The Charlottesville Woolen Mills, Clothing a Nation
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The Charlottesville Woolen rogues she called the Union troopers, mately one mile east of Charlottes- King of Great Britain.” The second Mills, Clothing a Nation scribbling furiously in her diary, and ville’s original downtown. “At that highway into Albemarle County, the by Rick Britton confided that if she were a boy, she point,” wrote Harry E. Poindexter, Mountain Ridge Road, constructed would fight them. Later that evening, “Moore’s Creek empties into the circa 1740, led to Secretary’s Ford [Albemarle County] is a section with the after everything that could benefit [Rivanna] river from the southwest, from the east. When later extended greatest capabilities of self support, having Confederate arms had been put to forming a narrow triangle of land west to a gap in the Blue Ridge Moun- minerals, timber, materials for fabrics and the torch, Sarah Ann watched in hor- which rises rapidly to a rocky crest tains, this well-traveled thoroughfare an unexcelled water power for factories.— ror as a jubilant Federal incendiary some one hundred feet high.” was dubbed Three Notched Road. detail rode past. “They have burned From The Albemarle Handbook, published part of the iron bridge, & the cotton The earliest known enterprise on On the same “triangle” of in 1888 by Wm. H. Prout factory” [on the easternmost edge of the site was a water grist mill built in land was also located the port of town], she wrote. “The conflagration 1795 by Edward Moore, who owned Charlottesville, “called Pireus,” wrote During the Confederacy’s last win- was magnificent, sublime, it illumi- 500 acres thereabouts. In 1805 Wil- Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, ter, as prospects for victory dwindled, nated the whole canopy of heaven, liam D. Meriwether purchased “since the town itself liked to be spo- the clatter of approaching Union cav- with a lurid glare.” Moore’s property. Approximately ken of as the Athens of the South. alry was an ominous sound. Most of- twelve years later, after navigation on It seems to have been just above the ten it foreshadowed destruction and March of 1865 was not the last the Rivanna had opened up, Meri- dam. .with entrance through a lock despair. So it was on the afternoon time the “cotton factory”--or the wether constructed there a large and canal on the right bank.” A sub- of March 3, 1865, when a Federal Charlottesville Woolen Mills, as it was merchant mill, an operation that was sequent improvement came about in force of 10,000 horsemen--two full later known--was destroyed by fire. soon expanded to include a sawmill. the early 1830s, when the Blue Ridge divisions--under Major General Phil- Nor were the fires the only travails In 1826 the forward-thinking Meri- and Rivanna Turnpike was built con- ip Sheridan, captured Charlottesville suffered by the firm. Nonetheless, wether erected a wooden toll-bridge necting Meriwether’s Bridge, and the after annihilating the last organized through the latter half of the 1800s and began charging folks to cross the port, to Brooksville in western Al- Southern army in the Shenandoah the business weathered all storms due Rivanna. A dam was thrown across bemarle. “Its construction,” wrote Valley. Sheridan’s progress eastward to the vigilant stewardship of a father the river four years later. county historian Edgar Woods, “oc- through Albemarle County had been and son: John Adams and Henry Clay casioned the laying out of the straight marked with billowing plumes of Marchant. Thanks to their efforts the Why so much activity at this one road from the [span] to the east end black smoke. Woolen Mills prospered and grew to location? Since Charlottesville’s earli- of Market Street.” By 1835 Pireus become, as wrote O. Allan Gianniny, est days the “triangle,” or spit, of land was a bustling commercial center, “a “The long expected hordes have Jr., “Charlottesville’s most prominent between the two streams had played depot for the produce of the north- come at last,” wrote nineteen-year- industry of the late nineteenth cen- an important role--that of eastern ern and middle part of [Albemarle old Sarah Ann Strickler, a student tury.” access to the town’s low range of County],” according to a visitor. at the Albemarle Female Institute hills. Here was located the Rivanna on Charlottesville’s East Jefferson The story of Charlottesville’s most crossing known as Secretary’s Ford, Circa 1840, Meriwether’s son, Street. “They came shouting & gal- famous mill complex is also the tale so named, according to James Alex- William H. Meriwether, along with loping through town, waving their of a section of Albemarle County, ander, after “Col. Carter the Colonial partners Robert S. Jones and James banners aloft.” Vandals, pests, and specifically the plot of land approxi- Secretary under George the Second, S. Crewdson, dramatically advanced © 2006 Rick Britton, All Rights Reserved, For Further Info Contact Mr. Britton at [email protected] the business of the area. Tapping the ing cotton yarn, a double carder, two of cloth,” wrote John Hammond came to an end, of course, another Rivanna’s powerful flow, a group of dressers, and twelve looms.” Moore, “to turn out white jeans for monstrous, nationwide crisis rose structures known collectively as “the twenty-one cents a yard and colored over the horizon. Despite the Civil Charlottesville Factory” was erected Enter John Adams Marchant. Of jeans for twenty-four cents per yard. War, however, John A. Marchant, for carding and weaving cotton and French Huguenot ancestry, March- The success of this venture, essen- like so many businessmen North and wool, sawing timber, and grinding ant’s father had run a packet-boat tially the production of slave cloth- South, succeeded in finding a ready flour. A plaster mill was also includ- line from Baltimore to Norfolk. John ing, encouraged Marchant to enter market for his products. ed. Housed nearby was a mechanical A. Marchant arrived in Albemarle other textile fields. .” shop capable of turning out iron and sometime before 1826. Doing busi- During the conflict Marchant’s wooden machinery. ness out of a large, double brick At first, business was good for firm--as of 1860 known as “the building at 101 East Main Street, the “the Charlottesville Factory”--sit- Charlottesville Manufacturing Com- Beginning operation in late 1841, dry goods merchant was, wrote Poin- ting astride, as it was, one of the pany”–produced cloth and uniforms the mill complex at Pireus contin- dexter, a “stern man, full of energy, Old Dominion’s main arteries. And for the Confederate Army. So did ued through the decade under first and a staunch Episcopalian. .” He the site’s transportation options had other local businesses. The county the above-named partnership, then was also ambitious. “I expect I shall recently been expanded. The Cen- at the time, as mentioned above, subsequently Thomas L. Farish, a lo- surprise you,” the storekeeper wrote tral Virginia Railroad, in 1848, had included at least two other cloth- cal farmer and Baptist minister, and a niece in January of 1851, “when I built a 200-foot-long iron bridge making concerns. In a directory of finally the firm of “Farish, [Henry tell you that I sold every house and across the Rivanna right alongside Southern wartime manufacturers, W.] Jones and [John T.] Randolph.” every foot of ground I owned in Secretary’s Ford. Regular service to William A. Albaugh III wrote that “As the years went by,” wrote Poin- Charlottesville in exchange for the Charlottesville had begun in 1850. the “Charlottesville Factory Co.” [sic] dexter, “the textile end of the busi- bridge Cotton factory. .” “It was in 1852,” penned Wertenbak- employed fifteen hands, and “spun ness became the major concern. By Evidently the family was taken er, that the mill’s advertising boasted cotton and wool into cloth suitable 1850, besides carding fibers for home aback, for another niece wrote, the “that though the [railway line] passed for uniforms.” Albaugh also listed weaving, the mill manufactured a following month: “Most persons within a few yards of their factory, the Buckeye Land Factory,” located cheap grade of cloth for servants think he has made a bad trade but he they also had the advantage of navi- “ten miles from Charlottesville,” and and slaves.” does not think so. Well, I hope he is gation on the Rivanna.” “B.C. Flannagan & Co.,” which, with in the right. .” its forty workers, “[m]anufactured That same year, wrote Newton But the beautiful waters of the cotton and woolen goods for the C.S. Bond Jones, “the Charlottesville It seems that he was. Under the di- Rivanna brought disaster that same Gov’t.” Factory, one of three cloth-making rect management of Henry W. Jones, year. A devastating flood destroyed establishments [in Albemarle], was a partner in the previous administra- the dam and forced Marchant to sus- In 1864 John A. Marchant dis- valued at $90,000.” With an average tion, the firm made a few physical pend manufacturing for three years. solved the Charlottesville Manufac- payroll of twenty-eight hands, cloth improvements then charged ahead. By borrowing money and mortgag- turing Company by buying up the production totaled 70,000 yards. The “Within a short time [Marchant and ing property, the plucky entrepre- outstanding stock and turning it facilities at the time included, accord- Jones] offered, when customers fur- neur was barely able to keep “the over to his son, Henry. It was a wise ing to Jones: “a saw mill; a grist mill; nished three-fourths of a pound of Charlottesville Factory” out of the move. Born in Albemarle County on a plaster mill; 552 spindles for mak- washed and picked wool for each yard hands of his creditors.