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Colonial and Regulator years · 1680–1774
- 1750s
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Synnott's Mill is at work on the Eno River
A water mill known as Synnott's Mill was already running on the Eno before Orange County was formed. It is the earliest Eno mill Mattson names.
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Hugh Laughlin and Thomas Lindley start a grist mill on Cane Creek
In 1756 Laughlin and Lindley started grinding at a mill on Cane Creek, the first mill in that part of the county. For more than a century people called it Lindley's Mill, and afterward Sutphin Mill.
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The Few family settles on the Eno with four enslaved people and builds a saw and grist mill
William Few brought his family from Maryland in the fall of 1758 to 640 acres bought from James Taylor, lying on both sides of the Eno about seven miles east of the county town. Four enslaved people came with them, and Few and his brother James built a saw and grist mill on the river.
- 1760s
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Abner Nash settles briefly in Hillsborough and builds the town's first mill on the Eno
The Virginia lawyer Abner Nash moved to Hillsborough, then called Childsburgh, in 1762 or early 1763 with his younger brother Francis. He bought town lots, dammed the Eno River and built the town's first mill before moving to Halifax by 1764.
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John Armstrong contracts with Henry McCulloh to run a mill on the Haw River
John Armstrong of Orange County and Henry McCulloh of Halifax County made a contract about the operation of a mill on the Haw River.
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Farmers met at Maddock’s Mill to press the county’s officers to account for fees and taxes
Delegates from Orange County neighborhoods met at Maddock's Mill to ask their assemblymen and vestrymen how public money was spent. The officers refused to attend, and the meeting resolved that such conferences between voters and their representatives should be held every year.
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Thomas Hart buys Joseph Maddock's mill on the Eno
Joseph Maddock, a Quaker who had run the grist mill on the Eno west of Hillsborough since 1755, sold it to Thomas Hart, a friend of Governor William Tryon, who built it up with a sawmill, oil mill, fulling mill, distillery, tannery and other works. This is the mill, known as Hart's Mill, that a British guard held in February 1781.
- 1770s
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John Collett's map of North Carolina shows a row of mills on the Eno and Little River
Collett's 1770 map of the colony marks a series of mills along the Eno and on the main branches of the Little River.
Revolution and early republic · 1775–1799
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Rochester is named to a commission to set up a gun factory near Hillsborough
The commission was to establish a gun factory near Hillsborough, and Rochester led a wagon train to Philadelphia to obtain iron for it. Illness later that year ended his military service.
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John Hogan's paper mill opens near Hillsborough
A notice in the North Carolina Gazette announced a newly built paper mill near Hillsborough ready to work and asked households to save linen rags for it. John Hogan owned the mill, a mile and a half northeast of town; drought hampered it in 1778, and the Assembly gave him more time to earn the state's premium for paper.
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Drought shuts down the state gun factory near Hillsborough
The factory's shop sat beside a creek on Thomas Burke's land about two miles northeast of town, and a dry summer left the creek too low to drive its wheel. The dry spell slowed the paper mill as well, and the Assembly gave John Hogan more time to earn the paper bounty.
- 1780s
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Lee's Legion joins Pickens's militia camp after the Hart's Mill raid
Later the same day as the Hart's Mill raid, Henry Lee's Legion, returning from beyond the Dan River with Greene's army, reached General Andrew Pickens's militia at a farm up Stony Creek, where the camp at first took the horsemen for Tarleton's cavalry. The combined force then went after Tarleton west of the Haw, the movement that led to Pyle's defeat.
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Patriots and Loyalists clash at Hart’s Mill
At daybreak about 45 North Carolina cavalry under Captain Joseph Graham and mounted riflemen under Captain Richard Simmons, sent out by General Andrew Pickens, surprised the British guard of about 26 regulars and two Loyalists that was keeping Thomas Hart's mill on the Eno grinding for Cornwallis's army. Graham's accounts report the whole guard killed, wounded or captured with no Patriot dead, and the party reached Pickens's camp with its prisoners ahead of pursuing British cavalry.
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Cornwallis calls loyal subjects to the Royal Standard at Hillsborough
From his headquarters at Hillsborough, Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis issued a proclamation inviting loyal subjects to come without delay, with their arms and ten days' provisions, to the Royal Standard erected in the town and help restore royal government in North Carolina.
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Pickens's cavalry fights Tarleton's horse at Clapp's Mill
An American force ambushed Banastre Tarleton's cavalry at Clapp's Mill on Alamance Creek, in the part of Orange County that became Alamance County in 1849. Forty of Pickens's cavalry under Captains Joseph Graham and Richard Simmons took part. The American second line broke and the British lost about twenty-one men.
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Butler's militia ambushes Fanning's Loyalists at Lindley's Mill
The day after David Fanning's raid carried Governor Thomas Burke out of Hillsborough, John Butler rode with about four hundred militia to the ford where the Wilmington road crossed Cane Creek at Lindley's Mill and laid an ambush with Colonel Robert Mebane. The opening volley killed Colonel Hector McNeil, but Fanning organized a flanking attack that drove the militia from the field, and the prisoners went on to Wilmington.
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Jesse Benton's son Thomas Hart Benton is born near Hart's Mill
Thomas Hart Benton, later a U.S. senator from Missouri, was born in 1782 at Hart's Mill near Hillsborough, the son of Jesse and Ann Gooch Benton.
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The county court names a jury to lay off a road from McCauley's mill to Hillsborough
At the week-long August 1786 term, held by justices John Butler, William McCauley and William Ansley, the court named a jury to mark the best and most direct road from McCauley's mill to Hillsborough. The same term licensed three taverns and named tax collectors for all seven taxing districts.
- 1790s
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David Faucette buys the home tract and a grist mill from his father
David Faucette paid his father Richard 400 pounds for two adjoining tracts of 100 acres where he was already living, with a grist mill and other improvements. He later built the two-story frame house that still stands above the Eno.
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Faucett's grist mill is working at the Eno ford northwest of Hillsborough
The county's architectural survey records the Faucett Mill in operation by at least 1792, at a place where a wagon road forded the Eno River northwest of Hillsborough, and says it may have been built as early as the 1760s by the Quaker milling family of Isaac Lowe. Mills of this kind ground the corn and wheat that Orange farmers hauled north to Petersburg or south toward the Cape Fear, and doubled as gathering places; the Faucett family later added a house that served as an inn and tavern.
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Black workers and campus labor
Enslaved men built and served the university from its first buildings, Wilson Caldwell led its labor force after Reconstruction, and the janitors organized an association in 1930 that became a CIO local in 1942. The university named the laundry for Kennon Cheek and Rebecca Clark in 1998, dedicated the Unsung Founders Memorial in 2005 and published the names of 119 enslaved workers in 2018.
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Enslaved men owned by contractor James Patterson paint the roof of Old East
James Patterson, the slaveholding contractor who built Old East between 1793 and 1795, reported in a 1795 letter that several of his own enslaved workers had painted the building's roof. Their names were not recorded.
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1800s
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The Patterson family builds a Federal-style house near Mount Moriah
A two-story center-passage house with Federal mantels was built for the Pattersons, who owned much land and the Patterson grist mill. Colonial Revival changes, probably in the 1920s or later, and 20th-century additions have hidden its early form.
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Mount Carmel Baptist Church is organized at Pritchard's Mill
Mount Carmel Baptist Church began at Pritchard's Mill in 1803 and moved to its later site in 1873, when it built the church still in use in 1953.
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The Faucett family builds a two-story house and inn beside their Eno mill
After buying the mill at the Eno ford northwest of Hillsborough, the Faucetts put up a two-story house next to it that also served travelers as an inn and tavern. It still stands beside the mill.
- 1810s
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Samuel Hancock buys lots near the Eno for a brickyard
With a $50 loan from Dr. James Webb, brickmason Samuel Hancock bought lots near the Eno River for a brickyard, which became known as the Webb-Hancock brickyard. Webb's 1842 bankruptcy papers say the two men ran it as partners.
- 1820s
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Named enslaved workers build the third story of Old East
Bills from William Nichols's 1822 to 1824 enlargement of Old East list enslaved carpenters, bricklayers and laborers including Bob, Henry, Nelson, Allman, Tony, Luke, Isaac and Ned Peek, with their pay due to their owners. One bill from John C. White came to about $395.
- 1830s
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Edwin Michael Holt builds a cotton mill on Alamance Creek, then in Orange County
During the panic of 1837 Holt opened a cotton mill on Alamance Creek, run as Holt and Carrigan and starting with 528 spindles. The book calls it the first cotton mill in the county, in country that became Alamance in 1849.
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Enslaved plasterers, masons and laborers work on South Building's new roof
Thomas Waitt's bill for 1837 work on South Building, including its tin roof, lists wages for enslaved plasterers and masons Stewart, Chester, Peter, Calvin and Evans and laborers including Lewis, Tom, Redin, Abraham and Jordan.
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The Cane Creek Farmers and Mechanics Company starts a cotton mill
In 1837 the Cane Creek Farmers and Mechanics Company of Orange and Chatham Counties set up a cotton mill in southern Orange County, giving local farmers a place to have their raw cotton spun for sale.
- 1840s
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John Newlin and his sons build a cotton mill at Saxapahaw
The Quaker Newlins began a spinning mill on the Haw River at Saxapahaw in 1844, using enslaved labor to dig the millrace from a rock dam. The brick mill was ready to produce in 1848, the second cotton mill in the county.
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Brothers Albert and Osborne, enslaved by Dabney Cosby, plaster the lengthened Old East
The additions to Old East and Old West, contracted in December 1844 and finished in 1848, used the labor of Albert and Osborne, brothers enslaved by Dabney Cosby, who plastered the lengthened Old East in 1845 and 1846. Cosby praised Albert's plastering as first-rate work.
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Thomas W. Holden, now living in Milton, offers Enoe Mills for sale
Thomas W. Holden advertised all or half of Enoe Mills, five miles below Hillsborough, for sale. The works had about 300 acres, a threshing machine, saw mill, cotton gin, two wool-carding machines, an oil mill and a corn and flour mill, with his partner J. F. Lyon on the premises.
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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.
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Free Black cabinetmaker Thomas Day supplies woodwork and furniture for the new society halls
Thomas Day, the free Black cabinetmaker of Milton, North Carolina, supplied woodwork and furniture for the halls and libraries of the Dialectic and Philanthropic societies in A. J. Davis's north additions to Old East and Old West. Little names him, with the Virginia builder Dabney Cosby, among the craftsmen who carried out Davis's design.
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The North Carolina Railroad is chartered and built
The General Assembly chartered the North Carolina Railroad in 1849, after Senate speaker Calvin Graves cast the deciding vote. The state built the 223-mile line from Goldsboro to Charlotte between 1851 and 1856, running it through Hillsborough, and the first train ran its full length in January 1856.
- 1850s
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Enslaved workers build the stone dam at Trimm's Mill near Cedar Grove
Enslaved laborers build a large stone dam for Trimm's Mill near Cedar Grove in the 1850s. The dam is all that survived of the mill by 1993.
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Ira Ellis's mill, later Hall's Mill, is working on the Eno west of Hillsborough
A mill stands on the Eno west of Hillsborough by the middle of the nineteenth century, part of the Rev. Ira Ellis's home place; it took the name Hall's Mill after Nelson P. Hall acquired the Ellis house and land. Only its stone dam, a stone foundation and the trace of the race survived.
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Webb and Douglass finish a cotton factory on Little River
Webb and Douglass had finished building a cotton mill on Little River, some thirteen miles east of Hillsborough, by February 1852, and machinery for 1,000 spindles was on its way. Later owners kept it running, for a time as a rope works, until about the 1920s.
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Brown and Wilkinson's Eagle Foundry is at work on the Eno
The Eagle Foundry, about three miles east of Hillsborough near Berry's mill, had opened shortly before February 1852 and could barely keep up with orders. It ran for many years.
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Robert and John Shields ready a woollen factory on the Eno
The Shields brothers built a woollen factory on the Eno about seven miles east of Hillsborough, due to start in February 1852. The Recorder thought it one of the first three or four in the state; it later ran as the Alpha Woolen Mills.
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Elizabeth Keckly purchases freedom for herself and her son
Elizabeth Keckly purchased freedom for herself and her son in St. Louis, after earlier enslavement in Hillsborough.
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A small smoking-tobacco factory opens by the depot at Durham's Station
Built beside the tracks and worked by free Black and white laborers, the plant was the start of the tobacco industry that later made Durham a factory town.
- 1860s
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Webb and Whitted's plug tobacco factory is Hillsborough's largest works
The firm made plug tobacco in Hillsborough with 15 workers, the biggest manufacturing concern in present Orange County in the 1860 census.
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Washington Duke begins manufacturing smoking tobacco on his farm
Back from Confederate service, Washington Duke starts making smoking tobacco on his Orange County farm, the start of the business his sons later built into W. Duke and Sons.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
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Trustees strike Confederate leaders from the commencement ball
The student ball managers named Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, John C. Breckinridge, Zebulon Vance and other Confederate figures as honorary managers without asking them. Fearing hostile action by Congress, the trustees ruled the choice improper.
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Allison and Corbin run a plug tobacco factory at Cedar Grove
By the late 1860s Cedar Grove had a plug tobacco factory run by Allison and Corbin that employed fourteen men, the largest workforce of any business in the area. Dr. John J. Allison, a large landowner, was also a partner in dry goods, hardware and grocery stores, and William W. Allison kept a hotel.
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J. Morrow and Sons grind flour and corn at Oaks
In the late 1860s and early 1870s J. Morrow and his sons ran a flour and corn mill at Oaks, where a dry goods store and a tannery also operated in the community that had grown up around the Bingham school.
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Nelson Hall runs a flour and grist mill near Caldwell
In 1869 Nelson Hall, a large landowner in the Caldwell area, was operating a flour and grist mill alongside his farm, one of several planters who took up a side business after the war.
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Robert Fitzgerald and his brother start a brick kiln
Robert G. Fitzgerald, who came to Hillsborough in January 1868 to teach a freedmen's school, set up a brick kiln in partnership with his brother; his diaries through 1871 record its supplies and labor. His brother Richard was selling bricks in Durham by 1869.
- 1870s
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John and Mary Jane Pope build their farm near Cedar Grove
John S. Pope, a Confederate captain, and his wife Mary Jane McDade Pope built a two-story I-house on land she inherited from her father's estate in 1869; it was likely finished by 1874, when her brother's share brought the tract to about 73 acres. Tobacco was the farm's main cash crop, and its oldest surviving barn dates to about 1875.
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The Dukes move their tobacco business into a wooden factory in Durham
The Duke family's smoking tobacco business outgrows the farm and moves into a wooden factory at Durham, then still part of Orange County.
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H. P. Jones ships two hundred cases of Tar Heel smoking tobacco from Hillsborough to Georgia
The Recorder reported that Jones had lately shipped two hundred cases of his Tar Heel brand smoking tobacco to Georgia and held orders for a hundred more.
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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.
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Webb, Roulhac & Cameron prepare to move their tobacco business from Hillsborough to Durham
The Hillsborough Recorder reported that the tobacco firm of Webb, Roulhac & Cameron was about to move to Durham, where it had been offered better terms. The paper said the town could ill spare them.
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Wilson Caldwell returns to the reopened university and later heads its labor force
When the university reopened in 1875 Wilson Caldwell went back to work there. He became curator of South Building and head of the campus labor corps, and held the post until his death in 1898.
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The present Morrow's Mill is built on Cane Creek
The timber-framed mill on a stone foundation known as Morrow's Mill was built in 1878 on Cane Creek in southwestern Orange County, the third mill on a site whose stone dam enslaved laborers had built before the Civil War. It ground grain until 1930, and the 1993 county survey found it the only rural mill building besides Faucett's still standing, with its dam kept up.
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E. H. Pogue moves his tobacco manufacturing from Hillsborough to Durham
Pogue, a tobacco dealer since 1866 alongside his tinware and general merchandise trade, began making plug tobacco at a factory in Hillsborough in 1872 or 1873. In 1879 he moved the business to Durham, where E. H. Pogue & Son made granulated and long-cut smoking tobacco, while Pogue kept his home in Hillsborough.
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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.
- 1880s
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Five custom grist mills work the creeks of Cedar Grove Township
The 1880 manufacturing census found five flour and grist mills in Cedar Grove Township on Back, Eno and Lynch creeks and the South Little River, grinding local farmers' grain about six months a year. James Allen, who owned the township's largest farm, ran one of the smaller mills on Lynch Creek; two sawmills on the Little River ran five months a year.
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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.
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Little River Township has one grist mill and two sawmills
The 1880 manufacturing census found a single flour and grist mill in Little River Township, on the Eno, and two sawmills on the South Little River: one run by Furner and Smith, the other by Harry Roundtree.
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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.
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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.
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Two cotton gins operate on Cane Creek in Bingham Township
Bingham Township, where cotton was a cash crop, had two cotton gins on Cane Creek in 1880. The township also had three flour and grist mills running full time, two on Cane Creek and one on Turkey Creek, and four sawmills on Morgan, Cane and Tom creeks.
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W. R. Hughes makes bricks at Cedar Grove
The only brickyard in Cedar Grove Township in 1880 belonged to W. R. Hughes. It worked two months of the year and turned out about 100,000 common bricks.
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The commissioners allow gates across the roads at Orange Factory
The board ordered a gate on the road from Orange Factory to the Durham and Roxboro road near the old Douglas place, and another across the road on the opposite side of the river on S. W. Holman's land.
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From West End to Carrboro: railroad, mills, and a new town
In 1882 a university railroad spur ended a mile west of Chapel Hill, and the settlement of West End grew around its boxcar depot. Thomas Lloyd opened a gin and grist mill in 1883 and the Alberta Cotton Mill in 1899, which Julian Carr's Durham Hosiery bought in 1909. Incorporated as Venable in 1911, the town became Carrboro in 1913.
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Railroad service reaches West End
The first passenger train on the University Railroad left Chapel Hill on Monday, February 6, 1882, and ran through University Station to Raleigh. The line ended about a mile west of the village at West End, where a boxcar served as the depot, and the settlement that became Carrboro grew up around it.
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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.
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Thomas Lloyd and William Pritchard build a grist mill and cotton gin at the West End depot
Thomas F. Lloyd, a Confederate veteran, and his partner William Pritchard built a steam-powered grist mill and cotton gin in a two-story frame building just north of the railroad depot at West End in 1883. Farmers from southern Orange County brought grain and cotton there, and Lloyd bought out Pritchard's share in 1886.
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Thomas F. Lloyd buys the brick house on West Cameron Avenue later called the Lloyd-Wiley House
With his West End gin and grist mill doing well, Thomas F. Lloyd bought a two-story brick house on West Cameron Avenue in Chapel Hill in 1885. It has been known since as the Lloyd-Wiley House.
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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.
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Wilson Caldwell is elected to the Chapel Hill board of commissioners
Placed on the Republican ticket without seeking it, Wilson Caldwell, head of the university's labor force, was elected a Chapel Hill commissioner in 1886, defeating Professor Ralph Graves.
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The Webb & Co. tobacco partnership in Hillsborough is dissolved
James Webb Jr., Joseph C. Webb and George C. Corbin gave notice that their tobacco manufacturing firm, Webb & Co., was dissolved, leaving the two Webbs to collect its debts and wind up its business. The firm had been making tobacco in Hillsborough since at least 1881.
- 1890s
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A miller's house is built above Pritchard Mill
About 1890 a small frame I-house was set on a knoll over the Pritchard Mill site on Damascus Church Road. The survey found no other miller's dwelling in the township; an early log barn stands beside it.
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Meridith post office serves northern Little River Township
Around 1890 the Meridith post office in northern Little River Township had J. Law's store, the Riley and McKee sawmill and Berry's Grove Baptist Church close by.
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Five Forks rivals Cedar Grove as a crossroads settlement
In 1891 the crossroads of Five Forks was probably as populous as Cedar Grove. Allen's flour and grist mill and Sharp's sawmill stood nearby, and a Dr. Murphy lived at the fork and likely kept a store. Riley School, Harmony Primitive Baptist Church and Mount Zion Church lay between Five Forks and Border.
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J. Laws keeps a country store at Laws post office
In 1891 J. Laws ran a small country store at the Laws post office in northeastern Cedar Grove Township. Walnut Grove Methodist Church, Sartain School, G. W. Parker's sawmill and Hawkins's flour and grist mill stood nearby.
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J. McAdams runs a mill and a country store near Border
Around 1891 J. McAdams operated a mill and a small country store near the Border post office in southwestern Cedar Grove Township.
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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.
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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.
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A new mill house on Center Street becomes the community's first school
The Alberta Cotton Mill built the house at 109 Center Street about 1898, apparently the first on that side of the street, and it was soon put to use as the village school. It went back to being a house when the Carrboro Public School opened on West Main Street about 1908.
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Carpenter Thomas Clark moves to West End at Brodie Lloyd's request
Thomas Clark, the earliest carpenter known to have worked in Carrboro, came in from the Cane Creek section of Orange County while the Alberta Cotton Mill was going up, at Brodie Lloyd's urging. He built rental houses for Lloyd, among them 101, 103 and 109 Shelton Street and 205 Weaver Street, and helped Bennie Ray build his two-story house at 301 Weaver Street.
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Herbert Lloyd takes over his brother's cotton gin and grist mill
As Thomas F. Lloyd turned to building the Alberta Cotton Mill, his brother Herbert took charge of the steam gin and grist mill by the tracks, the frame buildings that had started the settlement in the early 1880s.
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Thomas F. Lloyd builds the Alberta Cotton Mill
Lloyd built the Alberta Cotton Mill beside the railroad in West End in 1898 and 1899, the brick mill that later became Durham Hosiery Mill No. 4 and then Carr Mill Mall.
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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.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1900s
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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.
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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.
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Lloyd and Neville's cotton gin operates on Laurel Street
The gin occupied the lot at 108 Laurel Street from the first years of the century into the 1930s. When it was dismantled its materials are said to have gone into houses, perhaps the two porcelain-enamel-tile houses at 108 and 110 Laurel Street.
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Mill owner Isaac W. Pritchard builds a large frame house on Ransom Street
Isaac Pritchard, who ran one of the first textile mills near the Carrboro depot, built a spacious house at 400 Ransom Street combining a hipped roof and Palladian dormer with a Queen Anne entrance and wraparound porch. Most of his land later became part of the Westwood subdivision.
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The Hillsboro Milling Company is chartered
The state chartered the Hillsboro Milling Company with $10,000 in capital stock. By early 1901 it had put in a corn mill and was buying wheat, with H. Winder Webb as secretary and treasurer, and it later ran roller mills in a large brick building east of the courthouse.
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Thomas F. Lloyd gives a church lot facing his mill to Chapel Hill's four congregations
Lloyd offered a Weaver Street lot to the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists and Methodists of Chapel Hill. The first two gave up their rights, and the Baptists and Methodists built Union Chapel on it in 1901 or 1902, a frame building about twenty by thirty feet.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Eno Mill adds cloth weaving
New looms extended operations beyond spinning yarn.
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Shepperd Strudwick builds a Churton Street house designed by Ralph Adams Cram
Shepperd Strudwick built a Neoclassical Revival house on Churton Street to a design Ralph Adams Cram drew about 1904; Cram's wife Elizabeth was the sister of Strudwick's wife Susan. The site had been cleared in 1903 by moving the antebellum W. J. Bingham House down East Union Street, and the house was finished about 1908. It was later named Tamarind.
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Shepperd Strudwick heads the new Bellevue Manufacturing Company in west Hillsborough
The Bellevue Manufacturing Company, Hillsborough's cotton mill in the west of the town, was incorporated in 1904 with Shepperd Strudwick as its first president, and he remained president until 1929. By 1911 the mill ran 5,000 spindles and 200 looms making ginghams.
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P. C. Collins buys the southern part of the future Bellevue mill site from J. W. Hooker
Before the Bellevue company was incorporated, P. C. Collins bought the south half of the mill site near the West Hillsborough depot from J. W. Hooker; a later hand added that he acted as the mill's agent. Collins, a shareholder, passed the land to the company in 1905.
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Mill engineer Richard C. Biberstein lays out the machinery for the Bellevue mill
The new company hired Richard C. Biberstein, a Charlotte mill designer trained in Massachusetts, to plan the arrangement of its machinery; his drawings run from 1905 to 1907. Fifteen years later he designed the mill's weaving room.
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Patterson Mill miller George Brown buys a farm on Mount Moriah Road
In 1905 George Brown, the miller at Patterson Mill, acquired the 1885 farmstead; his children still owned it in 1992.
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Shepperd Strudwick buys Allen Ruffin's land north of the future Bellevue mill
Four years before the Bellevue mill was built, Strudwick acquired the tract north of the site from Ruffin, one of the Eno Cotton Mill's founders, probably to build company housing there.
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The Efland family opens an excelsior plant at Efland
The Efland family founded one of North Carolina's first excelsior, or wood wool, plants at Efland in 1906, with Mack P. Efland as manager. By 1911 the Orange Manufacturing Company was listed as an excelsior maker at Efland.
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The Durham Recorder hails "Progressive Hillsboro" and the mill town at its depot
A Recorder article pointed to Hillsborough's new buildings, macadam roads and growing textile trade, and to a large mill that had raised a settlement around the depot called West Hillsboro. The authors think the mill meant was the Eno Cotton Mill, since Bellevue was not yet running.
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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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Shepperd Strudwick builds the Bellevue cotton mill on South Nash Street
The Bellevue Manufacturing Company's mill went up in 1909 west of South Nash Street, a short way beyond the town line of the day, backed by local investors and staffed by people leaving farm work. By 1912 it ran 5,000 spindles and 200 narrow looms.
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Julian Carr's Durham Hosiery Mills buys the Alberta Mill
In early February 1909 Julian S. Carr and his sons closed a deal for both the Alberta Cotton Mill that Thomas F. Lloyd had built at West End and the Blanche Hosiery Mill, to change hands on April 1 and run together as Durham Hosiery Mills' Mill No. 4. The deeds were recorded in March.
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Shepperd Strudwick is president of the Hillsboro Clay Manufacturing Company
Besides the Bellevue mill and the Bank of Orange, Shepperd Strudwick headed the Hillsboro Clay Manufacturing Company, according to the Orange County Observer.
- 1910s
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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.
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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.
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Durham Hosiery Mills builds a two-story company house on New Hill for the Oakley family
The L-shaped house at 303 South Greensboro Street was one of three two-story houses for large families in the last group the mill built for Mill No. 7. The company recruited the experienced Oakleys from Burlington, whose men became superintendents and foremen, and Cora Oakley ran part of the house as a boardinghouse at 25 cents a room a week.
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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.
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The Bellevue Commercial Block is built as West Hillsborough's shopping street
Five one-story brick buildings with seven storefronts on South Nash Street near the old depot became the West End business district for the mill village and West Hillsborough. Over the years they held a drug store, the Cates brothers' general store with a branch post office, a barber, a dry cleaner, a cafe and a movie theater.
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The Bellevue mill superintendent's house is built on South Nash Street
The two-story house built for the mill superintendent, with corbelled brick chimneys, a canted bay and a wraparound porch, is the most decorative early house in the surveyed area and stands out beside the plain mill houses next to it.
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The Blackwood family builds a grist mill on Millhouse Road
Around 1910 the Blackwoods built a small frame grist mill on a stone basement near Eubanks. It was made into a house in the 1950s.
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The Carrs open a night school for Carrboro children working in the mills
In the early 1910s the Carr family's company started a night school for children who spent their days in the Carrboro mills. It soon closed because the pupils were too tired after work and had chores waiting at home.
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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.
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A county report finds no factory-made desks in any school for Black children
In the 1911-12 term seven of the 23 Orange County schools for Black children were log buildings. Eleven had homemade desks and the rest only benches; none had factory desks, while 28 of the 47 frame white schools did.
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Venable is incorporated
The General Assembly incorporated the mill settlement west of Chapel Hill as the Town of Venable in an act ratified March 3, 1911, naming William H. Parker mayor and T. N. Mann, J. F. Ragan, T. A. Ray and J. F. Partin commissioners until the first election. The town, named for UNC president Francis P. Venable, became Carrboro in 1913.
-
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.
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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.
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John L. Efland starts a hosiery mill at Efland
Efland's first hosiery plant, opened by John L. Efland in 1912, first made half hose and later full-fashioned stockings. Relatives' later mills grew from it.
-
The Bellevue mill runs 5,000 spindles and 200 looms making dress ginghams
Three years after it opened, the Bellevue mill had 5,000 spindles and 200 narrow looms weaving dress ginghams 27 and 32 inches wide, sold through agents in New York and New Jersey.
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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.
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R. B. Mason's land west of the Bellevue mill is platted as the West Hill Property
To meet the need for workers' housing near the two mills, Mason's holdings were laid out in 1913 as a grid of roughly equal lots, bounded by the Bellevue mill village, Eno Street and the railroad, West Hill Street, and Mount Willing Road (later King Street). Most houses there went up from the 1920s to the 1940s, and the section beyond West Hill Avenue was platted in the 1930s.
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Venable is renamed Carrboro
A 1913 act of the General Assembly changed the name of the Town of Venable to Carrboro. Julian S. Carr, owner of the local mill since 1909, had asked UNC president Francis Venable's consent in January 1913, and the town's own history says Carr agreed to supply the community with electricity.
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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.
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The Blanche Hosiery Mill Company is chartered again with $100,000 in authorized capital
Four years after Julian Carr's company bought the first Blanche mill, W. E. Lindsay, Blanche Gilbert Lindsay and W. S. Robertson took out a new charter for the Blanche Hosiery Mill Company. By late April its new plant was finished, with 58 knitting machines and work for about 40 hands.
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The Efland Hosiery Mills is incorporated at Efland
The Efland Hosiery Mills received a state certificate of incorporation with its principal office at Efland and an authorized capital of $50,000. By July the mill was reported nearly finished.
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A. J. Blackwood recruits Cora Oakley's family from Burlington to the Carrboro mills
In 1914 A. J. Blackwood, a Burlington neighbor lately made superintendent of Mill No. 4, drew Cora Oakley and her large family to Carrboro with slightly higher wages and a ten-hour day. Durham Hosiery Mills hired many experienced hands away from Burlington-area mills in this way.
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Durham Hosiery Mills builds a house on West Main Street for its Carrboro superintendent
Some time between 1915 and 1925 the company built a one-and-a-half-story house with a tall hipped roof and Tuscan porch columns at 103 West Main Street for the head of its Carrboro mills; it was long thought the best house in town. Ralph Ward of Mill No. 4 lived there first and Floyd M. Durham of Mill No. 7 later, and Marvin J. Dawson bought it at the 1939 company sale.
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Durham Hosiery Mills builds its last group of mill houses on South Greensboro Street
Around 1915 carpenter John Squires built five houses on South Greensboro Street south of Carr Street, thought to be Durham Hosiery Mills' last housing project in Carrboro. The company then planted Lombardy poplars along the street, which was called Poplar Street until the diseased trees came down in the 1930s.
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Eno Cotton Mill rents its village houses to workers for 25 cents a week
The Eno Cotton Mill, founded in 1896 by Allen J. Ruffin and James H. Webb Jr., built a company village for its fast-growing workforce, and by 1915 the company was 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.
-
Mill worker Jesse Riggsbee builds his own house on South Greensboro Street
Riggsbee and his wife both worked for Durham Hosiery Mills but chose to build rather than rent from the mill or a speculator, and two relatives later built on adjoining West Carr Street lots. A humidifier mechanic, he lived there until his death in 1946.
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Southern Power Company builds a steam plant on the Eno near University Station
Duke's Southern Power Company built a coal-fired steam generating plant beside the Eno near University Station, a backup for its hydroelectric stations, with Fiske-Carter Construction Company holding the contract in 1915. By July 1916 the Eno steam plant was sending current as far as Charlotte while flooding shut down the company's river stations. Its power went to Durham's factories, not to Orange County.
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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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The Bellevue mill is also turning out cheviot cloth
By 1916 the Bellevue mill was weaving cheviot, a rough-finished cloth, alongside its ginghams.
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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.
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Julian S. Carr Jr. starts the Industrial Democracy plan in Durham Hosiery's mills
In 1917 Julian S. Carr Jr., who ran Durham Hosiery Mills, set up a plan of worker representation and profit sharing in all sixteen company mills, Carrboro's among them. Its Senate of superintendents and foremen and House of elected workers met twice a month in the Carrboro clubhouse, voted help for families hit by sickness or death, and paid for repainting most of the mill houses.
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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.
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Durham Hosiery sets up looping machines in a Center Street house
After the former school at 109 Center Street was lengthened at its north end, the company, out of room in Mill No. 4, installed extra looping machines there for closing the toes of hose. It became a house again a few years later, once the mill was enlarged.
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The Bivins Liner Company begins making tobacco hogshead liners in Hillsborough
Founded in 1918 as the Bivins Liner Company and later called the Hines Liner Company, the firm made the hoops that hold tobacco hogshead heads in place. It also ran a lumber and planing mill nearby.
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The power house wing of Mill No. 4 is raised to two full stories
In 1918 Durham Hosiery Mills built the original power house wing of Mill No. 4 up to two full stories and gave it a taller two-story tower on the north side.
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University janitors organize with the Industrial Workers of the World
Black janitors at the university formed an affiliate of the IWW and weighed a strike for higher wages as the spring term closed. Business manager Charles T. Woollen answered that he would hire a new crew from Durham, and the effort faded. That fall all the campus help lost their jobs when the SATC took over the buildings.
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The Efland excelsior mills burn
Fire destroyed the Efland Excelsior Mills, four miles from Hillsborough, with a loss estimated at $15,000 plus about $3,000 in wood. The fire was believed to have been set.
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Carrboro opens an influenza diet kitchen in the mill club rooms
When influenza spread from the university to Carrboro, a volunteer nursing committee worked night and day, and J. S. Carr gave the club rooms for a diet kitchen and paid its costs. For two weeks Mrs. R. B. Lawson and Mrs. Arthur Blackwood served at least seven gallons of soup a day, and orderlies checked homes each morning.
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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.
-
The Bellevue mill changes over from steam to electric power
The mill was built to run belt-driven machinery from a steam engine. By 1919 it ran partly on electricity, and by the mid-1920s it had changed over completely, with individual motors on the machines and the belt-way removed.
- 1920s
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A fenced playground is built beside Mill No. 7
Around 1920 a fenced playground with swings and horseshoe pits went up on the north side of Mill No. 7, one of the projects of the mills' Industrial Democracy plan. It was taken apart in World War II so its metal could go to the war effort.
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Carrboro's lettered streets receive names
Until about 1920 the mill village's streets went by letters. Around then most got the names they still had in 1983; the H, I and J streets north of Mill No. 4 became Ice Avenue, Durham Street and Hosiery Street.
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Mills own only a third of Carrboro's houses
In 1920 Carrboro had about 280 textile workers and 223 houses, and the mills owned only about a third of those houses. Most of the rest were private, many of them rentals put up by local farmers and businessmen such as Brodie Lloyd.
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The Bellevue company builds its mill village north of the mill
In the early 1920s, as it doubled the mill, the company set closely spaced houses along a narrow loop road reached from West King and South Nash streets, in three plain types; the one-and-a-half-story houses had two front doors so workers on different shifts could come and go separately. All the houses appear on the 1924 Sanborn map.
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The Bellevue mill is enlarged in 1920 and again in
Expansions in 1920 and 1923 were part of a decade of growth in which the mill more than doubled its spindles and looms, and they coincided with the building of much of its company housing.
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The Bivins brothers' tobacco basket factory is running in Hillsboro
A Hillsboro report called the Bivins brothers' basket factory a new industry doing a thriving business. It wove the large baskets used in tobacco warehouses by machine, one of few such plants in the country.
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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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Lightning sets fire to the new brick grist mill
A few years after the brick mill replaced the burned frame buildings, a strike burned out its interior. It was soon repaired, and W. Albert Lloyd is said to have made it a grocery and his home; the 1925 Sanborn map lists it as his grocery warehouse.
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Story-and-a-half houses, probably mill housing for the Newport Manufacturing Company, go up on South Occoneechee Street
Three matching one-and-a-half-story houses at 212, 216 and 218 South Occoneechee Street, built around 1920-1921, may have been mill houses for the Newport Manufacturing Company, which the 1924 Sanborn map shows on nearby Calvin Street.
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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.
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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.
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J. F. Sturdivant completes a master's thesis on the Carrboro mill village
In 1924 J. F. Sturdivant finished a UNC master's thesis studying Carrboro as a small mill village. It found every house painted and about two-thirds with electric lights, and it counted 197 workers at Mill No. 4 and 81 at Mill No. 7 in the early 1920s.
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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.
-
Black clubwomen open the North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls at Efland
After years of fundraising, the North Carolina federation of Black women's clubs led by Charlotte Hawkins Brown opened a home and school for Black girls on a 143-acre farm on US 70 at Efland. The state gave only occasional small grants; the federation's board voted in October 1938 to close within five months, and the home closed on March 15, 1939. The state later opened a training school for Black girls, first at Rocky Mount and then at Dobbs Farm near Kinston.
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The four Bivins brothers start a woodworking plant in Hillsborough
The Bivins brothers opened a plant in Hillsborough in 1925 that first made tobacco baskets and later, as Orange Furniture Craftsmen, upholstered furniture. It became the White Furniture Company's Hillsborough branch.
-
The old Blanche Hosiery mill building on Lindsay Street is cut into two houses
Blanche Hosiery's small frame mill, about 50 by 24 feet, was already a dwelling by 1915. It was sawn in half to make the mirror-image cottages at 102 and 104 Lindsay Street, which stayed rental houses into the 1970s.
-
J. Cheshire Webb takes options on the Hillsborough quarry farm that supplied stone for Duke
Webb showed geologist Jasper L. Stuckey the old quarry near Hillsborough that had supplied flagstones, and at the request of Duke's business manager Frank Brown he took purchase options on the quarry farm, signed January 31, 1925. The land was bought under the option for Duke University on March 31.
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The Mayo family's quarry land near Hillsborough is sold to Duke's land agent for $500
A deed at the Orange County courthouse records that Duke land agent Murray Jones paid the Mayo family $500 in March 1925 for land with a working stone quarry, the source of the stone for Duke's new campus. According to family accounts, George Mayo refused to sell until he was jailed and signed so his family would not go hungry.
-
After its 1920s additions the Bellevue mill runs 10,740 spindles and 592 looms
The additions of the early 1920s more than doubled the mill's spindles and looms, and by 1926 the company's capital stock stood at $500,000. In 1919 it had still declared only its original $125,000.
-
Durham Hosiery Mills begins cutting back its Carrboro operations
With demand for cotton stockings sliding since silk hosiery came in during the mid-1910s, the company began curtailing work at its Carrboro mills in 1928. The 1929 crash deepened the slump, and Mill No. 4 shut in 1930.
-
A workmen's compensation law that Frank Graham and Harry Wolf helped write passes
Sixteen earlier bills had failed, but with Governor O. Max Gardner's backing the 1929 General Assembly passed a no-fault workmen's compensation act. Frank Graham lobbied for it, and he and economics professor Harry Wolf helped draft it; the governor's support kept textile interests from objecting to Graham's role.
-
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.
-
Shepperd Strudwick resigns as president of Bellevue, and L. E. Beard takes over
After twenty-five years as president, Shepperd Strudwick stepped down in 1929, the year its stock value fell from $500,000 to $419,600. L. E. Beard succeeded him and his partner Norfleet Webb as president and treasurer.
-
The University Press publishes Harriet L. Herring's study of mill villages
Herring, a research associate of the Institute for Research in Social Science, had visited 322 of the state's roughly 500 mills after the manufacturers refused formal cooperation. It was the first systematic look at mill communities. Chase mailed copies to leading textile men, including Charles A. Cannon, as a model of social research.
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Chase refuses a mill official's demand that Frank Graham be fired
After the Southern Textile Bulletin wrongly placed Graham at a Communist Labor Day rally, an official of the company that owned Gastonia's Loray Mill asked Governor Gardner to have him dismissed. In the reply Gardner passed along, Chase said Graham had been in New York and that faculty had the same right as other citizens to form and voice opinions, and he would resist any censorship of those seeking change by lawful means.
- 1930s
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An owner of Durham's Erwin Cotton Mill builds a log retreat above New Hope Creek
In the 1930s a log house was built on a steep ridge over New Hope Creek, reportedly as a getaway for Mr. Erwin of the Erwin Cotton Mill in Durham. Older log outbuildings, among them a tobacco barn, mark an earlier house site.
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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.
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Frank Graham circulates his Industrial Bill of Rights
Answering the 1929 Gastonia strike deaths, Graham gathered more than four hundred signers across the state, among them Odum, Branson, Poteat and Walter Murphy, though not Chase. He made it the theme of his mid-April 1930 address as president of the North Carolina Conference for Social Service, ignoring advice to soften it while the trustees searched for a president.
-
The Hillsborough Manufacturing Company builds a warehouse and woodworking shop on North Churton Street
Around 1930 the Hillsborough Manufacturing Company puts up a building supply warehouse at 503-505 North Churton Street and a woodworking shop next door at 507-513, both on the 1943 Sanborn map. The warehouse was made into two apartments in the 1950s and the shop into five apartments by the 1960s.
-
A bungalow goes up on the old Bivins Basket Factory lot on South Occoneechee Street
By 1931 the Bivins Basket Factory, shown at South Occoneechee Street and West Margaret Lane on the 1924 Sanborn map, had left the site, and a bungalow was built there. The factory's small office may have been moved next door when the house went up.
-
James J. Freeland moves to Hillsborough
Born in Durham in 1918, Freeland came to Hillsborough in 1934. In his early years there he operated the Sunny Side Inn, a barbecue restaurant, worked part time at a sawmill and helped run a dry cleaning plant in West Hillsborough.
-
Janitors' Association president Elliot Washington asks for help joining a union
In 1934 Dean Robert House wrote to President Frank Porter Graham about a request from association president Elliot Washington for help with union membership, since the janitors could not afford local union dues.
-
Andrews and Lloyd sell their North Greensboro Street cedar mill site to Fitch Lumber
Dick Andrews and Brodie H. Lloyd had kept running a cedar mill on the lot after leasing buildings to Fitch in 1923. They then sold the whole industrial site, including early frame sheds built for the Thelma Knitting Mill, later Blanche Hosiery.
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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.
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G. C. Kennedy and Sons build the Piedmont Packing Company plant north of Hillsborough
The meat packing plant about five miles north of Hillsborough was first built in 1937 and later enlarged. It held state permit No. 18, employed about 40 people and supplied markets from Hillsborough to Raleigh.
-
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.
-
Durham Hosiery Mills sells its Carrboro houses and land at auction
A year after its last Carrboro mill closed, the company auctioned much of its Carrboro property in 1939. Most houses went for $500 to $550, many to the families living in them, while Marvin J. Dawson of Chapel Hill, merchant Ernest Hearn, former foreman W. A. Riggsbee and Dick Andrews bought others as investments.
-
Sample and Ina Forbus make the old Morrow's Mill on Cane Creek their home
Sample B. Forbus, later director of Watts Hospital, and the writer Ina B. Forbus bought the 1878 grist mill on Cane Creek in 1938 and converted it into their permanent home in 1939, keeping its hand-hewn beams and setting millstones in the garden. The mill had run until 1930.
- 1940s
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The Efland Knitting Company is started
A second family hosiery firm, the Efland Knitting Company, began about 1940 as an offshoot of John L. Efland's mill.
-
The cotton warehouses beside Carrboro's two mills are torn down
The large cotton warehouses next to Mill No. 4 and Mill No. 7, where ginned cotton was bought and stored for Durham Hosiery Mills, were torn down and hauled away in the 1940s.
-
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.
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White Furniture Company of Mebane takes over Orange Furniture Craftsmen in Hillsborough
The Mebane firm bought the Hillsborough plant and turned it to dining room buffets and cabinets, many of them eighteenth-century reproductions. By 1953 it employed 125.
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Fitch Lumber buys the Crawford brothers' spoke plant on Lloyd Street
Walter S. and Charlie M. Crawford had made wooden wheel spokes in a sheet-metal building beside the tracks, probably built about 1930. Fitch made it a planing mill that dressed rough lumber from county sawmills, later adding a raised shavings bin that farmers drove under to load bedding for their stock.
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Construction begins on the Negro Community Center
Work on the Negro Community Center began on January 9, 1941, with Clarence Webb directing a crew of 20 and Charles Craig, the Black architect and contractor who drew the plans, helping supervise. A WPA grant paid most of the cost, and Black masons, carpenters and other workers donated their labor.
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Fire destroys the Bivins Basket Factory east of Hillsboro
A fire of unknown cause razed the Bivins Basket Factory on the Durham-Greensboro highway just east of Hillsboro. The plant had been used mostly for storage, and its owners called it a total loss.
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The Janitors' Association reorganizes as a CIO union local
The Janitors' Association became Local 403-P of the State, County and Municipal Workers of America, a CIO union. Minutes of July 2, 1942 name pay as the most important matter, and laundry worker Rebecca Clark became a shop steward.
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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.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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Hesslein and Company buys the Belle-Vue mill, ending local ownership
Belle-Vue Manufacturing Company had been run from Hillsborough since 1904, lately under L. E. Beard. In 1945 Hesslein and Company bought it and spent over half a million dollars on new machinery and on baths for the mill village houses.
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