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Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–20.Back to highlights
Entries
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
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Allen J. Ruffin and James H. Webb Jr. found the Eno Cotton Mill
Ruffin and Webb, both of old Hillsborough families, founded the Eno Cotton Mill on the north bank of the Eno west of town, chartered by special act of the General Assembly in 1896. It was the first textile mill in Hillsborough and in present-day Orange County.
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Eno Cotton Mill begins production
Yarn production started late in the year.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
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Eno Mill adds cloth weaving
New looms extended operations beyond spinning yarn.
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Eno Methodist Church is founded in West Hillsborough
Eno Methodist Church began with services upstairs in the Eno Cotton Mill's company store; in 1908 Allen Ruffin gave land in West Hillsborough and the frame church went up. It had 147 members in 1953.
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The Eno Methodist congregation builds its church on land given by Allen Ruffin
The congregation formed for Eno Cotton Mill workers first met in an upper room of a mill building. In 1908 it moved into a simple front-gabled frame church with pointed-arch windows and a small belfry, on land Ruffin donated facing the mill across the railroad tracks.
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Eno Cotton Mill is enlarged and adds gingham
In 1909 the Hillsborough mill was expanded again and began weaving gingham alongside chambray and plaids. Some yarn was still sold unwoven until the First World War.
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Eno Cotton Mill rents its village houses to workers for 25 cents a week
Owners Allen J. Ruffin and James H. Webb built a company village for their fast-growing workforce and in 1915 were renting the houses to employees for a quarter a week. The 1924 Sanborn map shows about 100 mill houses west and south of the mill.
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Eno Cotton Mill reports 150 women among its 500 workers
Reports from the years before the wartime changes count about 500 workers at Hillsborough's Eno Cotton Mill, 150 of them women and 50 children under 16, on a 60-hour week. The top average daily wage for women was $1.75 against $4.00 for men; at the smaller Bellevue mill nearby women's top average was $2.50.
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Eno Mill opens an influenza diet kitchen at West Hill school
When influenza reached the Eno Mill district, the mill opened and paid for a diet kitchen at the West Hill school for about seven weeks, run by home demonstration agent Elizabeth Cornelius. It fed as many as 150 people a day, and the mill hired nurses for the sick.
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J. Cheshire Webb becomes president of the Eno Cotton Mills
Webb, a director of the Eno Cotton Mills since early manhood, was made president of the Hillsborough mill in 1921. He ran it until his death in 1932 and was also a director of the Rocky Mount Mills and the Bank of Orange.
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Eno Cotton Mill installs new machinery and switches to combed yarn
New machinery went in at the Eno mill in 1929, and combed yarn replaced coarse carded yarn. Broadcloth shirting and corduroy became its main products.
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Wartime orders push the Eno Cotton Mill to about 600 workers
Military demand for cloth during World War II enlarged the Eno Cotton Mill, which by the 1940s employed as many as 600 workers on three shifts.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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Eno Mill becomes part of Cone Mills
The subsidiary joined the Greensboro textile corporation.
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Eno Mill houses are relocated
Most company houses moved into nearby neighborhoods.
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James J. Freeland develops Holiday Park with a swimming pool
In the 1960s Freeland built Holiday Park northwest of town, a development with its own pool and other amenities; some of its houses were former Eno Mill village houses moved to the site.
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Cone Mills honors Eno plant workers, most of them women, for fifty years at the mill
At the Eno Plant's seventieth anniversary celebration in Hillsborough, Cone Mills recognized at least six of its 385 employees for fifty or more years of work at the mill, five of them women.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
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Eno Mill closes
Textile production ended at the Hillsborough plant.
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Gold family acquires Eno Mill
The property became a business center with varied tenants.
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The Eno Cotton Mill joins the Study List
The National Register Advisory Committee placed the Eno Cotton Mill in West Hillsborough on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register.
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The Eno Cotton Mill is listed in the National Register
On September 1, 2011 the National Park Service listed the Eno Cotton Mill in Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
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Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 1, 2026.
