed a very rough pattern. Although some woolen mills sprang up full-blown in areas where earlier textile factories had already made their appearance, the normal growth for the typical early mill before 1850 began with a period when a carding and fulling mill served the needs of a small locality. In this capacity the tiny enterprise merely complemented home production of cotton and woolen cloth; raw wool was combed to untangle the matted fiber and prepare it for the home spinning wheel and loom. Home-woven cloth was cleaned of impurities and shrunk in preparation for the housewife?s needle and thread.--Harry Poindexter

Woolen Mills dam

Woolen Mills dam, August 13, 2007

CHAPTER I
THE CHARLOTTESVILLE FACTORY IN THE OLD SOUTH,
1820-1865

The commercial manufacture of woolen and worsted cloth has never been an important part of the economy of Virginia or of the South as a whole. Since the rise of the factory system in the industry, dating from about 1830, it has been concentrated in New England and around Philadelphia. As late as 1810, there were no Southern woolen mills, and six years later Virginia had only a handful of very small cotton and woolen factories. The next generation saw an outcropping of mills in the Old Dominion, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Louisiana. But today one rarely finds existing a Southern woolen mill that had its start prior to the War of Secession. Because it is one of the few enterprises which survived the ante-bellum days In the South, the century-old Charlottesville Woolen Mills, located in the Virginia Piedmont near the town whose name it bears, provides an interesting facet of Southern economic life--a facet which includes attempts at manufacture in the Old South, problems incurred because of the War and Reconstruction, difficulties with an inadequate money supply, the impact of world war, and the consequences of depression. In a sense it also provides a small picture of regional and local sectionalism, of the awareness of economic potentialities which has been so much a part of the New South. For these reasons the story of the Charlottesville Woolen Mills, insignificant as it may be to the total history of the country, possesses a certain uniqueness and interest which makes it worth telling.--Harry Poindexter

Woolen Mills dam

(pictured above, Woolen Mills dam)

Of course, one cannot from this one mill make a case for the continuity of Southern sentiments in favor of manufacturing. One can see, however, that its history lends support to the new viewpoint presently tearing down distinctions between the Old and New South. One should observe, too, that this mill sprang up in the shadow of Monticello, in a region steeped in the democratic and agrarian spirit of Thomas Jefferson. The aged Sage, in fact, still lived when the Charlottesville mill took its first hesitant steps along the path of industrial progress.

Three persons have been of great importance in making this study possible. I wish to thank Hampton S. Marchant not only for the generous fund of information which he has supplied me but also for his patience during the long months this work was in progress. I deeply regret I could not acknowledge my debt of gratitude to Archibald Lammey before his recent untimely death. As Secretary-Treasurer of the Charlottesville Woolen Mills, Mr. Lammey graciously provided me with many of the records of the company without which this thesis would not have been possible. And finally, I wish to extend to Dr. Edward Younger of the Corcoran Department of History my deepest appreciation for his invaluable aid, guidance and kind words of encouragement over the past two years.--Harry Poindexter

ephemera

photo from the collection of Lola Holloway, unknown horse, unknown rider. Text below from the preface to Harry Poindexter's "A History of the Charlottesville Woolen Mills, 1820-1939", reprinted with the permission of his wife.

The conception of the ante-bellum South as an area hostile to commercial life is slowly being undermined. But the extent to which historians are able to modify the old view will depend to a large degree on researches into pre-war Southern Industrial activity. Unfortunately, such studies are not numerous.

The present work is an attempt to supply information which may fill in a small part of this gap in Southern history. The story of the Charlottesville Woolen Mills gives abundant evidence of long, persistent efforts to promote textile manufacturing in Albemarle County. The obstacles which slowed its growth before 1865 were primarily economic and technological in nature rather than psychological. Crude machinery and the lack of well trained personnel limited the mill for generation to the production of coarse cloth incapable of competing with Northern or foreign fabrics. Until after 1850 transportation facilities proved a handicap to expansion. And until well after Reconstruction had ended, the mill was financially undernourished. But when these limitations were removed?which occurred between 1865 and 1885?the company converted its latent energies into a thriving, efficient textile business.- Harry Poindexter

UVA c 1928

The collection of images I've been scanning the past three weeks had its origins with Bettie Frances Baltimore. Bettie was born in 1877, died 1971. She was a life long resident of Woolen Mills Road.
Any speculation regarding the nature of the frame construction in front of the Pavillion?

unknown 0012

I'd like to be able to slow the deterioration of these images, to store and catalog them properly.

unknown 0011

demon rum, run-up to the 18th amendment

In addition to its built in scrapbook, Ginny Starkes' Bible contained this family pledge to protect innocents from the evils of ETOH. 26 years after this Bible was published, the 18th Amendment was ratified.

Believing it to be better for all
We, the undersigned solemnly promise
BY THE HELP OF GOD
to abstain from the use of all
intoxicating drinks as a beverage.
Why sign the pledge? Because...

1. Moderate drinking tends to drunkenness, while total abstinence directly from it.
2. While no one means to become a drunkard, there is said to be over six hundred thousand confirmed drunkards in our country to-day.
3. Intoxicating drinks can do no good as a beverage, and there are always safer and surer remedies to use in case of sickness.
4. The idea of moderation is full of deceit, and our estimate of the power of our own will is usually a mistaken one.
5. The drinking habit is the cause of the larger portion of the misery, poverty and crime in our land.
6. Both science and experience prove that even moderate drinking is injurious to the health.
7. External interests are often forfeited through drink, for the Bible declares that no drunkard shall enter heaven.
8, The Bible pronounces no blessing upon drinking, but many upon total abstinence.
9. It is easier to keep a pledge publicly, solemnly given than a simple resolution.
10. The pledge protects us from the solicitations of friends and removes us from the temptations of the saloon.
11. Persons miscalculate their ability to drink in moderation, and become slaves to the drinking habit before they are aware of it.
12. Intemperance obstructs civilization, education, religion and every useful reform.

unknown 006-0010

label label label! These individuals occupy a page of Virginia Starkes' bible. Doubtless Virginia knew who they were.

The Book + the scrapbook

The word of God and the children of God in one place, a Bible with a built in section for family photos.

the Book

Virginia Starkes' family bible. Virginia and James Starkes built their Woolen Mills Road house in 1890.

March 12, 1925

Marion Brown, March 12, 1925
One in a hundred has a label.