from the ruins

Before the new company can be examined, one must recount briefly the immediate postwar history of the mill. From the smoldering ruins confronting Henry Marchant during the damp and dreary days of March, 1865, to the birth of the stock company on that cold December day stretched three years of determined exertion on the part of Marchant. Quickly clearing away the debris, his first impulse was to make only the modest outlay needed to rebuild the grist mill. But germinating in his mind was the hope of returning to the processing of wool and the manufacture of wool and cotton fabrics. As this seed took root one fact became visible. The fire of 1865 had left one beneficial effect; it had purged the mill forever of the encumbrances of the once necessary subsidiary activities tied to the water power of the dam. --Harry Poindexter

surviving the forties

Woolen Mills dam and race, date unknown

No record exists of the amount paid by Marchant for the mill, but undoubtedly it was much less than the $90,000 at which it was valued only two years previously. Since Jones' share was sold at public auction and at a time disadvantageous to him, one cannot estimate the total cost from the sum he received. But whatever the price, the frequency with which ownership had changed hands since 1840 leads one to suspect that the Factory was having a difficult time surviving the forties.--Harry Poindexter

Woolen Mills dam

Annie Marion, c. 1930, picnic on Sand Island

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