Factory Timeline

The Oconee River was a disputed frontier between the Muskogee Creeks, whose ancestral homeland it was, and the white Georgian settlers (see Joshua Haynes [2018] Patrolling the Border: Theft and Violence on the Creek-Georgia Frontier, 1770-1796).

Daniel Easley purchased 693 acres on the north fork of the Oconee for $897. By 1801, he was operating a “successful mill complex” on Cedar Shoals (De Vorsey 1979, p. 39). Easley’s mills were grist and lumber mills, not “industrial” mills.

Daniel Easley sold 633 acres to John Milledge for UGA. Easley retained a 30-acre strip along Oconee Street plus the river frontage.

Southern industrialization was promoted using the notion that enslaved factory workers would be more efficient and cost-effective as they could neither strike nor quit. [As industrialization progressed, enslaved labor was found to be more expensive than free labor. (Gagnon, 2012, p. 50).]

The first industrial mill in Athens-Clarke was established at Whitehall (~5 miles south of Athens); in its first years, the mill in Whitehall was sometimes called “the Athens Factory.” The first mill became known as The Georgia Factory and/or Whitehall.

Athens mills originally planned to use slave children as the lowest tier of labor in the factories…. “fortuitously, the factory partners were major slaveholders seeking to use more of their slaves’ time in the early 1830s.”

William Carr sold the 55-acre site for $8K to investors, William Dearing, John Nesbitt, Abraham Walker and Augustin S. Clayton. The Athens Factory was the first mill in the City of Athens. The first mill in the area, the Georgia Factory (confusingly, the Georgia Factory was called “the Athens Factory” in its first years), had been opened in 1830 in Whitehall, by the same group of investors.

Production began at The Athens Factory.

The Athens Factory burned the first time.

William Dearing rebuilt the mill after the fire. He owned 47 slaves in 1835.

Bob, Cuffee, and Charles, along with Ezekiel and Dinah and their two children—are listed alongside the other assets of the company, including “lands, water privileges, mills, factory buildings…smith tools, wagon and team and the stock of wool” (Athens Manufacturing Company minutes, p. 6).

James Silk Buckingham visits Athens from England. He wrote of a mill “close by the town of Athens” and generalizes to the 3 mills then operating here:

In each of them there are employed 80-100 persons, and about an equal number of white and black. In one of them, the blacks are the property of the millowner, but in the other two they are the slaves of planters, hired out at monthly wages to work in the factory. There is no difficulty among them on account of colour, the white girls working in the same room and at the same loom with the black girls, and boys of each colour, as well as men and women, working together without apparent repugnance or objection. (Buckingham, 1842, p. 112)

Clarke County factories led the state by any measure of industrial production (Gagnon, 2012, p. 136).

A large part of the factory washed away by flood/freshet.

“By 1840, Clarke County led the state in manufacturing textiles, and even though larger towns soon superseded Athens during the mill building boom of the late 1840s, the seat of the University of Georgia remained among the top textile towns in Georgia. In 1860, Athens was the fourth largest textile center in Georgia, ranking after Augusta, Columbus and Macon. Additionally, when the textile industry expanded, Athens built a foundry and a bobbin mill to support the industry throughout northern Georgia, making it a regional industrial hub. Further, by 1860, Athens’ well-trained workforce included homegrown factory superintendents” (Gagnon, 2000, not paginated).

The Railroad reaches Carr’s Hill in East Athens.

George Cooke’s painting, The View from Carr’s Hill (1845), shows the Athens Factory on the North Oconee.

The dam was built across the North Oconee. The remaining portion of this dam still abuts the School of Social Work.

The Athens Southern Banner advertised the incorporation of the Athens Manufacturing Company, which would manufacture wool, cotton, flour, and meal and repair machinery. Its initial capital stock was $92,600. William Mitchell, one of the original investors, served as its president from 1849 to 1851.

54% of Athens millworkers are women (Gagnon, 2012, p. 56)

The first Factory Night School was organized by Emmanuel Episcopal Church to serve families working in the mill. In the first years, approximately half of its students were adults. It is not known how long this school existed (Easom and Arnold, p. 47)

The factory was completely destroyed by fire and it was believed to be the work of arsonists (known as “incendiaries.”)

Present brick building reopened.

“Because of the instability of Confederate currency, factory thread became a medium of exchange. Once, shortly after it was first put on public sale at the Athens Factory, a feminine riot occurred. Hundreds of women had assembled….”So great was that pressure…that many females fainted, and…the scene was occasionally enlivened by rough and tumble fights”.”

Robert Lee Bloomfield purchased controlling stock in the Athens factory and he became its agent. Bloomfield had come to Athens from New Jersey in 1849.

The Confederate War Department purchased goods valued at $181,171.38 from the Athens Factory in 1863, and at least $351,904.93 worth of textiles in the first seven months of 1864. (Gagnon, 2000, not paginated)

“The cotton mills went into full production manufacturing thread and cloth for the Confederate national government and for the defense forces of the state of Georgia. The Athens Factory spun cotton, yarn, sewing thread, and knitting cotton; it also wove flannel for underwear, hickory stripes, and wool jeans for uniforms, and cotton duck for tenting for the Confederate government through at least 1864. In 1864, the Athens Factory also dyed fabric for uniform pants and coats and it sold the army an occasional cotton rope for use in a hospital’s well. Textile sales to the Confederate government proved extremely remunerative.” (Gagnon, 2012, p. 183)

In January 1864, the Athens Factory sold cotton flannel, sufficient quantity for making two undershirts, to families or friends of members of all of Athens’ volunteer companies at the front, at the greatly reduced rate of one dollar per yard. By April 1864, the Athens Factory’s announcement that ‘all persons living in the town of Athens’ could purchase one-half a bunch of yarn or seven and a half yards of cloth, indicates that mere resumption of sale of cotton goods to the general public could be considered charity, particularly since the sale excluded the rest of the countryside. (Gagnon, 2000, not paginated)

During the Civil War, the Athens Factory operated as fully as access to raw materials allowed (Gagnon, 2012, p 181)

After the Civil War, Bloomfield offers the use of the Athens Manufacturing Company’s corn and flour mill to the community: “flour and meal will be returned free of charge.”

Athens Factory builds St. Mary’s Church (R.E.M. steeple).

The Athens Manufacturing Company (under Bloomfield’s leadership) purchased the Cook and Brother Armory. At that time the current School of Social Work building became known as “the lower factory” and the new building was “the upper factory.” Yarn, spun at the lower factory, was woven into cloth at the upper factory (Easom & Arnold, p. 26). Yarn was transported from the original plant to the Armory by flatboats, operated by two men with long poles (Carlisle, 2003). In a WPA Slave Narrative, a Robert Shepherd describes his post-emancipation life working for Robert Bloomfield on the boat they used to carry cotton from one mill to another.

The Southern Watchman reported on December 21st, 1870, that Robert Bloomfield had “overhauled, rebuilt, and rejuvenated” the mill across the North Oconee for a flour mill. The mill operated briefly by the Athens Manufacturing Company and reportedly produced “extra nice flour.”

There is a call in the Athens Banner Herald for a system to educate the children working in the mills. (Easom & Arnold, pp. 47; 66)

Athens’ School Superintendent reports that there are children working in the factories as young as 7 years of age. (Easom & Arnold, p. 51)

The Athens Weekly Banner calls the Athens Manufacturing Company (AMC) the principal factory in East Athens. They note that the AMC’s Check Factory ships their high-quality goods to Detroit, Chicago, and Nashville.

Bloomfield financed an unsuccessful electrification scheme using the Athens Factory assets, a move that led to bankruptcy. (Gagnon, 2012, p. 207)

There were over 1000 children (ages 6-18) in East Athens of whom half are not in school largely due to working at the mills. (Easom & Arnold, p. 52)

East Athens Night School opened. Classes were held from 6:30-9pm, Sunday-Friday. By 1905, the school is serving more than 250 children. In a 1901 photo, all the students are white. (Easom & Arnold, p. 52-55)

The Athens Manufacturing Company closed the Lower Factory (the building that is now the School of Social Work). See Easom and Arnold, page 26.

Chicopee Manufacturing Company, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, purchased the old Lower Factory (Easom & Arnold, page 26)

O’Malley’s Bar opened at 279 Williams St.