affordable housing, 1881

August 24, 2007, based on old photos, looking for the pond

Most discernible was the provision for inexpensive living quarters for laborers and their families. As we have noted previously, as early as 1850 there had been a start in that direction. Between 1869 and 1873 additions and improvements were made to these dwellings even though the company was begging for operating capital. Such additions continued through the decade. By 1881, besides houses for the president and plant manager, the mill owned seven tenement dwellings and rented one house, all for the use of employees at nominal cost. In the forty-four rooms thus provided lived seventeen white and two Negro families. Fifty-five of the sixty employees occupied company dwellings.--Harry Poindexter