Historic Charlotte

ecause of the noise produced by the spinning
and weaving machines, the new mills
appeared at the edges of town along railroad
lines. Tompkins did not like sites in the hearts
of cities. “The proximity of lawyers...promotes
law suits,” he declared, and a “mill in the
country can operate its own store and thereby
get back some of money paid for wages.” It is
important to note that Northern capital
played no direct role in financing the great
majority of Charlotte’s first cotton mills. They
were home owned and home operated.
In 1892 Tompkins joined with three other
local industrialists, R. M. Miller, R. M. Miller,
Jr., and E. A. Smith, in picking the southern
end of Dilworth, Charlotte’s first trolley suburb,
as the place to erect the only cotton mill in
Mecklenburg County that he owned and ran,
although he did operate a cottonseed oil plant
nearby. The Atherton Mills began operations in
January 1893, with 5,000 spindles manufacturing
yarn goods. “There’s no doubt about it,
things are ‘humming’ in the Queen City, and
‘humming’ to the tune of lively progress,”
declared Tompkins’s Charlotte Observer.
After 1900 entire mill villages containing
more than one factory began to appear on the
outskirts of Charlotte. E. A. Smith, a native of
Baltimore and part owner of the Atherton
Mills, organized the Chadwick and Hoskins
Mills in Charlotte near Rozzelles Ferry Road,
and by 1907, was head of the Chadwick,
Hoskins, Calvine (formerly Alpha), and
Louise Mills, and the Dover Cotton Mill in
nearby Pineville. When these factories consolidated
into the Chadwick-Hoskins
Company in 1908, it was the largest textile
firm in North Carolina.
Charlotte’s biggest textile mill village was
North Charlotte, the centerpiece of which was
the Highland Park Manufacturing Company
Plant No 3, designed by Stuart W. Cramer, who
had first come to Charlotte as an engineer for the
D. A. Tompkins Company. Erected at the former
site of the municipal water works, the imposing
brick, electric-powered mill, containing 30,000
spindles, 1000 looms, and employing 800
workers, opened in 1904. The Mecklenburg
Mill (1904) and the Johnston Manufacturing
Company (1913) were also located in North
✧
Above: Stuart W. Cramer.
COURTESY OF CAROLINA ROOM, PUBLIC LIBRARY
OF CHARLOTTE AND MECKLENBURG COUNTY.
Below: Stuart Cramer’s Highland Park Mill
#3 was used as a model of modern mill
design, emulated extensively after Cramer
used it in his book Useful Information for
Cotton Manufacturers.
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, ATKINS LIBRARY,
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHARLOTTE.
CHAPTER VII
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