1805-1829

Cotton industry spins money

Spinning cotton locally saved money, rather than shipping bales north.

In 1789, the Fayetteville Gazette championed the development of local textile mills, publishing articles on successful mills elsewhere and editorializing about the need for mills here.

The town was becoming a trading center for cotton. Most of it was shipped down the Cape Fear River, bound for processing in New England.

Cotton growers in Cumberland County didn't have the money or appetite for risk to develop their own mills. It wasn't until 1825 that George McNeill and Robert Strange, members of Cumberland County's rising merchant class, combined their money with the knowledge of Henry Donaldson, who had already built three mills in the state.

They converted a gristmill below the confluence of Cross and Blounts creeks to spin cotton, using machinery made in Providence, R.I. Donaldson estimated the mill would save at least 10 percent over the cost of sending cotton bales north. Local mills also would cut waste, he said.

A story in an 1826 edition of the Fayetteville Journal said the McNeill-Donaldson mill expected to hire young boys and girls, paying them about $40 a year. Other sources said the mill used slave labor.

An 1828 report to the state legislature by Charles Fisher said a Fayetteville mill supervisor reported "he not only finds negroes equal to whites in aptness to learn and skills to execute, but all things considered, he actually prefers them."

The mill closed in 1829, and five others were already planned.

Rockfish Manufacturing Co. was chartered in 1836 to spin wool, flax and hemp. It was on Rockfish Creek and became the state's largest mill before the Civil War.

Under the leadership of Charles Peter Mallett, the mill's 100 looms and 4,500 spindles turned cotton into sheeting that sold for 8 cents to 10 cents per yard in markets as distant as St. Louis, Philadelphia and New York.

Plantation owner Duncan Murchison cut out the middle manmill Cumberland Countyit doorswould be good somewhere in here to mention the mill villages that developed, where people lived, worked and bought supplies. also to mention the demise of the mills/villages.