Chronology

Julian Shakespeare Carr, later Carrboro's namesake, is born in Chapel Hill

Julian S. Carr was born in Chapel Hill on October 12, 1845, the son of the Franklin Street merchant John Wesley Carr, and later studied at the university. He built tobacco, banking and textile fortunes in Durham, and his Durham Hosiery Mills went on to own both Carrboro mills; the town took his name in 1913.

People: Julian S. Carr

Robert F. Hoke obtains a charter for the Chapel Hill Iron Mountain Railroad

While the university was closed, Robert F. Hoke, owner of an iron mine north of Chapel Hill, obtained a state charter for a railroad to carry ore from Iron Mountain to the North Carolina Railroad.

Subject: North Carolina Railroad

The railroad is rechartered as the State University Railroad

The legislature rechartered the stalled iron-mine line as the State University Railroad, shifting its purpose to a rail link for the university, with UNC president Kemp P. Battle working alongside Hoke to raise funds.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

Jack Brim, a Black blacksmith, and then Bennie F. Ray open smithies at West End

As the settlement around the depot and Lloyd's mills grew in the later 1880s, Jack Brim, an African American blacksmith, opened a shop at West End, and Bennie F. Ray opened a second smithy after him. Ray's shop was still working north and east of the depot in the early 1910s.

Robert F. Hoke raises subscriptions to run the railroad toward Chapel Hill

When iron prices rose in 1880 and shipping ore to Pennsylvania furnaces paid, Gen. Robert F. Hoke, who owned most of Iron Mountain north of Chapel Hill, began organizing the branch line from University Station. His Iron Mountain Company put up $6,000, the largest single pledge, and Julian S. Carr was among the other subscribers.

People: Julian S. Carr

Ruffin Cheek and then Hiram Stone open West End's first general stores

Ruffin Cheek, followed by Hiram Stone, opened grocery and general merchandise stores at West End in the 1880s. The book counts their stores, east of the railroad spur on what became East Main Street, as the start of Carrboro's business district.

Julia Spencer drives a last spike to celebrate the finished University railroad

Chapel Hill celebrated the completed State University Railroad with speeches and the driving of the last spikes, one by Julia J. Spencer, daughter of Cornelia Phillips Spencer, and one by the railroad's agent, J. G. Cooley. Passenger trains had been running to the West End terminus since February.

Thomas F. Lloyd buys out his partner and adds a flour mill by the depot

Lloyd bought William Pritchard's share of the steam grist mill and cotton gin the two had built north of the station in 1883, and had a flour mill built on the property.

People: Thomas F. Lloyd (Carrboro mill builder)

Subject: Lloyd grist mill (Broad Street)

Brodie Lloyd builds a rental house on Oak Avenue before the Alberta mill opens

The house at 307 Oak Avenue is one of very few in Carrboro older than the Alberta Cotton Mill and among the first investment houses of Brodie Lloyd, Thomas F. Lloyd's cousin; once the mill opened it was rented to its workers. Carpenter Thomas Clark and later his daughter and her husband, knitter Ben Williams, lived there from the 1920s.

Thomas F. Lloyd builds twelve houses for Alberta Cotton Mill workers

On the mill tract east and northeast of the new Alberta Cotton Mill, Lloyd put up a dozen one-story frame houses for his hands. A house of the same period built for Alberta workers still stands at 105 Short Street.

A frame depot replaces the box car that had served West End as a station

From 1882 a box car had been the passenger depot at West End. In 1900 a one-story frame depot was built a few yards north of the later station; after the 1913 station opened it became a freight shed, and a new freight house had replaced it by 1925.

Four mill houses go up on Shelton Street for Bill Lloyd

Bill Lloyd, a cousin of Alberta Cotton Mill owner Thomas F. Lloyd, had four identical one-story houses built to rent to the mill's workers. Each had two front doors so family members on different shifts could come and go; carpenter Thomas Clark, brought from Cane Creek by the Lloyds, built number 107.

The state charters the Blanche Hosiery Mills Company at West End

The secretary of state issued a charter to the Blanche Hosiery Mills Company, formed by W. R. Lloyd, T. J. Hogan, John Lloyd and W. E. Lindsay to make hosiery. The company began on $6,500 in stock, with leave to raise it to $15,000.

The Blanche Hosiery Company builds its own knitting mill near the West End depot

After more than a year in the upper story of Tom Lloyd's cotton mill, the Blanche Hosiery Company put up a $1,500 building of its own near the depot and planned to move in about July 1. The owners said Lloyd charged too much for power.

Baptists organize Union Chapel in West End

On land Thomas Lloyd deeded for churches, Baptists and Methodists shared a small Weaver Street building on alternate Sundays, and the Baptists organized as Union Chapel with seventeen charter members; the congregation became Venable Baptist in 1911 and Carrboro Baptist in 1914.

People: Thomas F. Lloyd (Carrboro mill builder)

Subject: Carrboro Baptist Church (Century Center)

Carrboro Methodist Church is organized

Methodists in the mill village that became Carrboro organized a church in 1910 with W. A. Stanbury as first pastor.

Carrboro businessman Miles Andrews builds a frame house on East Main Street

Miles Andrews, a Carrboro businessman and farmer, builds a one-story, hip-roofed frame house in the 100 block of East Main Street and lives there for many years. It was the only frame building on the block to survive the 1924 fire.

Mill houses go up for the Lloyd Manufacturing Company's workers

One-story frame houses with front porches were built between 1910 and 1915 as worker housing for the Thomas F. Lloyd Manufacturing Company; 25 of them form the Thomas F. Lloyd Historic District on the National Register.

People: Thomas F. Lloyd (Carrboro mill builder)

Lloyd organizes a second mill company and builds a yarn mill

Thomas F. Lloyd organized the Thomas F. Lloyd Manufacturing Company in February 1910 and built a second mill across Main Street from the Alberta mill in 1910 and 1911 to spin cotton yarn.

People: Thomas F. Lloyd (Carrboro mill builder)

Thomas F. Lloyd, founder of Carrboro's first two mills, dies

Thomas F. Lloyd died in May 1911, close to the time his second mill, a one-story brick yarn mill a block south of the Alberta mill, was finished. A Confederate veteran with no schooling, he had built the gin, grist mill and flour mill by the depot before starting the Alberta mill in 1898.

Durham Hosiery Mills nearly doubles Mill No. 4

In 1912 the company added a two-story extension to the west end of the old Alberta mill, enlarged the one-story south wing as an office with a hooded entrance, and put up a new power house northeast of the reservoir. Orders for cotton hosiery had outgrown the building.

Subject: Carr Mill

A new wood-frame railroad station is built in Carrboro

The depot that still stands beside Carr Mill was built around 1913, replacing the earlier West End stop that had drawn settlement to the end of the line.

Subject: Carr Mill

The Lloyd yarn mill becomes Durham Hosiery Mill No. 7

The Thomas F. Lloyd Manufacturing Company mill was sold to Durham Hosiery Mills, which ran it as Mill No. 7 alongside Mill No. 4, the former Alberta mill.

People: Thomas F. Lloyd (Carrboro mill builder) · Julian S. Carr

The Lloyd grist mill burns and is rebuilt in brick

The original wood-frame grist mill buildings burned in 1916 and were replaced by the brick mill that survives on B Street; lightning gutted its interior in 1921.

People: Thomas F. Lloyd (Carrboro mill builder)

Subject: Lloyd grist mill (Broad Street)

W. H. Parker serves as Carrboro's first listed mayor

W. H. Parker heads the list of Carrboro mayors in 1917, four years after the mill town of Venable took the name Carrboro. He served again from 1937 to 1941.

Fitch-Riggs Lumber Company buys Andrews and Lloyd's Carrboro lumber business

In 1923 the Mebane firm Fitch-Riggs took over Andrews and Lloyd, a small Carrboro lumber business with one employee, and R. Bernice Fitch ran the Carrboro plant. It traded as Fitch-Riggs Lumber Co. into 1925 and as Fitch Lumber Co. by 1927, and by 1953 it was Carrboro's oldest small concern, with 20 men, a planing mill and a coal yard.

Carrboro Baptist Church completes its brick church at Greensboro and Main

The mill-town congregation borrowed $50,000 to build a brick church at the corner of Greensboro and Main streets, paying off the debt in 1942; the building is now the Town's Century Center.

Subject: Carrboro Baptist Church (Century Center)

Fire on East Main Street in Carrboro leads to brick rebuilding

Early on December 3, 1924, a fire that started in Lueco Lloyd's boarding house burned five frame buildings on East Main Street in Carrboro before it was stopped at Marks's brick store. By late December Lloyd was preparing to put up two brick stores on the site, and the rebuilt block was brick.

Durham Hosiery closes Mill No. 4, the former Alberta mill

Durham Hosiery Mills stopped operations at Mill No. 4 in 1930 as the Depression cut into the hosiery business.

Subject: Carr Mill

Passenger trains stop running on the University Railroad

Mixed passenger service on the ten-mile line between University Station and Carrboro ended as car ownership spread and roads improved, leaving the line to freight.

Subject: University Station

Durham Hosiery closes its last Carrboro mill

Durham Hosiery Mills dissolved its business at Mill No. 7 in June 1938 and laid off the workers, ending the company's operations in Carrboro.

A wartime munitions plant opens in the former Mill No. 7

National Munitions Corporation converted the empty Mill No. 7 on Roberson Street into a shell-loading plant that pressed tetryl pellets for Navy anti-aircraft ammunition, growing from about 126 workers to more than 500; an explosion hit its pellet houses on September 6, 1942.

The former Alberta mill reopens as Carrboro Woolen Mills

After fifteen idle years the modernized Mill No. 4 building reopened as Carrboro Woolen Mills, which ran until the early 1960s.

Subject: Carr Mill

The idle Carrboro depot is converted into The Station

Lee Epting and Mike Macomson finished renovating the disused depot in 1976 after two years of negotiations, reopening it as The Station restaurant, later a music venue.

The Alberta Mill complex is listed on the National Register

The mill, the railroad depot and the brick grist mill were listed together on the National Register of Historic Places, a year after the 1975 nomination made during the fight over demolishing the mill.

Subject: Carr Mill · Lloyd grist mill (Broad Street)

The Carrboro Commercial Historic District is listed in the National Register

On June 20, 1985 the National Park Service listed the Carrboro Commercial Historic District in Carrboro in the National Register of Historic Places.

The Thomas F. Lloyd Historic District is listed in the National Register

On August 14, 1986 the National Park Service listed the Thomas F. Lloyd Historic District in Carrboro in the National Register of Historic Places.

Carrboro backs a study of turning the old University Railroad line into a greenway

The Town Council unanimously approved an agreement to study converting the 11-mile rail corridor, which still carries coal to UNC's cogeneration plant, into a multi-use trail once the plant stops using coal.