Southern Quakers and Industry

"Friends of Industry: Quakers and the Industrial Revolution in the South"

Notes by Mac Whatley for a speech to the Friends Historical Society, Guilford College, November 8, 2001

The early southern historian Broadus Mitchell stated in the 1920s the ‘heroic’ thesis of southern industrialization: that the Reconstruction-era “New South” industrial pioneers were unique figures who took a stand for transforming the agricultural economy against the post-war status quo. This point of view characterizes the Cotton Mill Campaigns of the 1870s and 1880s as creating “a new civilization… made by individual men thinking out ideals and working up objectives which aimed at the progress of the whole community.” [see Herbert Collins, “The Idea of Cotton Textile Industry in the South, 1870-1900,” NC Hist Rev Vol. XXXIV #3 (July 1957)]

My point of view is that the Friends of central NC were ‘thinking out ideals and working up objectives which aimed at the progress of the whole community’ more than sixty years before the Cotton Mill Campaigns began, and indeed the central figures of late nineteenth-century industrial development were veteran employees of the antebellum Quaker factories. This thesis was first stated in 1906 by Columbia University historian Holland Thompson, a native of Randolph County, who was one of the first historians of southern industrialization.

“Upon Deep River in Randolph County, where five mills were built before 1850, conditions were somewhat peculiar… These mills were in a section where the Quaker influence was strong. Slavery was not widespread and was unpopular. The mills were built by joint stock companies composed of substantial citizens of the neighborhood. There was little or no prejudice against mill labor as such, and the farmers’ daughters gladly came to work in the mills. They lived at home, walking the distance morning and evening, or else boarded with some relative or friend near by.

“The mill managers were men of high character—who felt themselves to stand in parental relation to the operatives and required the observance of decorous conduct. Many girls worked to buy themselves trousseaux, others to help their families. They lost no caste by working in the mills. Twenty years ago throughout the section one might find the wives of substantial farmers or business men who had worked in the mills before the Civil War. Some married officials of the mills.”

[Holland Thompson, From the Cotton Field to the Cotton Mill: A Study of Industrial Transition in North Carolina (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1906), pp. 51-52.]

Thompson was almost undoubtedly describing his own mother in this passage. He was born in the Farmer community of southwest Randolph County; his grandfather Thomas Rice had been a builder in Greensboro in the 1830s who moved to Franklinville and built the Island Ford factory, where he was a shareholder. Rice moved to Farmer in the late 1850s, where one of his daughters married and raised her children (including Thompson).

Many early proponents of manufacturing emphasized the social and moral benefits of manufacturing as did Thompson. North Carolina’s advocates of industrialism worked diligently to demonstrate that manufacturing would not degrade local moral standards [in response to contemporary journalistic efforts to expose the dismal and unhealthy working conditions of laborers in British mills- see also the Luddite movement, and Charles Dickens’ comments in the 1840s on how much better the mills of Lowell, Mass., were in comparison to the mills of Manchester, England].

Randolph County editors and industrialists mounted a concerted public relations campaign to promote the virtues of local manufacturing activities. The Asheboro newspaper in 1838, for example, advertised for Franklinsville factory workers with the appeal, “Here is a fine opening for hardy, industrious young men, who are willing to work hard, live well, earn money honestly and enjoy one of the most healthy situations in this or any other county.” [Asheboro (N.C) Southern Citizen, 14 April 1838.] In 1843 the Greensborough Patriot enviously called Cedar Falls “one of the most picturesque and romantic spots east of the mountains” [Greensborough Patriot, 30 Sept. 1843], and in 1845 assured its readers that the Franklinsville factory operatives “sustain a moral character equal to that of any portion of the surrounding population.” In 1851 one of the Island Ford stockholders wrote the Patriot that his operatives were “experienced and industrious and of the best moral character.” An 1851 report on the new Middleton Academy between Franklinville and Cedar Falls stated that “The villages are unsurpassed for morality and good order; the situation is healthy and mountain-like.” In 1852 a similar statement insisted that the location is very healthy and the whole country is remarkably free from immorality of every kind.” [The Greensborough Patriot, 2 August 1851; 22 Nov. 1851; 12 June 1852]

While those advocates underscored the moral and social benefits of manufacturing, local Quakers addressed the more controversial philosophical and political issues. In 1839 a Memorial on Slavery, approved by the North Carolina Yearly Meeting of Friends, was presented to the General Assembly. [See Susan T. Hatcher, “North Carolina Quakers: Bona Fide Abolitionists,” in The Southern Friend, Vol 1, No. 2 (Autumn, 1979)]. James T. Morehead, the Whig senator from Guilford County, submitted it in the Senate just a few days before adjournment. Its blunt language denouncing “the manifold evils” of slavery and demanding “the extinction of this evil in our beloved state” aroused a political firestorm in the press. Lost in the controversy over what became known as the “Abolition Memorial” was the petition’s case for industrialism. One of the consequences of slavery, it said, was that it “discourages mechanichal [sic] enterprise: Because Slave labor (owing to the uncultivated genius of the slaves, their slovenliness and carelessness) rarely, if ever succeed when applied to the intricate branches of machinery and for the second reason that it discourages enterprising men of skill and genius in the manufacturing States from settling among us and applying our wasting waterfalls to the manufacturing of the thousand various articles that we now purchase from our northern brethren.” [paragraph ‘3d.’] “Remove slavery from our soils and you will stay the tide of emigration now draining the life-blood of our Commonwealth, increase our political strength in our National Assembly, add security to our State in peace and in war, make fertile our barren fields, & raise the price of our lands, by an increase of population and the creation of manufacturing villages, which would create a market for the farmers’ produce, and induce Capitalists to open the bowels of the earth, to supply those manufactures with iron, copper, coal &c; These are some of the physical and political advantages that would result from emancipation.” [see copy of the petition in the N.C.Y.M. “Meeting for Sufferings” Papers, 1171-1839 (Box 1), Quaker Collection, Guilford College].

By that time Quakers already had a long history of involvement in manufacturing activities, both in England and in America. One of the first textile ‘manufactories’ in America was organized in Philadelphia in the early days of the Revolution to weave cotton, linen and woolen cloth. “The United Company of Philadelphia for Promoting American Manufactures,” was organized in February 1775, upon the following principles: “We, the subscribers, being deeply impressed with a sense of our present difficulties and earnestly solicitous… to support the freedom and promote the welfare of our country, on peaceable and constructive principles; and well knowing how much the establishing of manufactories among ourselves would contribute thereunto, besides exciting a general and laudable spirit of industry among the poor, and putting the means of supporting themselves into the hands of many who, at present, are a public expense, and also to convince the public that our country is not unfavorable to the establishing of manufactories, DO AGREE to form ourselves into a Company for the promoting of an American Manufactory…” [William R. Bagnall, The Textile Industries of the United States (Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1893), Vol, 1, p. 63]. Christopher Marshall, a Chester County, PA. native and birthright Friend, was Chairman of the Board of Managers. Samuel Wetherill, Jr., a Friend from Burlington, NJ, was another manager who was subsequently disowned for supporting the Revolution too vigorously; he went on to start by 1777 a competing company to weave woolen cloth for military uniforms; he also founded the “Free” or “Fighting” Quakers. [id., pp. 65-66; 72] The factory used spinning jennies (hand or animal powered) with 24 spindles each to spin yarn which was then converted into cloth by male handweavers.

The best known Quaker proponent of manufacturing was Moses Brown of Providence, Rhode Island [1738-1836]. One of the wealthiest men in 18^th century America, Brown and his son-in-law William Almy created the first water-powered textile factory in America at Pawtucket Falls, using locally-made machinery from pirated British designs. Brown and Almy hired the immigrant textile worker Samuel Slater to supervise their factory, which survives in history under the name of “The Old Slater Mill.” Despite the fact that history has given the recognition to Slater, Almy and Brown were much better known to their contemporaries. Moses Brown, in fact, was one of the most respected American Friends, who “had participated actively in the Quaker abolition and antipoverty movements and had shaped the Friends beliefs that manufacturing might relieve social ills.” [Steve Dunwell, The Run of the Mill: A Pictorial Narrative of the Expansion, Dominion, Decline and Enduring Impact of the New England Textile Industry (Boston: David R. Godine, 1978), p.12] Carol Treadway says that a volume of the Women’s Minutes from New Garden Quarterly Meeting contains a carefully wrapped packet labeled “Father Brown’s Hair.” Almy and Brown were also directly involved with North Carolina Friends in anti-slavery and manumission work. See the correspondence in the 1834 records of the Meeting for Sufferings for North Carolina Yearly Meeting [see #207, 207B, and 210] from William Almy enclosing “a check of the Manufacturers Bank of this city [Providence], on the Union Bank at New York, endorsed by me and payable to thy order. This sum is what has been subscribed by a few friends of this City, and a few friends in New Bedford, to aid friends of North Carolina in removing the coloured people under their care to the free States…. I send this check to thee by the desire and direction of Jeremiah Hubbard and Phineas Nixon, who came here with a copy of a Minute of the said Meeting for Sufferings of North Carolina, asking for our advice and aid in effecting the object above described.” [207B, dated 10^th mo. 8^th 1834]. According to Almy, this resettlement effort was also discussed in a letter from Jonah Foster to “Father Brown,” which stated that “Our Friends in London at the time of our Yearly Meeting felt much for our brethren of North Carolina as they have done in years past in reference to the people of colour under their care, and as the charge of them is becoming increasingly burdensome I think that if there was a prospect of their being all removed with their own consent to places in which they could have the full enjoyment of their liberty, that Friends in England would be willing to contribute something further to this object.” [#210, dated 9^th mo. 5^th 1834].

Although no correspondence between the early Quaker proponents of manufacturing has yet been uncovered, given the close contact between northern Quaker industrialists and southern Friends, their advice must have been sought when the earliest factories were being planned on Cane Creek and Deep River. When “The Randolph Manufacturing Company” was organized on April 2, 1838, it primary stockholder Elisha Coffin was dispatched “to the North” to buy equipment and machinery. Coffin almost certainly went to Massachusetts and Rhode Island for this purpose, as George Makepeace, the man hired to superintend the factory, was en route to North Carolina from a factory at Wrentham, Massachusetts (near the Rhode Island border) when his daughter was born in Petersburg, Virginia on Christmas Day, 1838.

Although Coffin and a majority of his 1838 stockholders in Franklinville appear to have been Quakers, this is even more clear in 1848 at the creation of the Union Manufacturing Company in what is now Randleman, where at least ten of the original fourteen stockholders were prominent Friends. Union Factory was the largest mill built on Deep River before the Civil War, on property provided by James Dicks adjoining the grist and oil mill built much earlier by his father, Peter Dicks. Peter Dicks was in 1832 the largest contributor to the New Garden Boarding School subscription fund, and a member of the committee that recommended a location for the school. In 1834 he became one of the schools’ twelve original trustees.

The original shareholders of Union Manufacturing Company:

1. James Dicks (1804-1883), a birthright member of Centre MM.
2. Dougan Clark, well-known Friends minister with his wife Asenath Clark, members of Marlboro MM, who were granted certificates to Walnut Ridge MM in Indiana in 1856. He was one of five Friends appointed to “consider the cause of education” and recommend a plan for New Garden Boarding School. His wife Asenath was a daughter of Nathan Hunt. They were superintendents of the School for its first five years of existence.
3. William Clark (1808-?), son of Dougan and Asenath Clark, a member of Centre and Marlboro meetings, married Louisa Worth in 1834; they were later granted a certificate to Springfield MM of Wayne County, Indiana.
4. Joseph Newlin (1797-1865), a birthright member of Spring MM, was granted a certificate to Marlboro in 1827. He had married Ruth Farlow in that meeting in 1820. It is not clear whether Joseph Newlin was closely related to John Newlin (1776-1867), of what is now Saxapahaw. John Newlin, the owner and operator of a store and tanyard near Spring meeting house, was the treasurer of the New Garden Boarding School building fund and one of the largest contributors to the construction of Founder’s Hall. In 1844 he formed a partnership with his sons Jonathan and James to build and operate a textile mill on Haw River. Some of Joseph Newlin’s furniture is in the Quaker Historical Collection.
5. Samuel Hill (1782-?), a native of Center MM who married Mary Branson at Back Creek meeting in 1806, a member of the site selection committee for New Garden Boarding School and the father of Nathan B. Hill.
6. Dr. Nathan Branson Hill (1817- ?), a native of Back Creek MM, who married Eliza L. Mendenhall (sister of Dr. Nereus Mendenhall) of Deep River MM in 1845. Hill was a teaching assistant at New Garden Boarding School in 1837, and returned as principal teacher in 1841-42. Dr. Hill and his family were granted a certificate to Minneapolis, Minn. MM in 1865.
7. Jonathan P. Winslow (a native of Back Creek meeting who transferred in 1848 to Marlboro, he and his family requested a certificate to Springfield MM of Indiana in 1857).
8. Jabez Hodgin (1809-1891), a birthright member of Centre MM, great-grandson of Peter Dicks and grandson of James Dicks through his daughter Deborah.
9. William Hinshaw (1802-1877) a member of Marlboro MM.
10. Elihu E. Mendenhall (1817-?), son of James and Miriam Mendendhall of Deep River MM, married Anna Hill at Back Creek MM in 1841. His father James Mendenhall was on the site selection committee for the Boarding School and was one of the first donors to the subscription fund.
11. S.D. Bumpass (not in Quaker records)
12. David Coletrane (1811-1892), married Susanna Welborn in 1833 according to the Coletrane genealogy, p. 18- not a Friend.
13. Dr. Charles W. Woollen, resident of the village of New Salem north of Randleman, who in 1859 would provide shelter to the Quaker Abolitionist Daniel Worth, the father of his second wife. Woollen’s first wife was a daughter of Jesse Walker; their daughter Mary E. Woollen was listed as one of his heirs at his death.
14. Jesse Walker (ca. 1796-1869), one of the wealthiest men in Randolph County. Wife Anna M. Walker (b. 1810); son Samuel Walker, married Jonathan Worth’s daughter Elvira; daughter Connie A. Walker married J.H. Millis; daughter Sarah married James I. Bostick.

[Info from the Quaker Records; Dorothy Lloyd Gilbert, Guilford: A Quaker College (Greensboro: Jos. J. Stone and Company, 1937); The Geneaological Journal of the Randolph County Genealogical Society, Vol. VI, #4, Fall 1982, pp. 10-11]

If I were to keep going I would get into an analysis of the shareholders of the Franklinville and Island Ford factories, who were mostly Quakers, and the story of the hostile takeover of the Franklinville factory in 1851 during the Wesleyan missionary “Abolitionist Meeting House” controversy. I’d also get into the history of the Franklinsville village, named after Gov. Jesse Franklin in tribute to his vote keeping slavery out of the Northwest Territory Ordinance. I’d also get deeply into the history of the Snow Camp Manufacturing Company and the Cane Creek Foundry. In the section on Moses Brown I’d discuss the Bess Beatty article “Lowells of the South: Northern Influences on the Nineteenth-Century North Carolina Textile Industry,” in the Journal of Southern History, Vol 53, #37 (1987), and I’d talk a lot more about Holland Thompson, a forgotten figure in early southern industrial history.

Textile History - Home