Roswell’s Big Wheel…Water that Powered Roswell…And Empowered Georgia
THE
ROSWELL
MILLS
Roswell Historical Society
The Heritage Center
at Roswell Visitors Bureau
617 Atlanta Street
Roswell, Georgia 30075
800-776-7935; 770-640-3253
www.visitroswellga.com
Roswell Historical Society
The textile industry takes root
In the late 1700 and early 1800s Great Britain was the center for the textile industry. So
serious was this country about protecting its interests, laws were created to prevent those
knowledgeable about the technology from leaving the country.
Meanwhile, from 1790 to 1810, a fledgling cotton industry was beginning to take hold in
Rhode Island, but it was mostly dependent on southern plantation cotton. By 1815, 167 cotton
mills dotted the Rhode Island landscape.
Note: To lessen confusion as you read this information, be aware that although Roswell and its historic mill sites are
located in Fulton County, in the 1800s they were part of Cobb County
At that time, Boston was a financial center, but when the Embargo of 1808 and the War of
1812 bottled up Boston Harbor, wealthy shipping leaders, out of desperation, decided to invest
in new textile factories. The Colonies had to become more self-sufficient. By 1846 Lowell, Massachusetts, had nine large mills, machine shops, miles of canals and thousands of people employed in the mills.
Textile mills were flourishing in another part of the New World as well, beginning in 1830
through 1882, because of a peculiar geological boundary that would have an impact on early
transportation and, consequently, on commerce. Georgia’s fall line, where land drops from the
hills of the Piedmont region to the upper Coastal Plain lands, was perfect for such an industry.
In the 1837 publication, A Gazetteer of the State of Georgia, graphically (and charmingly)
subtitled “Embracing a Particular Description of the Counties, Towns, Villages, Rivers, &c., and
Whatsoever is Usual in Geographies, and Minute Statistical Works, Together with a New Map of
the State,” author Adiel Sherwood wrote this about the proliferation of factories in relation to
Georgia’s fall line:
Factories. – Factories to make cotton and woolen cloths have been established in
two or three counties; but owing to the high price of labor, they have been but shortlived. Since the late tariff, however, they have begun to start up in several places.
Manufactures. – Leather, shoes, hats, carriages, saddles, cabinet work, cotton and
woolen cloths, etc., are manufactured throughout the State. But little is manufactured
in the southern section even for the blacks; but homespun in the upper sections is
worn by the most wealthy and respectable inhabitants. Much, however, is imported
for every part of the state.
As factories sprang up in the region, another significant event took place. Roswell King of
Darien, Georgia decided to take an exploratory trip to Auraria to investigate the gold discoveries.
As he traveled on horseback he happened upon Vickery’s Creek. With the waters rushing before
him, he envisioned a mill with a community close by. Later, he would obtain the land from
someone who received it in a land lottery, King began construction of the mill and offered home
sites to friends and business associates from the coast of Georgia.
By 1839 he and his son, Barrington, and their slaves had settled in the area north of the
Chattahoochee River. In 1839, the Roswell Manufacturing Company would incorporate and
have approximately 150 operatives working at the mill.
Unfortunately, King’s wife, Catherine, never saw her family’s enterprise, nor the town that
would be named for her husband. She died while still living in Darien. In 1844, Roswell King
died and the couple’s son, Barrington King, worked to carry on his father’s dream. He served as
president of the Roswell Manufacturing Company for twenty-seven years, from its incorporation
in 1839 until his death in 1866.
According to the Roswell Historical Society’s book, Roswell: A Pictorial History, King’s cotton
mill “was built right below the dam, and early surveys show it to be a long and narrow building
connected to the machine shop by a wooden raceway.” It is thought that much of the machinery
for the mill came by oxcart from Augusta and that some of the components, including the original
water wheels, may have been produced on site.
Note: To lessen confusion as you read this information, be aware that although Roswell and its historic mill sites are
located in Fulton County, in the 1800s they were part of Cobb County
1853 Cotton Mill
Original Sawmill
(in 1843 Wool Factory)
Lower Dam
1839 Cotton Mill
Vickery’s Creek
1839 Mill Raceway
Wood Engraving - Roswell Historical Society
The New England of the South
By 1840 Georgia ranked third in the nation in production of cotton cloth, just behind
Massachusetts and New Hampshire, which were ranked first and second respectively. Nineteen
mills were operating, with one of the largest the Roswell Manufacturing Company. Also
operating in Roswell, along with a saw mill, grist mills and a few small textile mills, was one
of the earliest and most successful mills: The Lebanon Mill. This grist mill would later be
acquired by the Roswell Manufacturing company.
According to Statistics of the State of Georgia, compiled by Rev. George White in 1849, by
the mid-1840s, Roswell Factory at Vickery’s creek had capital of $80,000. Additionally, it had
these resources:
Spindles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,500
Looms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Operatives (nearly all white) . . . . . 150
Bales of cotton per day. . . . . . . . . . 5
Yards of shirting made per day . . . 1,100
Osnaburgs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,500
Bundles of yarn per week . . . . . . . . 1,200
Michael Hitt
Hours of work per day . . . . . . . . . . 11
The success of the Roswell Manufacturing Company is documented in The History of
Chicago Board of Trade Battery by John A. Nourse from records at the Chicago Historical
Society, referencing July 7, 1864, during the Civil War and the burning of the Roswell Mills:
“These mills and the whole country around here is owned by King & Co. they own
all the stores, provisions, etc.; they allow no liquor sold in the town, and in truth run
everything to suit themselves – Had their own paper currency, which circulated all
through this country as better than confederate scrip…”
On April 13, 1906, Virginia Wing Powers recalled another successful mill, the Laurel
Woolen Mill, which, like other area mills experienced strong growth during the last decades
of the nineteenth century: “…carriages passed near the Laurel Woolen Mill, remembered
for having made woolen material for Confederate uniforms,” she wrote. “This mill was later
flooded and abandoned when Bull Sluice Dam was constructed for Atlanta’s first hydroelectric power plant.”
The mills produced tenting, flannels and a cloth of wool and cotton called “Roswell Gray.”
Yarn, rope and cotton and wool cloth were also produced.
In Rev. George White’s 1854 Historical Collections of Georgia, the author noted that the
“Roswell Manufacturing Company is situated at Roswell, containing 2 cotton mills, 1 wool
factory and 1 flouring mill; Capital: $220,000.” He further observed:
The old factory is built of brick; 3 stories, with basement, 88 feet by 48; 2208 fly
spindles, turning off 1,000 pounds of yarn per day. The building is in the process
of enlargement and it is expected that at an early period there will be added 8
frames, 1,152 spindles, which will make 650 pounds No. 16 yarn; also machinery
for cotton rope; 400 lbs. per day.
The new factory is built of brick, with rock foundation; 140 ft. by 53; 4 stories,
overshot iron wheel, 16 feet face, 20 feet diameter…
According to The Marietta and Acworth City Directory for the years, 1883 and 1884:
“The cotton is nearly all obtained in this section, hauled in on wagons by the farmers.”
By 1850 Georgia had 38 textile mills and was called “The New England of the South;”
by 1855 Roswell Manufacturing Company would double its work force.
Timeline: Roswell Cotton Mills
1839
1853
1864
1873
Mill #1 opens (Roswell Manufacturing Company)
Mill #2 and a second dam opens (Roswell Manufacturing Company)
Both mills are burned during the Civil War; after the War, the 1853 mill is rebuilt.
Willeo Cotton Mill is established. According to the 1880 census, it had a fall of 30
feet and operated 1,200 spindles. (1896 records still list this mill.)
1882
Roswell Manufacturing Company builds another mill; the 1853 mill is now called
Mill #1 and the 1882 Mill is Mill #2.
1894
Oxbow Falls Manufacturing Company (The Roswell Company) opens a cotton mill.
It is later called The Pants Factory.
1920-23 The Roswell Manufacturing Company is purchased and its name is changed to
Roswell Mills.
1926
Lightning destroys the 1853 mill on June 12 and it is not rebuilt. The 1882 mill is
expanded and operates until 1975. It is known simply as “the Mill.”
1941
The Pants Factory is destroyed by fire but a new building is constructed in 1942.
(Cost: $75,047)
1947
Southern Mills purchases Roswell Mills and operates until 1975.
1985
Mimms Enterprises purchases the 1882 mill.
Vickery Falls
Overshot Wheel
Timeline: Roswell Woolen Mills
1857
1864
1871
1873
1877
1904
Ivy Mills is established by James R. King and Thomas E. King. Ivy Mills is not part of
Roswell Manufacturing Company.
Ivy Mills is destroyed during the Civil War; after the war, another mill is built next to
the Ivy Mill site. This would later be called Laurel Mill.
Ivy Mills is purchased by Empire Mills.
Laurel Mills Manufacturing Company is incorporated.
Laurel Mills has purchased Empire Mills.
Morgan Falls Dam was completed by the Georgia Power Company. Following
completion, Laurel Mills experiences ongoing flooding; it is eventually abandoned
and, in 1916, the machinery is sold.
Weather: a persistent enemy
For the mills in Roswell, as with other mills in Georgia, drought was a constant threat. Low
water resulted in less power which resulted in less production, meaning mill management could
not guarantee fulfillment of contracts. Mill workers were only paid for the hours they worked.
If work wasn’t available, they were forced to move on and find other jobs. When water power
again became sufficient to run the mills, the workforce would have to be rebuilt, causing other
challenges for mill managers and owners.
According to the Roswell Manufacturing Company’s minutes from October, 1853, the area had
“suffered much detention from low water the drought during summer & fall, more severe than
for the last 17 years…”
On November 1, 1876, the minutes show this account: “[W]e have suffered since August 15th
with a most serious drought, which as caused continued interruptions to the regular running of
the mill.”
The minutes of October 29, 1879, illustrate the ongoing challenges weather posed: “Loss of
time in 1878 and 1879 due to excessive droughts.”
April 28, 1885: “The old wheel, on account of its wear and tear, wastes water largely. When
water is plentiful, this makes very little difference, but should we want to use it in a dry time, the
trouble and loss would be felt.”
April 26, 1897: “…I consider the want of power the most urgent…”
Drought was not the only enemy; flooding could cause its own devastation, delaying
production and destroying technology and materials.
Morgan Falls Dam
Georgia Power Company
Morgan Falls Hydroelectric Plant
Georgia Power Company
Capturing the Energy of Moving Water:
Water was the source of energy that first powered Georgia mills and empowered the State
of Georgia. South of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Piedmont topography drops from 1,600 to
600 feet above sea level. This slope played a major role in Georgia’s productive milling industry. Many narrow stream and river valleys descend rapidly down the Piedmont across a granite
base exposed by numerous shoals and falls. Water confined by these valleys turned the wheels
of milling across Georgia. In the early days water wheels captured the flow (weight of the water) and force (height of the water’s drop) of many streams and rivers, producing the energy
that powered Georgia industry for many years.
Water wheels vary in form. Selecting which form of wheel might work most efficiently
depended on the landscape where the mill was to operate. A hilly site with a fast flowing
stream required a form of wheel different from a form that efficiently worked at a flat site
with a slow flowing stream. Some of the forms used in Georgia are described below.
The Tub Wheel is an early form of energy capture. A horizontal wheel with a set of
attached blades was mounted in a tub. The tub increased the water’s flow by containing it.
Guided through a chute or sluice, water struck the blades forcing the wheel to turn a vertical
shaft. This turning shaft supplied power directly to the milling process without any form of
gearing. Tubs were seldom more than six feet in diameter.
The Overshot Wheel was used in hilly topography that had narrow valleys, fast flowing
streams, and a high fall of water. This vertical wheel was turned by the weight of the water
(62.47 lb. /cubic ft.) falling into troughs - commonly called “buckets” - near the highest point
of its rotation. At the lowest point the buckets spilled the water into a tailrace for return to
the stream. Overshot wheels turned in the same direction as the flow of the supplying stream.
These factors made this wheel form very efficient with an exception. During floods rising water
could back up the tailrace causing the wheel to turn slower or stop. According to the Roswell
Manufacturing Company’s records, the efficient overshot wheel was used in their mills to capture the energy of Vickery Creek.
The Mid-shot, or Breast Wheel was a blend of the less efficient undershot wheel and the
more efficient overshot wheel. From the headrace water filled the wheel’s buckets at a point
level with its axle (middle or breast). The buckets were deep to catch more water (weight) supplied by a lower fall of water (force). This wheel form revolved in the opposite direction of the
stream source. At the lowest point of rotation the buckets dumped the water into the tailrace
to return to the stream. Flood waters backing up the tailrace, i.e., backwater, did not lessen the
wheel’s efficiency. In America this wheel proved to be very popular during the early 1800s.
The Undershot Wheel is one of the older forms. A low fall of water struck flat boards
suspended between the wheel’s vertical rims near the lowest point of rotation. Water flowed
under the wheel, turning it in the direction opposite of stream flow. This form and the midshot wheel were commonly used in flat landscapes with low flowing streams and rivers.
In 1897, the Roswell Manufacturing Company would begin supplementing the water power
with wood-generated steam power and, by 1898, electricity would be used in one of its mills,
Mill #2, which had been converted to steam. The mills would generate their own electricity
and would eventually run lines to some of the mill village houses. In 1910, the mill would become dependent upon electrical power.
The minutes of October 26, 1898, show the success of the conversion:
Steam plant at Mill No. 2 consist of 150 H.P. which cost $4,319.03. This steam
plant enables you to take contracts with a degree of certainty that you can run the
mill every day and night during the year, which is now being done. This places you
entirely independent of water power and with the assurance of the mill being run
all the time you can get and keep the very best families as operatives, which you
could not do were you dependent upon the uncertainty of water power through
the dry seasons.
Also reflected in the statements of those same minutes from October 26, 1898, is “that electric light placed at mill # 2; sprinklers put in Mill No. 2 and Mill No. 1 warehouse.”
Several years later, in the 1901 edition of Georgia Historical and Industrial by The Department of Agriculture and published by The Franklin Printing and Publishing Co., a passage in reference to Cobb County reads:
In the Northeastern part of the county on a branch of the Southern Railway is the
manufacturing town of Roswell with a population of 1,329. The water powers of the Chattahoochee are here utilized in two large cotton factories, one of which uses steam also.
The Laurel Mills Manufacturing Company operate a woolen factory, run by water, which
makes jeans, cassimeres [sic]and tweeds. Here is also a wagon and harness factory.
Oxbow Pants Factory – Roswell Historical Society
Roswell Mills and the Civil War
Roswell Gray would become a highly prized cloth for Confederate uniforms. The mill would
send the cloth to the Quarter Master in Atlanta and, if there was sufficient cloth, the Militia
would also have uniforms of this quality material. As the cloth became more and more scarce
during the War, however, it was reserved for officers’ uniforms only.
Pre-printed forms, from the Confederate Records of the Roswell Battalion, emphasize
the importance of the Roswell Mills: “…A large portion are composed of Detailed Men now
at work for confederate State Government under Maj. G. W. Cunningham, Q.M. of Atlanta at
Roswell Factories…”
On June 19, 1864, a letter appearing in The Southern Confederacy, written by a correspondent from Roswell, reflects the optimism of the Roswell Manufacturing Company staying the
course during the War:
This factory is of immense value to our Government and is operating chiefly for its
benefit and the natural advantages surrounding will enable our forces to hold it against
overwhelming numbers, should the enemy attempt to raid upon the place. We have
sufficient artillery to command every approach, and the heights are well fortified.
The Nashville Times tells a far different story just one month later, in July, 1864:
A gentleman, a native of Massachusetts but for several years past engaged in manufacturing cotton near Atlanta, passed through the city yesterday. He states that
General Sherman destroyed a very extensive cotton factory on the Chattahoochee, which
had been run for the Rebel Government since the beginning of the rebellion, and from
which they drew a large portion of their clothing. The loss is a very severe one to them.
Roswell Historical Society
Roswell Historical Society
Michael Hitt
By the time Sherman’s troops reached Georgia, the Union’s resolve to end the war and break
the back of the Confederacy was set. After all, Sherman had said, “I would make this war as
severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy.”
On July 5, 1864, Union troops arrived in Roswell. They came to secure the covered bridge,
which they discovered had been burned by retreating Confederate soldiers. Union soldiers were
surprised to find that the mills were still operational.
A mill employee hoisted a French flag above the woolen mill in order to claim neutrality; however, the letters “CSA” were found on the cloth being produced. Seized company records
showed that half the cloth was being sent to the Quarter Master in Atlanta.
Union General Kenner Garrard dispatched word to Sherman: “[O]ne woolen factory, capacity 30,000 yards a month, and has furnished up to within a few weeks 15,000 yards per month
to the rebel Government. Capacity of cotton factory 216 looms, 191,086 yards per month and
51,666 pounds of thread, and 4229 pounds of cotton rope. This was worked exclusively for the
rebel Government.”
The neutrality claim was proven false and General Sherman
ordered the mills burned, including Ivy Mills and the Roswell
Manufacturing Company’s two cotton mills. Four hundred mill
workers, mostly women, were charged with treason and sent by
wagon to Marietta. There, they and operatives from Sweetwater
Manufacturing Company, were placed at the Georgia Military
Academy and on the 15th of July, were marched to the train station and sent north, including to Indiana and Kentucky.
Sherman wrote: “I repeat my orders that you arrest all people, male and female, connected with those factories, no matter
what the clamor, and let them foot it, under guard, to Marietta,
Old Mill Parts
which I will send them by cars to the North…The poor women
Ron Redner
will make a howl.”
In the New York Commercial Advertiser, dated September 9, 1864, the editor of the Louisville Journal recalled visiting the prisoners in an article entitled, “Sherman’s Female Captives”:
As we ascended the steps, the first object that greeted our eyes was a child full of
robust health engaged at play in the hall. Passing the lower apartments, the doors
standing wide open, we found, on an average, three double beds in each room and
seated around and on the beds, engaged in sewing, and other occupations common
to ladies, were women - some with the bloom of eighteen years upon their cheeks
and others advanced in years beyond the hey-day of life. . .Some moved about the
building in sprightly manner, others with their robes gathered negligently about
them, and with all the languor to be found in the invalid, or in the person prone to
yield to gloomy thoughts, and grow sad and morose.
Although the women mill workers were charged with treason, they were never tried for that
crime. Shipped north, imprisoned and ordered to declare allegiance, they were eventually released—but without provisions or assistance to get back home.
Some of the women would make their way back to Roswell, but what happened to others remains a mystery. We can only speculate. Because many of the women were young, they might
have stayed in Indiana, married and settled. Some may have found employment in Indiana
mills or other locations. If their fathers, husbands and brothers had been killed in the War, they
may have had no reason to try to find their way back to Roswell.
Reconstruction and Recovery
Oxbow Manufacturing Co. - Nancy Hancock/Joe McTyre
According to Dress Her In White and Gold by Robert B. Wallace (originally published by
University of Michigan), 1870 to 1890 would be one of the strongest eras of economic regeneration in post-war history of Georgia: Manufacturing capital quadrupled, railroad track
mileage trebled and property rose from $215,000,000 to $820,000,000.
From 1880 to 1883, Georgia’s mills increased in number from 40 to 70. In 1881, the International Cotton Exposition was held in Atlanta, an event that would be credited for helping make
Georgia the leader in the manufacturing of cotton goods in the South.
According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, “[W]ith cotton mills multiplying in the state
(especially in west central Georgia), cotton again became the king of Georgia’s economy.” By
1882, over two thirds of Georgia was committed to farmland and over one third of its population
was engaged in making a living from the soil. Even the manufacturing boom of the period was
dominated by cotton, with over 60 percent of total manufacturing vested in cotton mills.
The publication, Cobb The Banner County and Marietta The Gem City, Georgia, The Empire
State of the South 1911, writes a glowing review of early twentieth century life in Roswell:
“Off in the eastern corner of the County, thirteen miles east of Marietta, and on
the county line, lies the town of Roswell, with its population of fifteen hundred
people… It is the seat of one of the oldest cotton manufacturing enterprises in the
State, and has also a woolen mill… It is a beautiful place of residence, as well as a
prosperous community.”
On February 28, 1920, Textile World Journal reported the sale of the Roswell Manufacturing
Company: “…Control of the Roswell Manufacturing company has been purchased… the transaction is understood to have involved $750,000.”
Then, on June 19, 1926, the same publication, datelined Roswell, Ga., reported:
Fire believed to have resulted from a lightning bolt, destroyed the five-story Mill
No. 1 of the Roswell Mills, Inc., late Saturday, June 12. A warehouse and the dye
house attached to Mill No. 1 was also destroyed, but Mill No. 2 was saved. The loss
estimated at $400,000 is fully covered by insurance.”
Mill Life
While the mills thrived and flourished, the mill workers were not so lucky. Paid in scrip, which
they redeemed at the company-owned store for their goods and supplies, the laborers were too
poor to own land and many lived in housing also owned by the company.
In the early days of textile mills, workers’ houses often were three room cottages or six-room
duplexes. As the industry grew stronger, some single-family four-room cottages cropped up.
A general rule used by some mills was that the house would provide for one worker for each
room: If a family occupied a three-room house, then that family should have three members
working at the mill.
Minutes from the Roswell Manufacturing Company document efforts to keep the houses sanitary and to make them a bit more comfortable:
The tenement houses have been whitewashed which preserves the weathered
boarding, acts as a disinfectant and adds to the external appearance of the buildings
very much, and we contemplate having most of the unceiled houses made comfortable
before very cold weather, using the ceiling taken from the new mill when the sprinklers
were put in.
Later, Roswell Manufacturing Company’s President’s Report states that “[s]ince the last report,
we have ceiled one room in thirteen of the tenant houses.”
Unskilled laborers almost always rented their homes from the company. Skilled workers and
overseers were sometimes able to purchase their homes from the Company. As mill owners and
managers struggled to keep a reliable work force, housing became an important incentive.
Entire families, including children, often labored in the mills, working long hours. In January,
1890, the State of Georgia found it necessary to regulate the hours of labor in all cotton or woolen
manufacturing establishments: Hours were not to exceed eleven hours per day or sixty-six hours
per week.
According to The Louisville Daily Journal in August of 1864, “Spinners made $27 per month,
and paid $25 per month for board, leaving two dollars to purchase clothing, pay incidental expenses, etc.”
Still, an April 26, 1899, President’s Report (Roswell Manufacturing Company) makes an uncharacteristically benevolent plea on behalf of mill employees—although an ulterior motive is
suggested:
In Mill No. 2 there should be put a system of humidifiers. This mill has so much of its
side walls of glass that the thermometer often registers over 100 degrees, which makes
it very uncomfortable for the operatives and increases the waste very greatly…
The original Company Store, located at the bottom of the hill near the 1839 cotton mill, moved
into larger quarters halfway up the hill in 1843 due to growth in sales. In circa 1854, a much
larger Company Store was built at the top of the hill across from the Town Square. Eventually it
would also have a department to sell coffins.
It was common for mill workers to move from one location to another as jobs fluctuated according to the economy and the productivity of the mills. Often drought and other conditions beyond the control of mill management would result in the need to move on.
Harsh Realities
Across mill towns in the South, the mill workers were often referred to as “Lintheads,” because the lint from the mill often settled on workers’ clothes and hair. Wilt Browning, the author of Lintheads, writes that it “was never a term of endearment-but some people whose
lives were formed in the cotton mill villages of the South wore it as a badge of honor.”
For workers in the employ of a given mill, regardless of where it might be located, management controlled everything, from the type and amount of food they had to eat to the clothes
they put on their backs.
In A Memory of the South, Catherine Elliott Server, in speaking of Roswell circa 1839, recalled that “there was also a small factory, where they made a coarse cloth called “Osnaburg”
for the negroes on the creek, and a store and a few log houses for the factory people who were
mostly the poor whites, or crackers.”
Fannie Oslin Jackson (1835-1925), who spent her early years in Georgia and worked as a
Union Army nurse during the Civil War, wrote this indictment of mill life with the Roswell
Company during the summer of 1863 in On Both Sides of the Line:
Everything purchased there had to be paid for in meat, lard, butter, chickens,
eggs, flour, corn – anything to eat. These men knew that the women had scarcely
enough provisions to keep body and soul together; yet it was true that not a pound
of thread nor a yard of cloth would they let them have without receiving its
equivalent in farm products. Thus many had to go hungry to get cloth and thread
to clothe their families.”
Every morning they would sell something like five or six five-pound bunches of
thread for money. A great crowd gathered there, hundreds every morning, to get a
bunch out of the number sold. No one could ever forget those scenes. The pale-faced
women, half clad, haggard, careworn, woebegone, hungry, with such piteous appeals
for thread as though they were starving and it was bread for which they begged.
In speaking about the fire of 1926, former mill employee Mr. J.L. Butler, whose father also
worked at the Roswell Mills, recalled that “[a]ll the floors inside the mill area were covered
with oil and grease so the fire was very hot, causing some walls to fall. After the fire, the walls
not down were pulled down to prevent them from falling on persons going through the site to
collect looms and other items not totally damaged.”
Butler also remembered the floor plan of the mill: The fourth floor was the spinning room
and the cloth room was on the third. On the second floor was the slasher room. The first floor
contained the looms.
There was an enclosed walk-way from the picker building to the 4th floor of the
cotton mill. Cotton bales would slide down a “V” shape ramp from the warehouse
to the Picker Building. Once the cotton was inside the Picker Building it was picked
apart, then the cotton was taken over to the cotton mill.
Nearby, the Machine Shop was a brick two-story building with its first floor used
for the machine shop and the second floor containing the carpenter shop. Butler
recalled that there “were no stairs from the first floor to the second floor. A person
walked into the second floor from ground level.”
For mill workers who were injured or sick and missed work, it usually meant they missed
getting paid. Card rooms were filled with dust, often settling in the lungs and causing coughing. The weaving room in some southern mills was believed to be the perfect environment for
tuberculosis to spread. The equipment itself was dangerous and workers could easily lose a
hand, arm or leg if they were not careful. This was prior to current federal laws that protect
workers’ rights.
From documentation in Georgia laws and Roswell ordinances, it can be assumed that lawmakers as well as mill owners attempted to limit access to liquors of any type:
Georgia Law 1875 states the following:
That the recited act, approved on the 20th day of February, 1874, to prevent
the sale of spirituous liquors at Trion factory, be so amended and extended as
to include in its provisions the following other places and factories to wit: The
Roswell Manufacturing Company’s factory, at Roswell, The Empire Cotton Mills,
The Willeo Cotton Mills, all of Cobb county in said State; and the Laurel Hill
Manufacturing Company’s mills of Milton county; and also Bethel church, and
the Kaolin Pottery and Mills, at Depot Number One, called also Steeven’s [sic]
Mills, both in Baldwin county; and that no Ordinary or any other officer shall
grant or issue any license to retail spirituous liquors, or intoxicating liquors, of
any kind or name, within three miles by straight line of any of said places…
The May 11, 1877, Marietta Journal reports that “There are no bars in Roswell – a town
pump being the only public ‘drinking place’ visible.”
The Marietta and Acworth City Directory for the years 1883 and 1884 is unequivocal on
the liquor issue in Roswell, stating “By the terms of the charter liquor was forbidden to be
sold, consequently the town has always been noted for its good order and the general intelligence and refinement of its citizens.”
Oxbow Parts Factory – Joe McTyre Collection/Elwyn Gaissert
Ivy/Laurel Woolen Mill – Roswell Historical Society
Special Thanks
Georgia Power
Foundation, Inc.
Michael Hitt, Historian and Author
Roswell Historical Society/City of Roswell Research
Library and Archives; Elaine DeNiro, Archivist
Roswell Historical Society – Sherron Lawson, Administrator
John R. “Chip” Morgan – Archaeologist
Spectrum 4/Dennis White – Exhibit Designer & Builder
Stroud’s Printing & Design
Connie Huddleston – Interpreting Time’s Past, LLC
Nancy Hancock & Joe McTyre
Laurie Rowe & Kathy Witt – Laurie Rowe Communications
Helen “Marty” Goldsmith
Zachary W. Henderson
The Late Elwyn Gaissert, Sr.
Nancy Davis
Margaret Calhoon
Dotty Etris – Exhibit Coordinator
The Heritage Center exhibit is a project of
Historic Roswell Convention & Visitors Bureau
Roswell Folk & Heritage Bureau
617 Atlanta Street, Roswell GA 30075
800-776-7935; 770-640-3253
www.visitroswellga.com
We invite you to also visit the Roswell Historical Society/City of Roswell Research
Library and Archives for additional research. 770-594-6405
In Georgia today, you will find many reminders of our State’s early textile heritage. We invite
you to explore Roswell’s Mill Village and visit our Southern Trilogy sites: Barrington Hall, Bulloch Hall
and Smith Plantation Home to more fully understand the history and culture of the area.
Throughout Georgia you will find sites that will help you understand more about Georgia’s
early mills and their fates. We hope you will take the opportunity to visit:
Enterprise Mill
1450 Green Street
Augusta, GA
(Augusta Canal National Heritage
Interpretive Center)
www.nps.gov
Porterdale Mill
Porterdale, GA
www.porterdalemill.com
Historic Banning Mills
205 Horseshoe Dam Road
Whitesburg, GA 30185
www.historicbanningmills.com
Sweetwater Creek State Park
(New Manchester Textile Mill Ruins)
1750 Mt. Vernon Road
Lithia Springs, GA 30122
www.gastateparks.org
Scull Shoals Mill Village
Greensboro, GA
www.scullshoals.org
www.visitroswellga.com
for additional information about Historic Roswell,
tourist attractions and lodging facilities.