Robert Allison Ragan is a Gastonia native who was born into textiles and its influences when cotton was king and the city was the proud Combed Yarn Center of America. Representing three generations and 120 years of noteworthy community involvement, it is but natural his historical interests should be channeled in this direction. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and several commercial banking schools, he is primarily a Charlotte businessman and private investor with an indefatigable curiosity for history, who has used his intelligence and wealth of knowledge to tell the story of a city, a county and an industry that have been vital parts in the New South vision we know today. Additionally, he has been president of Gaston County Museum of Art & History, has written and recorded through the years valuable information on the region's history, and assisted national television and broadcasting as well as state and local agencies in historical research on Gaston County, the Southern textile industry and its people.

INDEX

1. Railroads Create Gastonia

2. Merchants Become Gastonia's First Families 

3. Hotels Follow the Railroad

4. Gastonia's Medical Community

5. Dentists Arrive as Gastonia Grows

6. Drugstores Arrive With the First Doctors

7. Cotton Mills and the New South Vision: Gastonia Cotton Manufacturing Company

8. Cotton Mills and the New South Vision: Trenton, Modena, Avon, Ozark

9. (Part 1) Rise of the Gastonia Textile Industry

9. (Part 2) Gastonia: Textile Center of the South

10. (Part 1) The Beginning of Banking in Gastonia

10. (Part 2) Other Banks Open in Gastonia

11. Naming of Gastonia Streets

12. (Part 1) Gastonia Merchants Build a City

12. (Part 2) Gastonia Merchants Build a City

12. (Part 3) Gastonia Merchants Build a City

Vintage Gastonia Web Site Articles
Trenton Creative Enterprises

By Robert Allison Ragan

©2008 Robert Allison Ragan
All rights reserved

Article One:

As viewers of Tim Ellis’ unique Vintage Gastonia web site, many of you undoubtedly have or will express an interest in knowing when and how the city of Gastonia came into being. In a series of short articles, I will attempt through this medium to anticipate some of these questions and share with you numerous defining events in the antecedent history of this All-American city many of you proudly call home. As a beginning to the story, it is important to understand that two interrelated events were to unalterably shape its destiny and define its direction – the coming of the railroad in the 1860s and 1870s and cotton textile manufacturing in the 1880s and 1890s.

Railroads Create Gastonia

            Transportation in Gaston County before 1860 was confined almost exclusively to horses, mules and horse-drawn wagons that traveled along poorly maintained dirt roads. This was to change, however, in the years immediately prior to the War Between the States, opening new vistas of opportunity for the underdeveloped agricultural region.    

            In 1855, the Wilmington, Charlotte & Rutherford Railroad, working its way from the Atlantic port city of Wilmington to the Piedmont of North Carolina, announced its intention to extend its tracks west of the Catawba River into Gaston and Lincoln counties. Five years later, a wooden trestle was built over the river above Tuckaseegee Ford near what is today Mount Holly to facilitate its entry. From there, the iron rails extended west to Brevard Station (later to become Stanley), then to White Pine (later known as Cherryville) and finally to Lincolnton by 1861, when North Carolina seceded from the Union to join the Confederate States of America. All construction ceased until after the war, when work resumed and the line, known by then as the Carolina Central Railroad, was extended to Asheville . In more modern times it became known as the Seaboard Air Line. This was but a beginning in the opening of the “backcountry” west of the Catawba.  

            Following the war, a new, more important road that would create towns along the way came through in the opening years of the 1870s, as the South was gripped in a terrible period known as Radical Reconstruction. It connected Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, and Atlanta, the Georgia capital and railroad center that was rising like a Phoenix from the ashes of Sherman’s destruction. It was first known as the Atlanta & Richmond Air Line (the name was changed to Atlanta & Charlotte Air Line in February 1877) and by 1894 as the Southern Railway. Importantly, it connected many lesser market towns and hamlets in between, including a small depot, fueling and watering stop called Gastonia Station. The little station quickly emerged as a town and then into a city – today’s Gastonia .

            It was only by circumstance that Gastonia became the location where a town developed. Having crossed the Catawba River from Charlotte at a point now known as Belmont, the railroad’s intention was to lay its tracks to Dallas, then the county seat and only incorporated town. However, many of Dallas ’ citizens, sensing unwanted noise and pollution that would inevitably come with the train to its peaceful community of 350 inhabitants, objected to the proposed encroachment. So, the railroad reconsidered, and the tracks were laid about four miles south to a point near the old Shiloh Methodist meetinghouse, a location that today would be on East Long Avenue near the old Modena Mills and village. It was here that the first Gastonia Station was built in 1873. Railroad carpenters built an adjoining storehouse and a one-room cabin for the stationmaster’s living quarters. In a short time a barroom was also built and a blacksmith shop opened nearby. In 1876, David A. “Honest Dave” Jenkins, former state treasurer and prominent politician during Reconstruction, built a substantial white frame home across from the little stationhouse, which stood as a landmark in the city for over a hundred years.

            The first train came through Gastonia Station on March 31, 1873, when only a few families lived there, but hundreds of well-wishers were on hand to greet it. With numerous dignitaries aboard, the special train – drawn by the B. Y. Sage, a magnificent steam engine costing $12,000 – passed along the tracks through Gaston County.  It left Charlotte at 8:30 a.m., arrived at Garibaldi Station (in 1895, Belmont) at 9:22, then Wright’s Station (a year later, Lowell), and by 10:08 a.m. rolled into Gastonia Station, for a water stop.  Leaving the cheering crowd behind by 10:30 a.m., the train puffed west toward Wooten Station (in 1892, Bessemer City), White Plains (in 1874, Kings Mountain), and then south toward its final destination, Spartanburg, South Carolina. The following year, the tracks were completed to Atlanta .

In 1876, for reasons that are not completely known to history, Gastonia Station was relocated one mile west on farmland owned principally by Oliver W. Davis, the site of present uptown Gastonia as we know it today (behind the former BB&T bank building, now county offices, and the old seven-story First National Bank building). Other large property owners included the Bradley family, descendants of John McKnitt Bradley, who owned land north and west of the center city, and the Hannas, who had land south and west. After likely giving land to the railroad as an inducement for the move, Davis had much of his property laid off into town lots and sold many of them for as little as $50 or $100 apiece in the beginning. Slowly, people began to come to start a business and build a home. Fortunately for the new town, the landowners were found to be reasonable men who had vision for the future, as evidenced by their willingness to cooperate with the railroad and those interested in buying lots and building a town here. 

In 1876, followng close on the heels of the Atlanta & Richmond Air Line, another smaller road, known as the Chester & Lenoir Narrow Gauge Railroad, crossed the Air Line tracks at Gastonia Station, heading north. The junction created added economic advantages for the location. In 1897 the Narrow Gauge became known as the Carolina & Northwestern or more familiarly, the C&NW.  With the railroad came business, with business came people, with people came communication and demand for services; and this alternate location with two railroad connections quickly became a village and then a town.

On January 26, 1877, with a population of about 140, Gastonia had become large enough to be incorporated as a town. The first town officials were R. E. Waddill, mayor, and T. G. Chalk, J. H. Fayssoux, F. S. Hanna, R. M. Martin and J. E. Page as commissioners. Most of these men had come with the railroad as depot agents, telegraph operators or in other positions. Landowner Oliver Davis acted as the first policeman, served as the town’s official cotton weigher, lit the oil lamps that dotted Main Street and collected the taxes.

            The original pattern of streets was probably the result of natural boundaries such as the railroad tracks, wagon roads, ravines and gullies, suggestions by the railroad officials and desires of the original property owners. The first streets and avenues running east-west were Main Street (later Main Avenue) and Air Line Avenue, both paralleling the Atlanta & Richmond Air Line tracks, Long Avenue north of Air Line, Mill Street (in 1898 renamed Franklin Avenue) south of Main, and Elm Street (later named Second Avenue) running south of Mill. On the far  west running north-south was Cemetery Street (later named Chester). Then to the east of Cemetery there was York Street, then South Street, then Marietta Street, then Maple Street (later renamed Oakland Street). Finally at the far east was Railroad Street (later named Broad Street), down the middle of which ran the tracks of the Chester & Lenoir Narrow Gauge.

Article Two:

  Merchants Become Gastonia's First Families

                                                       Craig & Wilson Co., circa 1912

     As the year 1883 rolled around, Gastonia welcomed another unusually enterprising citizen. Robert Calvin Grier Love, a native of the southern part of the county, came from successful merchandising ventures at Woodlawn and Kings Mountain. Through those ventures and independent cotton trading activities, he was successful enough by 1887 to promote and become the largest stockholder in Gastonia’s first cotton mill, known for years as the “Old Mill” (subject of a subsequent article). That same year, brothers Lawson Henderson Long and Vardry Edward Long came from northwestern Gaston County and formed Long Brothers on West Main Avenue. The new firm sold stoves, tin ware, pots, pans and sewing machines, and soon did a big business in tin roofs for homes, stores and industry.

Article 3:

Hotels Follow the Railroad

            Hotels began to appear in Gastonia as soon as visiting passengers needing a place to stay started arriving on trains, a natural occurrence at any railroad depot location that had a variety of stores and an active commercial trade. Traveling salesmen, or “drummers” as they were called in those days, came by the dozens to supply merchants throughout the countryside with all kinds of staple and novelty goods required for their trade, or to hawk them directly to neighboring farm families. Horses and buggies were secured for reasonable fees from livery stables close to the depot, which in the early days were operated by Squire A. R. Anders, J. R. “Dolph” Warren, W. H. Jenkins and Captain John Davis. Farmers coming in wagons to market their cotton or produce also found hotels convenient and hospitable places to stay while they conducted business, as did local citizens who were perhaps waiting on a house to be built or become available, or bachelors and others who did not want to bother themselves with maintaining a home or preparing meals.

           
           The Waddill House, owned by the town’s first mayor, R. E. Waddill, is thought to have been the first hotel in Gastonia, opening about 1875 or 1876, the year the depot was moved from Shiloh. It operated from a rather unimpressive two-story wooden building on the north side of the second block of West Main Avenue, where the Citizens National Bank was built nearly a half-century later (now occupied as a county office building). Records indicate that the old hotel was destroyed by fire on the evening of November 23, 1885.

           
           The affable John Laban “Labe” Falls, a native of the Pleasant Ridge/Crowders Creek section of the county, came to the struggling village in 1877, the year Gastonia was incorporated as a town. Soon he built a two-story wooden hotel on West Airline Avenue, immediately north of the depot and railroad tracks. The Falls House became the best known and most remembered of Gastonia’s early hotels. Business was so good that in 1885 the old inn of 20 rooms was replaced by an attractive three-story brick building with 25 larger rooms to accommodate its discriminating permanent and traveling clientele. It featured large public rooms and had a spacious two-story porch across the front of the building. On top of the hotel was an observation tower, which provided a pleasant vista of the little town and the surrounding countryside.
 

Armington Hotel circa 1925

Article 4:

Gastonia’s Medical Community

          Gaston County’s distinguished medical profession had its beginning in the South Point community following the American Revolution, when Dr. WilliamMcLean returned from medical school at the University of Pennsylvania in 1787 to set up a practice near his home on the lower South Fork River in the “Point” section. In 1820 his son, Dr. John Davidson McLean, joined him. Together, these two country doctors served the citizens of the county, near and far, for a period covering 93 years, until the son’s death in 1880. Gaston’s next professionally trained physician was Dr. Ephraim B. Holland, who set up a practice at the new county seat in Dallas about 1858. Then came Dr. William Junius Torrence, who opened a practice in the Crowders Creek section immediately after the War Between the States.

          But it was to be in Gastonia, the fast-growing railroad and soon-to-become cotton manufacturing town, that most physicians would find the best opportunity and medicine made its greatest contributions. Dr. Robert Harris Adams, having completed the prescribed regimen of professional study at Louisville Medical College in Kentucky in 1875, became the town’s first doctor as well as its first druggist. A native of the Bethel section of adjacent York County, he came in the fall of 1876 and served the town and surrounding community until his death twelve years later. His office was said to be in a little brick building on West Airline Avenue that was also thought to serve as the town’s first post office, its first newspaper office and its first lawyers’ office.

          The next physician to arrive in Gastonia was 1878 University of Maryland graduate Dr. Charles Edward Adams. Also a York County native, he came in 1883 to assist his cousin. When Dr. Robert Adams died unexpectedly in 1888, Dr. Charles Adams succeeded to his practice and dutifully served the community for a total of fifty years, becoming one of the town’s most outstanding citizens. The third man of medicine was Dr. William H. Wilson, a Gaston County native, who came in 1887 to join in associated with Dr. Charles Adams and share with the town his talents and high professional standards as both a physician and druggist. He remained until 1900, when he left for a practice of his own in Lenoir. Another early physician who was reported to be practicing in Gastonia in late 1886 and in 1887 was Dr. J. L. McKay, of whom little is known, except that he was a partner in the pioneer Gastonia drugstore of Torrence & McKay.

           By 1890, Gastonia’s two resident physicians had become greatly overworked and needed assistance in caring for the townspeople and others who lived in rural areas. This need was filled in 1890 when Dr. James Marshall Sloan, a Mecklenburg County native recently graduated from Louisville Medical College, arrived in Gastonia at the age of twenty. He soon developed a sizable practice and began administering his skills to patients all over the county, traveling, as one did in those days, on horseback or doctor’s buggy. His work in surgery, some of it pioneering, continued until his death 36 years later. Six years after Sloan’s arrival, in 1896, Gastonia’s medical community was given another boost, when the much-respected Dr. Robert McDowell Reid, also from Mecklenburg County, began his practice. He continued until his death, 21 years later.

          That same year, 1896, also saw another skilled physician, Dr. Frank G. Wilson, arrive from the medical school of the University of Maryland to set up his practice. He served faithfully until his death in 1920 at age 48. Outspoken and independent-minded Dr. Lucius Newton Glenn of the Crowders Creek section, who had begun his outstanding career at McAdenville in 1897, arrived in Gastonia in 1903. “Luch” Glenn became one of the region’s most outstanding surgeons, and, along with Drs. J. M. Sloan and H. M. Eddleman, would found Gastonia’s first hospital in 1908, known as City Hospital in the early days and later as Gaston Memorial. Thus, by the turn of the twentieth century, five pioneering physicians – Drs. Adams, Sloan, Reid, Wilson and Glenn, were serving Gastonia.

          Gastonia’s explosive growth in the first decades of the twentieth century, brought about primarily by the expansion of the cotton textile industry and a general advancement of the “American Age”, resulted in the need for yet more trained doctors and a far greater sophistication of talent in all areas of medical service. Some of the city’s most prominent physicians and surgeons began their practices during that period.

          Foremost among them was Dr. Henry Franklin Glenn, another highly regarded York County native and a graduate of Emory University in Atlanta. He arrived in 1900 and immediately commanded a large Gastonia patronage. Then, from nearby Bessemer City in 1908, came Dr. David Allen Garrison who, like Dr. Glenn, specialized in surgery. Along with Drs. H. F. Glenn and L. N. Patrick, they founded Gastonia’s second hospital, Gaston Sanitarium, later known as Garrison General, in 1917. Drs. Hall M. Eddleman and McTyeire G. Anders, familiar names in the early days, came to join the Gastonia medical profession around 1903 from earlier practices elsewhere. In 1909, hard-working York County native Dr. Lyle Neale Patrick followed them.

          After World War I, another group of pioneering physicians found their way to booming Gastonia. The admired Dr. Roland Smith Clinton, born in the Bethel community of York County but reared in Gastonia, returned from the war in 1919 as a highly decorated major to set up his well-known practice. Coming at the same time to assist Dr. Henry Glenn was the inimitable Dr. James Luther Blair, another York County native. He succeeded to Dr. Glenn’s practice, became a partner and chief of staff at Garrison General Hospital and served faithfully from the 1920s until his death in 1951.

          To provide a diversity of quality medical care, Gastonia’s first eye, ear, nose and throat specialist arrived in 1910. Dr. Thomas Crouse Quickle, born on a farm in Lincoln County, operated his clinic until his death in 1936, at which time his son, John Cephus Quickle, who had interned in New York, succeeded him. Henry M. Van Sleen, a native of Holland who came to Gastonia in 1910 to open a jewelry store, became the first optometrist in the city, opening another new area of specialization.

          Others doctors came as the city grew during the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s: Drs. James Meek Caldwell, William Henry Patrick, William Augustus Anthony, Charles E. Lyday, William E. Jones, W. Wallace McChesney, H. Russell McConnell, Robert C. Miller, William M. Roberts, Charles H. Pugh, J. S. Norman, Henry F. Glenn, Jr., G. W. Belk, O. Douglas Boyce, J. Lee Robinson, Jr., W. M. Patrick, H. M. Van Sleen, Jr., E. C. Pierce, A. V. Suggs, Charles A Glenn, Dorothy Norman Glenn, H. Keith Herrin, L. L. Anthony, Leslie M. Morris, Simeon Adams, and many more since.

          Through the years, these men and women have made penetrating contributions to their professions. Gaston County has benefited as the profession advanced from country doctors to dedicated specialists in today’s highly technical and demanding health care industry.

Article 5:

Dentists Arrive as Gastonia Grows

In Gastonia’s founding days, one who had a hurting molar or bicuspid would very likely have to wait several days or even weeks to see a qualified dentist. Throughout the 1870s and early 1880s, pioneer Gaston County citizens had to depend for their dental care upon the few dentists of Charlotte, Lincolnton and Yorkville who made periodic visits to Gastonia or other communities in the county to serve its people.

           
           Gaston County native Dr. William Henry Hoffman of Charlotte, who had opened a practice there soon after his service in the War Between the States, was one of the weekly visitors. He found his trips to Gastonia so profitable and his patients so friendly and appreciative that he moved to Gastonia and established a practice in 1882, becoming the town’s and the county’s first permanent dentist. He attended to the dental needs of the county, first from offices on East Airline Avenue and then on West Main Avenue, for the next thirty years.  In 1886, four years after Dr. Hoffman’s arrival, University of Maryland graduate Dr. Enos Franklin Glenn, a native of the South Point/Union section of the county, also moved to Gastonia to hang out his shingle. He opened an office in the centrally-located town hall building on South Street for the practice of dentistry and dental surgery – Gastonia’s second – and played a leading role in Gastonia’s development until his death in 1913.

            
          Gastonia’s dental profession was given a much-needed boost in 1898 when its third dental practitioner, the friendly and talented Dr. Daniel Edward McConnell of McConnells in York County, arrived and opened a practice in the same worthy profession as Drs. Hoffman and Glenn. To his offices on the second floor of the Robinson Brothers shoe store building on West Main Avenue went several generations of Gaston families. The McConnells were to become highly regarded leaders in the professional and social life of the city for the next four decades

           
          Gastonia saw an influx of new dentists and other medical specialists in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s to support its surging medical needs. Dr. S. Everett Moser, an expert in dental surgery, came in the mid-1920s to set up a practice. So respected was his surgical ability that he was selected chief of staff at Gaston Memorial Hospital near the end of his remarkable 50-year career. Also coming to Gastonia during this era were Drs. Cullen Hoffman and Ralph Ray, warmly remembered for their caring service and personal attention.

Article 6:

Drugstores Arrive With the First Doctors

            In the early days, what we now call drugstores or pharmacies served three primary purposes. Firstly, they prepared and dispensed drugs, and were often owned and operated by doctors as a necessary and logical part of their practices. Secondly, they were places to receive advice and treatment for minor ills and purchase an array of patent medicines and elixirs for promoting good health, which would today be considered over-the-counter medicines. Both services are not unlike the services performed in the places we frequent today. Along these lines, druggists in the late 1890s and early 1900s, concocted their own tonics with claims for promoting health and energy. This is how Coca-Cola, Pepsi Cola and a hundred imitations came about.

           
          Thirdly, drugstores became the social center of small towns, where men, women, children and young courting couples congregated to see their friends and have long, pleasant conversations. Importantly, it was a place to share the news of the day, discuss family and personal goings-on in the community over a sandwich, Coca-Cola, root beer, homemade milkshake, soda or banana split, served to them at booths and tables by friendly attendants in white aprons. This third purpose defines the differences between that generation and this one.

           
          Dr. Robert H. Adams, who came to Gastonia in 1876 as its first physician, also served as the town’s first druggist, concocting his own medicines for patients. Then came Dr. W. J. Torrence, a physician in the Crowders Creek community, who opened a Gastonia drugstore in the early-1880s. It was located on West Airline east of the Falls House under the name of Torrence & McKay, with Dr. J. L. McKay managing the day-to-day operations. Things really began to change, however, in 1886, when young Frost Torrence, the senior partner’s son, came from Crowders Creek to work in his father’s pharmacy. As Frost took over management and ownership, he implemented new ideas that created the “modern” drugstore as envisioned in the 1890s. Torrence was followed in 1887 by Dr. William H. Wilson, who conducted the town’s third drug business. They were each small establishments operated as a natural adjunct of the physicians’ primary practices.

           
          Curry & Adams Drug Store began in 1888, when it took over the business founded 12 years earlier by Dr. Robert Adams, who had died. Located on the north side of West Main Avenue, it was operated by James Edward Curry, a native of Canada who had found his way to Gastonia two years earlier as a clerk in the Adams store. Then, in 1890, friendly James Holland Kennedy bought Dr. Charles Adams’ interest in the business and changed the name to Curry & Kennedy. Son of a local Presbyterian minister, young Kennedy had come to Gastonia in 1886 at the age of 20 as a clerk for Torrence & McKay.

Kennedy and Adams Drug Stores (right) on the southeast corner of West Main Avenue and South Street around 1917. Notice that the First National Bank Building had not yet been built across the street. The Commercial Building now stands on the site of the Kennedy building. Postcard published by the Gazette Publishing Company.

             
          Meanwhile, Jim Kennedy opened his own firm on the southeast corner of Main Avenue and South Street in 1897 under the soon-to-become familiar name of J. H. Kennedy & Co. It remained on that popular corner until 1922, when Third National Bank of Gastonia built its 7-story headquarters on the site and Kennedy changed locations.

Frost Torrence's Drug Store (with the Opera House above) stands on the southwest corner of West Main Avenue and South Street around 1912. The building was the home of Morris Jewelers until recently. Postcard published by the Gazette Publishing Company.


            When Frost Torrence relocated his drugstore to the southwest corner of Main and South in the early 1890s, it became the most popular place in the city. In 1911, he took over the Abernethy-Shields drugstore business, a nearby competitor. Not only was his drug emporium “the” smart place to be seen, on the second floor there was the Opera House, run by Charlie Cavis, to provide artistic diversions for the delighted citizens of Gastonia and the surrounding countryside. The productions were not grand opera in the classical sense, but popular stage performances by stock companies, musical programs, specialty acts, minstrel shows and lyceum courses.

            Jim Kennedy’s business continued to prosper. Soon, the unforgettable Edward Clarence Adams, a York County native, joined the firm in 1906 as the head pharmacist, and by 1913 had been admitted to the firm as a junior partner. Six years later, he and Meek Barnett each became one-third owners. With William Foil Michael as the pharmacist, the firm moved to the immediate east of competitor Frost Torrence & Co., in the Love building, in 1922. Ed Adams purchased the business in 1928 and changed the name to Kennedy’s, the most remembered name in Gastonia’s drugstore trade. It remained at its West Main location in the uptown business district for the next 60 years, until the landmark finally closed its doors in the 1980s, an end to a colorful era.

           
          Frost Torrence & Co. operated until 1930, when its business was purchased by and combined with Kennedy’s. It did a thriving ice cream business in connection with its pharmacy and delivered to the city’s families, as did most drugstores of that day. Sweetland, originally a confectionary shop owned and operated by the Trakas family, soon became a full-fledged drugstore. It was later taken over by Smith Cut Rate Pharmacy in the late 1950s, and continues in business today at its original location, 121 West Main Avenue, the sole surviving legacy of a by-gone era.

          There were other family-owned drugstores that were part of this scene. Norman Morrow, for instance, had Morrow’s Drug Store. Paul G. Caldwell purchased the Loray Drug Store on West Franklin Avenue in 1919 and in the early 1920s formed the popular Caldwell’s Drug Store. This business was subsequently purchased by the Brown family, and it operated until recently at its familiar location at 207 S. Chestnut Street. Fred Moss, of course, had Moss Drugs, which continued until the 1990s under the management of his family; and there was Akers Pharmacy, started in the late 1950s in Akers Shopping Center. That business later moved to East Garrison Boulevard.

           Drugstores today are mostly large national chains – Walgreen, Revco, Rite-Aid, Wall-Mart, Bi-Lo – extremely efficient, but without the ambience and personalized service of the old-time drugstores we nostalgically remember from the days of our youth, friendly, warm places like Kennedy’s, Torrence’s, Adams’ and Sweetland.

Cotton Mills and the New South Vision

 Gastonia Cotton Manufacturing Company

            The preeminent event in the transformation of Gastonia into a city of consequence was the arrival and grass-roots development of the cotton textile industry in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Henry Grady’s famous proclamation of a “New South” in 1886 and Daniel Tompkins’ promotion of the “Cotton Mill Campaign” in the Carolinas heralded a new era of hope in the war-torn and impoverished agricultural states of the former Confederacy.

           Newspaper editors, political leaders and enlightened citizens heeded the call of industry. Nowhere was that vision to become more evident than in Gaston County, and nowhere in Gaston County was it more evident than in the little town of Gastonia, with two major rail connections and a small but ambitious citizenry. A city was being built in a former cornfield and pine thicket on the strength of the industrial revolution, as men who nearly died defending the Old South committed the remainder of their lives to building a New South.

          One of the truly significant events in Gastonia’s history occurred in the closing days of 1887, when nine of its enterprising citizens – four merchants, a banker, two farmers, a physician and a cotton-mill superintendent – put up $75,000 and chartered a corporation for the building of the town’s first cotton factory. On more than one occasion, this group of visionary men had discussed the future of the struggling town of nearly 600 people and what action they might take to lift the region from the economic plight of a terrible war and debilitating reconstruction.

            Three particularly noteworthy partners of Gastonia’s first mill – George Alexander Gray, James Daniel Moore and George Washington Ragan – saw these opportunities and acted upon them. They were responsible, both individually and jointly, for promoting and operating the next dozen mills in Gastonia and providing employment to thousands. They were Gastonia’s first textile manufacturers, the 19^th century pioneers. To them and their associates are due much of the credit for bringing the textile industry to the city and making it the “Combed Yarn Center of America” by 1923.

        From The Textile Heritage of Gaston County, North Carolina, 1848-2000, by Robert Allison Ragan, 2001

Cotton Mills and the New South Vision

Trenton Cotton Mills

          Destiny intervened to place Gastonia on a path that only a few years earlier had been but the hopeful dream of its earliest advocates. Five years after Gastonia Cotton Manufacturing Co., in the closing days of 1892, Gastonia’s spirits soared, its pride swelled and land values rose accordingly when it learned that another cotton mill was in the process of organizing. George Washington Ragan, one of the founding partners of the Old Mill, proposed to a group of public-spirited entrepreneurs a yarn spinning enterprise he planned to build on a 23-acre tract of land on Main Avenue, several blocks west of uptown.

            
       As had the promoters of the Gastonia’s first mill, Ragan sought the technical assistance of George Gray, a man he had first known in McAdenville in the early 1880s when Ragan ran the company store and Gray superintended the factory, and most recently through their association at the Old Mill. Ragan provided the management skills gained from nineteen years’ solid experience in merchandising and operating country stores. Gray brought 30 years of training in cotton manufacturing, which began from necessity as a sweeper boy at age ten and advanced subsequently to the superintendency of several important mills.


George Washington Ragan, founder of the Trenton Mill.

George Alexander Gray, technical expert and first superintendent of the Trenton Mill.

           The partnership between a businessman with organizational, buying and selling experience and a production man with manufacturing experience became the general rule. This pattern created a successful combination that was to repeat itself over and over in the founding of the early mills in Gastonia and Gaston County as evidenced by the following examples: Ragan and Gray at the Trenton; Love and Gray at the Gastonia; Moore and White at the Modena; Hutchison and Dewstoe at the Nims; Stowe and Lineberger at the Chronicle; Armstrong and Dunn at the Clara; Groves and Withers at the Flint, to mention the most notable examples. A spirit of cooperation was set early by these pioneers and was directly responsible for Gaston County’s rapid rise as the manufacturing center of North Carolina. 

          Gastonia’s second mill proceeded to organize as Trenton Cotton Mills (a tribute to General George Washington’s first major victory in the Revolution at Trenton, New Jersey in 1776) on February 21, 1893 with a capital stock of $62,400. With money so difficult to raise in the South during that economically deprived era, the promoters eagerly talked with anyone who had a thousand or two dollars to invest in this new type of venture. Industry was foreign to people who had spend their entire lives in agriculture, and traditions had to be overcome. In many respects, the Trenton became a community effort, and the whole town was soon abuzz with excitement and curiosity over its prospects.

          Gastonia’s passage forward was only a beginning. The Cotton Mill Movement was catching on like a prairie wildfire and providing ordinary people a means of making a respectable and honest living, and becoming a decided preference to life on the farm. As new mills were built, it became more difficult to recruit qualified workers to tend the machinery. Whereas workers could be found locally in the beginning years, it soon became necessary for mill companies to recruit in other counties surrounding Gaston, and then into other states. Thus, mill villages became a necessary part of attracting a stable and contented workforce.

          Several of Modena’s factory buildings can be seen today on East Long Avenue. If one can visualize the era with the hustle and bustle of hundreds of workers coming and going day and night, lights glowing in the windows, the constant sound of whirring spindles, smoke billowing from huge smokestacks and whistles and bells sounding time and shift changes at regular intervals, we can then, perhaps, begin to understand the excitement and magnitude of the cotton mill experience.

          In 1896, with a spirit of progress and expectation continuing in the air, George Gray in partnership with a wealthy young Gastonia merchant, John F. Love, son of the Old Mill’s founder, led a group of investors in building the Avon Mills, Gastonia’s fourth. The up-and-coming city of 2,260 people was talking of little else but cotton manufacturing and the economic benefits that would come with it. This historic building now houses the old Avon Bonded Warehouse on East Franklin Boulevard, and has been a landmark in that section of the city for the past 112 years.

          As the nineteenth century drew to a close, still another new cotton yarn spinning mill of 10,000 spindles began to rise east of town. Ozark Mills, Gastonia’s fifth, was the work of Rufus Pinkney Rankin, a successful country merchant who had come from nearby Lowell in 1899. These five pioneer mills had broken the ice and charted the way, and the shape of Gastonia’s future began to emerge more clearly. What was to come afterward, however, would far exceed the expectations of this hopeful beginning.

Rise of the Gastonia Textile Industry

            When the new century dawned over Gastonia, expectations of a golden future shone brighter than it ever had. Prosperity was booming on farms and in factories. Its proud citizens – 4,610 in number, and again that number in the greater Gastonia area – were congratulating themselves on the success of its five thriving cotton mills with their recently expanded capacity of 40,325 whirling spindles, 644 clacking looms and nearly a thousand contented full-time operatives. Compared to great manufacturing centers it was still not much to boast about, but it was the beginning of a shining New South dream.

            Two separate but interrelated events in early 1900 were to produce transforming changes that would define Gastonia and Gaston County in the twentieth century. The first was the introduction and adaptation of the combed yarn process for making the finest quality of cotton yarns. It set in motion a trend that would quickly and completely dominate the county economically for the next 100 years and propel it into a position of leadership. The second was a mill so large and complex that national markets could no longer dismiss Southern manufacturing as secondary to that of New England. Unparalleled growth soon followed these trends as more textile mills were built and operated here than in any other place in America.

 The South’s First Combed Yarn Mill

            It was George Washington Ragan who had the idea for the South's first combed yarn mill. In building Arlington Cotton Mills in Gastonia in 1900, he fulfilled a dream that had begun years earlier when he was a struggling merchant in McAdenville and one which he began successfully implementing on a smaller degree at Trenton Cotton Mills in 1893. Up until this time, cotton mills in the South manufactured only carded yarn of a rather coarse quality that went into the making of heavy woven fabrics, work clothes, bagging, twine and other less refined goods. The highest quality yarns and woven fabrics were all made in New England or Great Britain, where their mills had many years of experience in the manufacture of premium cotton and woolen goods. The American consumer, particularly in the large, affluent Eastern cities, was demanding fancy dress goods by 1900. Ragan saw this trend and devoted his efforts to changing the South’s emerging manufacturing direction, just as he had devoted them to attracting the industry to the region a decade earlier.

            Combed yarn goes through processes that other cotton yarns do not and requires the use of the finest long staple Sea Island, Egyptian or Delta Peeler cotton. The relatively simple process combs out waste, or short fibers, that the carding process is not capable of removing, leaving the longer fibers parallel and giving the resulting yarn a silky, lustrous appearance and a smooth feel, as well as high tensile strength. It required more detailed work and was more costly to manufacture, but the finished yarn sold at a substantial premium and in a more stable market than did carded yarn at that time, making it well worth the extra effort.

            The production of combed yarn at Arlington Cotton Mills in 1900 was the first experiment with combed yarn ever made in the South. It was a delicate process in those days requiring constant operator attention, and only a few pioneering mills in the northeastern United States and England had successfully mastered it. Once the technique was perfected and more reliable equipment available, it gave impetus and direction to the emerging Gaston County textile industry. As the quality of Southern-made yarns improved, it matched and then surpassed the quality of yarns made at the older, more established mills in the North and was directly responsible for the rapid movement of the cotton industry to the South.

            Soon, other manufacturers in Lincolnton and Charlotte experimented with the process. In early 1906, George Gray equipped the Gray Manufacturing Co. in Gastonia with the next generation of “trouble-free” combing machinery, and twenty months later Laban Groves put the process into practical operation at Flint Manufacturing Co., also in Gastonia. This was the beginning of the renowned Southern combed yarn industry. As more mills moved south, improved high-speed cotton spinning revolutionized the industry.

            Arlington Cotton Mills was chartered under the laws of North Carolina on January 29, 1900 by G. W. Ragan, the moving spirit in the trailblazing enterprise, L. L. Jenkins, head of the First National Bank, Dr. C. E. Adams, a physician, J. D. Moore, a textile manufacturer, and A. A. McLean, a businessman, all of Gastonia. The original officers were: Mr. Ragan, president and treasurer, Mr. Jenkins, vice president, and L. L. Hardin, a recent college graduate, secretary and office manager. Eugene Cross of West Point, Mississippi, who had an unusual aptitude for mechanical engineering, was engaged as the first superintendent. This talented man, whom Ragan professionally encouraged, advanced to the superintendency of other mills and eventually built his own mills in Marion, North Carolina.

            Named in honor of Robert E. Lee’s historic Custis-Lee mansion on the Potomac River across from Washington, D. C., Arlington was the first Gaston County mill chartered in the twentieth century and the sixth ever established in Gastonia. With a capital stock of $130,000 a two-story brick steam-powered factory of 10,000 spindles, with an impressive four-story tower, was erected three miles west of the center city on 60 acres of farmland. It bordered the south side of the Southern Railway tracks.

            For the next 100 years, Arligton ran continuously as one of Gastonia’s principal combed yarn producers. After 1931 it became a plant in the Textiles-Incorporated chain of mills and was gradually increased in size to a 60,000-spindle capacity, making it the second largest individual yarn plant in Gaston County. The Arlington village grew to 150 neat frame homes, supporting a workforce of 400 and a community of perhaps 1,500. Near the mill, the highly regarded Arlington Elementary School became an integral part of the city’s educational system, subsequently serving the Arlington, Gray, Mutual and Parkdale mill communities. Along with the Loray Mills’ extensive village and retail center, it became the nucleus of what became known as West Gastonia.

            While no longer in operation, a victim of the governments removal of protective tariffs in 2005, the much-altered buildings of this historic mill can be seen on West Airline Avenue at Webb Street. The distinctive tower and the huge smokestack were removed many years ago.

The Largest Mill in the South

The second of the two defining events at the turn of the twentieth century and the one that gave Gastonia its most dazzling publicity, a sense of civic pride and national recognition was the building of the mammoth Loray Mills, or as it was popularly termed at the time, the “Million Dollar Mill”.

Heralded as the largest mill under one roof in the South, Loray became a bold experiment for Gastonia. Up until this time, only small mills of three thousand, five thousand and ten thousand spindles were attempted, and they were financed by small groups of public-spirited local businessmen using their own hard-to-come-by capital – a wonderful beginning, but nothing to compare or compete with the large, often publicly-financed mills in New England, or even several large vertically integrated ones in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Gastonia would have a magnificent textile enterprise with a capacity to make a difference, and it would become a symbol of its economic achievement and influence.

Loray Mills was incorporated February 19, 1900 by the Secretary of State of North Carolina, with John F. Love and George A. Gray, its prime movers. Frost Torrence, a druggist, Dr. J. M. Sloan, a physician, and W. T. Rankin, a merchant, all of Gastonia, acted as nominal incorporators. The capital was set at $1,000,000, by far the largest of any Gaston County mill. Mr. Love was elected its first treasurer, and the first two letters of his name formed the first syllable of Loray. Mr. Gray became president and furnished thelast syllable of the mill’s name.
                                                                                                                    

Soon rising out of the ground was a vast five-story brick structure, with an impressive eight-story tower and a huge smokestack reaching to the sky. The floor space was in excess of 350,000 square feet, upon which 60,000 spindles, 1,650 looms and auxiliary equipment were placed for producing print cloth and sheeting for the China trade. Expectations soared and public excitement over the undertaking became intense.

                                                      From the Southern Textile Bulletin, 1921.
  
          However, problems began to develop rather early. Rumor filled the air. It had been assumed that Eastern capital would be heavily relied upon for executing a venture of this magnitude, and that was to be John Love’s job. Despite repeatedly being reported in local and national news media as fully subscribed, in fact most of the million dollars in authorized stock was never sold or even subscribed for. Love invested the most and lost it all. Gray owned only two shares or $200 in stock, enough to be an incorporator. Adding to the troubles was Love’s unsuccessful speculation for himself and the mill in the volatile New York and London cotton markets.

The machinery makers, George Draper & Sons and Whitin Machine Works in Massachusetts, and their powerful Boston and New York banks had to eventually take control of the company as principal creditor. The result was that Love was ousted and Gray was retained only temporarily by the creditors to complete the mill and get it operational. Because of additional delays, the mill was not completed until early in 1902.

Loray had been built and designed around the idea of supplying cloth to China. Unfortunately, the Boxer Rebellion began in 1900 and reached its intensity by 1901-1902 as the Chinese attempted by violence to drive all foreigners out of their country. This culminated in the Chinese Boycott in 1904, whereby that country refused to purchase American goods or deal with American trading interests. Loray was greatly crippled until new products and new markets could be developed.

It was then that Thomas E. Moore and his brother Andrew E. Moore, successful textile manufacturers in South Carolina, were asked to take over operations of the large Gastonia mill. It was run under that capable management until 1919, when the Northern creditors were finally able to find a buyer and recover part, if not all, of their “forced” investment.

Jenckes Spinning Company of Providence, Rhode Island (became Manville-Jenckes Co. in 1924, one of America’s largest publicly-owned textile firms) became the new owners. In 1921 Jenckes doubled the size of the plant to 600,000 square feet containing 110,000 spindles and 300 looms. With 2,200 workers, it remained the largest textile factory in the South. The mill village was expanded at the same time to more than 625 homes covering over fifty city blocks, and it represented a community of between 5,000 and 6,000 people. During the recession following World War I, Loray’s production was changed from cotton sheeting to tire cord fabric to serve the rapidly expanding American automobile industry.

The Loray community became so large and self-sufficient that residents began talking about the possibility of having their own town, separate of Gastonia. At least one formal attempt was made in 1911 to incorporate Loray as a North Carolina municipality. Organized resistance by Gastonia and its textile interests stymied the attempt and it was not successful. The community, including its “greasy corner” business district, along with several other adjacent mill villages, became known as West Gastonia.

In 1929 a tragic strike occurred at Manville-Jenckes’ Loray plant, which left wounds on the city’s pride, lasting to this day. (This event will be covered in another article). After the demise of Manville-Jenckes during the Depression, Firestone Tire & Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio purchased the plant in 1935 to supplement their tire cord fabric needs and established Gastonia as its headquarters in the South for textile operations. Firestone operated the large mill successfully under the progressive managements of well-known textilists such as Richard M. Sawyer, Harold Mercer and James B. Call for another sixty years, until the aged facility on West Second Avenue was finally closed in favor a modern plant built near Kings Mountain in 1993.

Although Loray was a financial failure for its original promoters, it was, nonetheless, their vision for the future that ultimately resulted in the venture becoming a tremendous economic success for Gastonia; and it brought recognition to the entire region as a visible center for industry to locate. As for Gastonians, it provided thousands of jobs and untold millions of dollars in payrolls and bank deposits for almost 100 years. It was, and is today, the most recognized industrial landmark in the city.

Article Nine Part 2:

Gastonia: Textile Center of the South

            Soon after he left the management of Loray Mills in early 1904, George Gray, who began work as a child laborer 43 years earlier, accomplished the final dream of his life – that of building his own cotton mill. Along with J. H. Separk and C. J. Huss, the unschooled mechanical wizard incorporated Gray Manufacturing Company, the eighth textile mill established in Gastonia, on December 29, 1904 with a paid-in capital stock of $150,000. Gray, as controlling shareholder, was elected its first president and treasurer; L. L. Jenkins, president of First National Bank, vice president; and Joe Separk, Gray’s son-in-law, secretary. The first superintendent was Charles M. Dunn, who had been trained by Gray at Gastonia Cotton Manufacturing Co.

            The 10,000-spindle mill and village, situated on 50 acres of land near Arlington Mills, was unique in two respects. First, it was designed exclusively as a combed yarn mill, whereas only part of Arlington’s production had been devoted to combed yarn. Second, it was to be powered by electricity. Both were firsts for Gaston County. Gray had been among the enlightened Southern mill men who realized that they were losing opportunity by confining their output to low-end trade yarns. He also envisioned that electricity would be an improvement in speed and efficiency over less reliable water and ore-eating steam power. The electricity for the Gray Mill, however, was a hybrid arrangement, being produced at the mill by a traditional steam-powered system fueled by coal. In other words, it was unconventional in that the electricity was not received through the connecting power transmission lines of a commercial provider such as Southern Power Company. It would be another year before such utility lines reached the county through James B. Duke’s aggressive “mill-a-mile” promotional concept targeted specifically toward the textile interests to bring inexpensive, dependable electric power to the Piedmont Carolinas. The Imperial Yarn Mills in Belmont in 1906 has the distinction of being the first mill in North Carolina to be powered by commercial electricity.

            All of the remarkable advancement brought by Gastonia’s first eight mills was only the beginning of its remarkable textile heritage. Equally important was the accompanying evolution of a unique socio-economic movement of far-reaching proportions that would extend across the county and throughout the Carolinas. Joining this evolving heritage in 1905 and 1906 were four other Gastonians, each destined to become part of the legend of the city’s industrial prominence in the formative years.

            The first of these was Arthur Mills Dixon, who returned to Gastonia in 1905 from the University of Georgia to join his father in the management of Trenton Cotton Mills. He began shaping an outstanding reputation for himself, which resulted in the building of Dixon Mills in 1919, executive positions with American Yarn & Processing Co. in Mount Holly, the presidency of almost every textile trade association in the United States and political leadership in the city and state. Druggist Frost Torrence also realized that the future of the region was tied to cotton manufacturing. He seized upon an opportunity in 1905 when he purchased an interest in Avon Mills and took over its management. In 1916 he sold Avon and purchased Ozark Mills.

            Merchant and former Gaston County Sheriff Charles Beauregard Armstrong, who organized and built 5,000-spindle Clara Yarn Mills in 1906, followed Dixon and Torrence. The fourth newcomer, Laban Forest Groves, a pragmatic Gastonia businessman, decided to try his hand at cotton manufacturing in 1907 when he built Flint Manufacturing Co. north of town, opening up another major section of the city to development. Not only was he a good merchandiser and manufacturer, but he also joined ranks with Ragan and Gray in building a national reputation for quality in the combed yarn field. Groves went a step further than other manufacturers in realizing the advantages of identifying his yarns with customers. He selected a trademark in the form of an Indian flint stone arrowhead, to give a distinctive identity to the Flint products.

Chain Mills and Independents 

            By 1915, Gastonia had a population of nearly 10,000 residents, and again that number in the suburbs. It was home to 13 mills with 200,000 spindles in operation, an increase of almost five-fold in the fifteen years since 1900. There were 5,000 workers employed in the mills, and they supported a village life of many thousands more. As war descended over Europe in 1914, the American economy experienced a huge textile boom, which brought an unparalleled period of prosperity to Gastonia and Gaston County. New mills began to spring up throughout the county, and the older ones were expanding as fast as they could. Money was to be made in spinning and weaving cotton into textiles, and many thousands of people came to join in the abundance.

            The 1910s and 1920s brought a shift in the organizational pattern of many mills. While the earlier mills had been promoted and owned by small groups of individuals with eight or ten outside shareholders, some of the newer mill operators but together chain mills with 25 to 200 shareholders. It seemed everybody from the barber and grocer to the bank president was getting involved. It was Gastonia’s Golden Era.

            During this time three distinct operating groups formed in Gastonia, each aligned with and supported by capital from one of the two leading banks in the city. The business ventures, as well as the political ambitions of each group centered on the bank’s resources and influence. The First National Bank’s affiliation was composed of Labe Jenkins, Lee Robinson, Joe Separk, Lander Gray and Tom Craig; and the Gray-Separk mills were thus allied in this camp. The Citizens National Bank’s affiliation included Albert Myers, Charles Armstrong, Wiley Rankin, Grady Rankin and Andrew Moore, and they supported the other two groups – Armstrong and Rankin.

            The Gray-Separk group traced its beginning as an operating consortium to 1912, when pioneer George Gray died. His eldest son, J. Lander Gray and his son-in-law, Joseph Henry Separk, took over management of Gray Manufacturing Co., which had been built seven years earlier. This group built or purchased seven additional mills between 1916 and 1923. Parkdale Mills, Inc. was built in 1916; Myrtle Mills, Inc. in 1918; Arlington Cotton Mills and Flint Manufacturing Co. were both acquired in 1918; Arkray Mills, Inc. built in 1920; and Arrow Mills, Inc. in Lincolnton purchased in 1920. At its height, this group operated about 140,000 spindles and employed approximately 2,500 workers.

            The multi-talented Charles B. Armstrong began putting together a chain of Gastonia-headquartered

            The chain mill concept did not by any means dominate textile activity in Gastonia or Gaston County. In addition, a number of highly successful and innovative independent unit mills headquartered in Gastonia were developed between 1915 and 1923 that were not controlled by the banks or any political faction. With a combined capacity of perhaps 200,000 spindles and 3,000 gainfully employed workers, they had a huge role all their own in the city and region’s economic and social composition. Foremost among them were Rex and Ranlo mills, Groves Mills, Inc., A. M. Smyre Manufacturing Co., Dixon Mills and Ragan Spinning Company.

            In an area east and slightly north of Gastonia near Spencer Mountain, two of these new mills began to rise on land that had been farmland. The rural setting became known as Ranlo, the “Ran” for John C. Rankin and the “lo” for W. Thomas Love who promoted the Gastonia-headquartered mills. The first, Rex Spinning Company was incorporated June 12, 1915, and the second, Ranlo Manufacturing Co., on November 8, 1916.

            North of Gastonia, near the Flint mill, rose another textile plant that would dominate and characterize the area. Laban F. Groves, who had promoted Flint ten years earlier, along with his eldest son, Henry H. Groves, promoted a new combed yarn mill. Groves Mills, Inc., was chartered April 21, 1916 with a capital stock of $140,000. Soon the founder’s youngest son, Earl E. Groves, joined the organization as treasurer. This well-run family firm expanded into a three-plant network, and the name was changed to Groves Thread Company on June 21, 1931 to reflect their specialized segment of the thread market. This section of Gastonia with its two connecting mill villages became known as Flint-Groves.

            The Smyres became one of the last Gastonia families to enter the mill-building race, but their enterprise became among the best known. On January 21, 1917 pioneer Gastonia merchant A. M. Smyre, in conjunction with his two sons-in-law, David M. Jones and J. Lee Robinson, and his only son, Fred L. Smyre, organized A. M. Smyre Manufacturing Co. In an area four miles east of the city along both the Southern and Piedmont & Northern rail lines, the village of Smyre arose. Through the years the company expanded into three plants. In 1981 the mills were sold to Carolina Mills, Inc. of Maiden, North Carolina.

            Ruby Cotton Mills was the next spinning plant to be built in Gastonia. It rose in 1919 on South Marietta Street along the C&NW Railroad, a half-mile south of the Osceola and Seminole mills. Its announcement was followed within weeks by Dixon Mills, Inc., located almost adjacent to Ruby, which was chartered May 6, 1919 with a capital of $300,000. Its promoters were Arthur M. Dixon, an industry leader of unusual accomplishments and operating head of Gastonia’s Trenton Cotton Mills, and his brother, Kay Dixon, a Gastonia banker. The firm operated successfully until its sale to American & Efird Mills in 1946 and in 1957 to U. S. Rubber Co.

            Gastonia banker Albert G. Myers founded Myers Mills, Inc., located on lower York Road a mile south of the Victory mill, June 21, 1919. It was his initial entrance into textiles, which resulted in him heading a group of pre-Depression cotton mills before they were folded into Textiles-Incorporated in 1931. Separately, Priscilla Spinning Company, of which Charles D. Gray was a major principal, became the third factory erected in the developing area known as Ranlo. Like the other plants there, Gastonia interests managed it. Despite its rather troubled beginning, it eventually resulted in a sizable factory and village that gave energy to the area, before it, too, folded into Depression-era Textiles-Incorporated in 1931.

            The last independent textile mill to be built in Gaston County for the next fifty years was Ragan Spinning Company in 1923. This model combed yarn mill was the work of one of Gastonia’s first and most prolific textile pioneers, 76-year-old George Washington Ragan, and his 24-year-old son, Caldwell Ragan. Its location on 113 acres of land bordering the Southern Railway near Bessemer City was the furthest west of any of the Gastonia mills – so far in fact that Duke Power Company had to specially extend its utility lines to accommodate the undertaking. It opened up a completely new area that, despite being quite a distance from Gastonia, was gerrymandered into the city limits some years later for its obvious tax-base advantages. In 1950, the 31,000-spindle plant was sold to J. P. Stevens & Co., Inc. of New York, the nation’s second largest textile conglomerate.

            Gaston County’s whirlwind era of mill building was over by 1923, but its mixture of benefits and difficulties had only begun, assuring Gastonia and Gaston County’s unique place in history. The building of Ragan Spinning Company in 1923, along with a couple other plant expansions, advanced the county, with its 103 mills and 1,500,000 producing spindles, into first place nationally in both the total number of textile mills in operation and the number of spindles devoted to combed yarn production. The shift of this industry south, an industry that had started America’s Industrial Revolution at Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1790, was now a given fact. Gaston County became the “Combed Yarn Center of America” and
Gastonia’s proud new motto became “City of Spindles”.
                                                                                                                             
                                                                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                                            CALDWELL RAGAN    

Article Ten (Part 1):

Part 1: The Beginning of Banking in Gastonia

First National Bank of Gastonia

Banking in Gastonia had its beginning in the summer of 1887 as the little railroad town searched for a path to its future. That was when Laban Lineberger Jenkins, a 23-year-old Wake Forest College graduate and son of former State Treasurer David A. “Honest Dave” Jenkins, returned home with a realization that if the 10-year-old town and its 500 inhabitants was going to grow much larger, it needed a financial institution through which to accumulate money and make loans. It was only natural that this forward-thinking event occurred at precisely at the same time Gastonia’s first cotton factory was envisioned, and by many of the same people. It was becoming evident that its citizens were ambitious and visionary and intended to discover a way to prosper.

            Labe Jenkins and his 57-year-old brother-in-law John Henry Craig, already a successful Gastonia merchant, each invested $5,000 and started the private banking firm of Craig & Jenkins. It was located in the southwest corner of Captain J. D. Moore’s general store on the north side of the first block of West Main Street, with Jenkins as cashier and Miss Sallie Craig, daughter of one of the partners, as clerk.

            Craig & Jenkins Banking Co. operated only three years. It quickly became evident that a larger banking facility, one with more capital resources, was needed to fund industry and commerce and provide a mechanism for Gastonia to grow beyond its formative stage. The two partners called a meeting of several progressive businessmen who shared their enthusiasm. The result was that on July 8, 1890, First National Bank of Gastonia was organized by Laban L. Jenkins, John H. Craig, George W. Ragan, James D. Moore and ten others with a capital stock of $50,000 – quite an impressive amount in those days for a town so small. These fourteen visionaries were obviously looking to the future and forecasting promising possibilities.

            The original officers of Gastonia’s and Gaston County’s first nationally chartered bank were: J. H. Craig, president; G. W. Ragan, vice president; L. L. Jenkins, cashier; J. D. Moore, teller; and Miss Carrie Boyce, bookkeeper. The first board of directors consisted of Jenkins, Craig, Ragan, Moore, L. M. Hoffman, R. W. Sandifer, Thomas Wilson, J. C. Cobb and J. F. Love, among the county’s most prominent business leaders and professionals. Almost before the new bank began operations under the federal charter, John Craig resigned and was succeeded as president by George Ragan, who is said to have signed the first national currency ever issued by the bank, in early 1891.

            When First National Bank began operating from its temporary quarters in Captain Moore’s store building, they did not even have a suitable safe. Some accounts have said that Craig and Jenkins actually carried the cash in money belts around their waists. Conveniently, Ragan had a large, double-door “Halls patent, burglar and fire-proof safe, five feet high” in his general store office a few doors east and offered its use. The cash, notes and contracts were secured here until the bank moved to its permanent headquarters a few doors west the following year.

            Money began flowing into the new Mosley-Barnes vault of the First National Bank, and credit was extended to those with progressive ideas and sound abilities. New businesses were started through this means of credit creation, and three magnificent cotton mills were up and running by 1895 – the Gastonia, Trenton and Modena. A fourth, the Avon, was being conceived. Gastonia began to take shape and grow.

            By 1896, both G. W. Ragan and J. D. Moore had withdrawn from active management to concentrate their efforts on building more cotton mills. Thereafter, L. L. Jenkins became president of the bank, and in 1900 S. N. Boyce was employed as cashier. Jenkins was Gastonia and Gaston County’s chief financial advisor during its formative years, until his move to Asheville in 1910 to additionally become president of that rapidly growing city’s largest bank. It was then that his associate, J. Lee Robinson, a vice president of the institution, assumed Jenkins’ active executive duties at the Gastonia bank. From that date until1931, Robinson became one of Gastonia’s most energetic leaders in its material progress. It was during his tenure that the stylish seven-story bank building, Gastonia’s first “skyscraper,” was erected in 1916-1917 at 168 West Main Avenue. The building was designed by Wilson & Sompayroc, Architects, of Columbia, South Carolina, with three elaborately ornamented and decorated sides, and became a symbol of its own prosperity and the city’s rise to prominence. It later became known as the Lawyers Building, and its original weathered elegance can still be gleaned in the uptown district, despite its present age and condition.

            Upon Robinson’s tragic death in 1931 at the onset of the Great Depression, Samuel N. Boyce, vice president and cashier, succeeded him as president and made a valiant attempt to reorganize and save the failing institution. Nevertheless, President Franklin Roosevelt’s mandated Bank Holiday of 1933 closed all U. S. banks until they could be deemed solvent. First National Bank of Gastonia with a capital of $500,000, but under pressure of continuing deposit withdrawals and loan foreclosures, went through a second reorganization, which assumed 70 percent of its deposit liability. It emerged in 1934 as National Bank of Commerce, with a capital of $200,000, under the executive leadership of Kay Dixon, and later Joseph G. Reading and Miles H. Rhyne.

            In the 1960s, it was sold to Charlotte’s aggressively expanding First Union National Bank, which thereby became successor to Gaston County’s first bank. William H. “Bill” Keith subsequently became First Union’s Gaston County executive and headed the operation for many years, until his retirement. In 2001, First Union purchased Wachovia Corporation and took the Wachovia name, a name now prominently represented throughout Gaston County.

Citizens National Bank of Gastonia

The need for competitive banking in Gastonia and throughout the county grew with the new cotton factories being built at the turn of the twentieth century – Ozark in 1899, Arlington and Loray in 1900, Gray in 1905, Clara in 1906 and Flint in 1907. First National had grown large and rich in the ten years since its founding, but more capacity was needed to insure the region’s further advancement.

            In terms of financial resources and executive ability, one of the most important additions to the city of 5,000 came on January 3, 1905, when a new bank was organized by another group of city promoters with a capital of $50,000. Headed as president by Rufus P. Rankin, a merchant-turned-cotton manufacturer, and 25-year-old Albert Gallatin Myers, who was recruited from a Charlotte bank as cashier, Citizens National Bank of Gastonia began accumulating deposits, making loans and creating a healthy air of competition from its small quarters in a building on the north side of the second block of West Main Street. In addition to Rankin and Myers, the original board of directors consisted of J. A. Glenn, R. A. Love, Dr. J. M. Sloan, R. R. Haynes and C. N. Evans.

Original  Citizens National Bank building 1906. 
Frm Gastonia, North Carolina, Its Present and Future,
edited by Joseph H. Separk, 1906.
 
“Ab” Myers’ appointment was a fortuitous move on the part of the Citizens National Bank’s organizers. He was destined to become not only the county’s leading banker from the 1930s onward, but also head of a chain of fifteen sales yarn mills he helped put together and save during the Great Depression – known for fifty years as Textiles-Incorporated. He was elected president of the bank in 1920. In 1925 -1926, an architecturally distinctive three-story building designed by noted Gastonia architect Hugh E. White in neo-classical style, with richly detailed stonework, was erected on its original site at 212 West Main Avenue. Its handsome stone-carved eagle, indicating strength and stability, is still seen on the pediment above the main entrance of the building, now occupied by city-county offices. Following the Bank Holiday in 1933, Citizens National Bank in Gastonia was organized September 21, 1933 with a capital of $200,000, and took over 100 percent of the deposit liability of its predecessor, Citizens National Bank of Gastonia.

Citizens National Bank Building, Gastonia, N.C.
Published by the Asheville Post Card Company, c.1925.

            In 1920, twenty-year-old Allen H. Sims had joined Myers in the management of Citizens National Bank. Their combined leadership steered it safely through the Great Depression to become the largest financial institution in Gaston County. Sims became president of the bank in 1953 and ably led it to greater size and influence in the region. In 1962, Plato P. “Tete” Pearson, Jr. joined the bank’s management team and was elected president in 1967. Under his direction, the organization continued to grow, acquired banks in Shelby and changed its name to Independence National Bank. In 1981, the Gastonia-based bank merged into Branch Bank & Trust Co., successor to its business and known today as BB&T Corporation. It continues as the predominant financial institution in Gaston County in terms of local deposits and loans.

 Albert G. Myers
From The Textile Heritage of Gaston County, North Carolina, 1848-2000
by Robert A. Ragan.



Allen H. Sims, 1947
From A History of The Citizens National Bank,
Gastonia, North Carolina, 1905-1970,
by Maida McKain Adams.

Article Ten (Part 2):

Other Banks Open in Gastonia

Third National Bank

After 1905, other banks and building and loan associations were organized in Gastonia, but it was First National Bank, Citizens National Bank and their successors that dominated the financial business in Gaston County. Even before that time, in 1893, John F. Love and his family had launched Gastonia Banking Company, a private, state-chartered bank with a capital of $10,000. It failed ten years later because of the financial problems of John Love and the Loray Mills, but was reorganized in 1905. In 1906, its business was taken over by Citizens National Bank. In 1903, W. T. Love, E. G. McLurd and J. White Ware started another small bank, Gaston Loan & Trust Co. It operated for 30 years from a building on the northeast corner of Main and South streets, filling financial needs not provided by its larger competitors. In 1933, it was closed by the N. C. Banking Commission and never reopened.

            Encouraged by the textile boom created by World War I, businessman J. White Ware and a group of Gastonia associates saw an opportunity for another full-service commercial bank in the community. Accordingly, they chartered The Bank of Gastonia on April 21, 1917 with a capital of $100,000. In 1919, Ware, as president, bought controlling interest in the bank. In 1922, it was reorganized as Third National Bank, with $50,000 in capital, which was subsequently increased to $100,000.

            At the same time, the bank organized Third Trust Company for the purpose of building a seven-story bank and office building on the popular southeast corner of Main Avenue and South Street, a location formerly occupied by J. H. Kennedy Drug Store. It was to be another statement of Gastonia’s progress. Third Trust Company also operated real estate, trust and insurance departments.

            Despite their hopeful confidence, the bank and trust company were caught up in financial difficulties during the post-World War I recession and events that followed. Third National Bank was reorganized October 16, 1926 as Commercial Bank and Trust Co. by 105 incorporators. Textile manufacturer W. T. Love was elected president in an effort to restore confidence and save the struggling bank. As the textile industry fell into another nasty recession as early as 1927 and the clouds of a larger calamity approached, Third National was forced to cease operation and was liquidated by banking regulators April 4, 1929.

            Meanwhile, as the country began coming out of the postwar recession, veteran Gastonia bankers S. N. Boyce, R. N. Aycock and their associates organized Peoples Bank of Gastonia on July 31, 1920. However, it, too, was ill timed and found it necessary to liquidate in 1931, during the Great Depression.

Savings and Loan Associations

Commercial banks were not the only businesses that played important roles in Gastonia’s emergence from a town to a city. Leaders recognized quite early that a means for average citizens to build and own homes, a service not provided by traditional banks, was greatly needed if Gastonia was to continue moving forward. Gastonia Building & Loan Association, the first of its type in the county, was thus organized January 5, 1905 by S. N. Boyce as president, C. B. Armstrong as secretary and treasurer, W. T. Rankin, J. E. Page and seven others. In 1907, Armstrong resigned and was succeeded by E. G. McLurd, who held the chief operating job until his death in 1933. The association reorganized and continued its growth after the bank Holiday in 1933 under the presidency of merchant Samuel A. Robinson and executive management of James G. Jackson as secretary and treasurer. In 1945 Samuel M. Stewart succeeded Robinson as president. In 1959, still under Jackson’s efficient management, it changed its name to Gastonia Mutual Savings & Loan Association. Economic incentives in the 1980s and 1990s encouraged many savings and loans to convert into traditional commercial banks. Accordingly, Gastonia Mutual, then under the presidency of Gastonia merchant B. Frank Matthews II, became Gaston Federal Bank. Today it is known as Citizens South Bank, the oldest, largest and one of only two locally owned banks in Gaston County. Kim S. Price is the current chief executive officer.

In order to help extend the city’s residential housing boom, Home Building  & Loan Association was founded April 6, 1912 by C. B. Armstrong as president, W. T. Rankin, R. G. Rankin, A. M. Dixon, A. E. Moore and others as Gastonia’s second S & L.

It operated until 1935, when First Federal Savings & Loan Association was created by the Federal Home Loan Bank to take over the assets of Home Building & Loan Association. Businessman William D. Anderson became its president and Francis A. Whitesides, secretary, treasurer and general manager. In the 1980s it was sold to NCNB, the large Southeast regional bank, and is now the basis of Bank of America’s operations in Gaston County.

Modern Banks Find Gastonia Attractive

There were no entirely new full-service commercial banks chartered in Gaston County for 40 years after the Great Depression. However, as time passed and prosperity resumed, First Citizens Bank of Smithfield, North Carolina moved into Gastonia in the 1960s. They chose as their executive manager Gastonian Harold T. Sumner, who grew the business substantially during the next 20 years. First Citizens still has a strong Gaston presence. In the late 1970s, businessman John Houser started State Bank in Gastonia. About ten years later, it merged into Southern National Bank, which in 1995 was itself purchased by BB&T Corporation, the regional powerhouse already well represented in Gaston County.

            Then, there was First Community Bank, which was launched by former Independence National Bank president Plato “Tete” Pearson, Don Lineberger and other Gastonians in the late 1980s. In 1996, it joined with Centura Banks, Inc., headquartered in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Centura was purchased by Royal Bank of Canada in 2001, and operates locally and in the southeastern United States as RBC Centura Bank. Following First Community’s founding, another former BB&T executive, W. Alex Hall, Jr. and a group of Gastonia and Lincolnton investors started First Gaston Bank in 1994. Since 2006, it has been known as FNB United Bank, headquartered in Asheboro, North Carolina.

            Durham, North Carolina-based Central Carolina Bank moved into Gastonia some years ago. It subsequently merged with National Commerce in Memphis, Tennessee, and is today known as SunTrust Banks, with headquarters in Atlanta. The next outside bank to move into Gastonia was First Carolina Savings Bank. These were soon followed by SouthTrust Bank of Alabama, First National Bank of Shelby, N. C. and Fidelity Bank. In 2005, another new community bank was started by a group of Gastonians – Carolina Commerce Bank – with offices on South New Hope Road and in Charlotte.

Order Robert Ragan's comprehensive book, The Textile Heritage of Gaston County, North Carolina, 1848-2000 from the Gaston County Museum. Click here for more information.

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