WORTHVILLE

As part of my architectural inventory survey work, I not only wrote histories of Randolph County and Asheboro, but of all the 19th century Deep River mill villages.  Those thumbnail histories were not published in the final book due to lack of space, and all of them now need to be updated to reflect the last 30 years of local history.  But I’ll be reprinting them here because for many of them, those 1980/81 articles are the only histories available.

RANDOLPH COUNTY MILL VILLAGES: Worthville

Published  2-25-1981, in “The Maxi Page,” the Randolph Guide Senior Adult Newspaper Supplement.

Worthville Mill entrance

Worthville was founded in 1880 by Asheboro businessmen John Milton Worth, his son and son-in-law, and John H. Ferree of Randleman. Dr. Worth had previously taken over management of the Cedar Falls mill, and was familiar with the textile business before forming his Worth Manufacturing Company.

The mill was located at a site on Deep River known as Hopper’s Ford. The firm wove sheeting and bags, and employed 125 workers. After 1886 the firm was closely associated with the factory and village of Central Falls, acquired by Dr. Worth’s company in that year. In 1895 the Worthville factory was the larger of the two, employing over 200 persons, while the Central Falls operation employed 125.

Worthville Mill window detail

Worth’s heirs sold out to Riverside Mills, Inc., in 1913, which was in turn sold to Leward Cotton Mills, Inc. At this or some other presently-unknown point, the two mill villages were separated once again. Leward Cotton Mills, a partnership between J. Stanback Lewis and Wiley Ward, two Asheboro businessmen, took over operation of the Worthville plant. They continued the careful stewardship of the Worthville community which had been a special concern of Dr. Worth. Circumstances forced the temporary closing of the mill daring the Depression, but it soon  reopened. The village was sold to Erlanger Mills of Lexington in 1948, and to Fieldcrest Mills of Eden in 1964.

Individual houses were sold off and the factory was closed in 1975 by Baxter, Kelley, Foust of South Carolina, the owners at that time. In late 1980 the mill buildings were acquired by Asheboro businessman Stuart Love, who plans to manufacture upholstery and mattress stuffing.

Despite the ups and downs of its past, Worthville remains a very well-preserved Victorian mill village.

Howgill Julian’s Fulling Mill

A fulling mill illustrated in Theatrum Machinarum Novum, 1661

An advertisement in the Southern Citizen, published in Asheboro on December 9, 1837, announced that the Fulling Mill belonging to Howgill Julian was for sale.

The ad states that the mill was located “near the mouth of Polecat Creek, four miles above the Cedar Falls cotton factory.”

Between the time of Howgill Julian’s first purchase in 1830 (DB18:284) and his last purchase in 1861 (DB23:243), hundreds of acres of Deep River property passed through Julian’s ownership. Most of it appears to be located on the north side of the river between Polecat and Bush Creeks, and interestingly, adjoins the location of the Whetstone Quarry (I’m indebted to my fellow historian Warren Dixon for pointing out that the Whetstone Quarry is apparently located today somewhere on Randolph County tax parcel #7764893536, presently the site of the City of Randleman’s wastewater treatment plant).

Howgill Julian’s Fulling Mill was evidently located on a tract of 107 acres that Julian purchased from Tobias Julian on October 13, 1830. The tract description begins “on a Maple at the mouth of the Creek… then runs North and East to a branch, then “down the said branch to the mouth at the river… thence crossing sd. River… thence up sd. River on the W. bank… thence E. crossing sd. River to the Beginning.” So the fulling mill could have been located alternatively on Polecat Creek, Deep River or “the branch,” presumably Trogdon’s Branch which enters Deep River from the North opposite Worthville near the present-day bridge carrying NCSR 2122 across the river. At any rate, it was downstream of the Whetstone Quarry.

It may be that the sites of both the Whetstone Quarry and the Fulling Mill now lie under the waters of the Worthville mill pond, which impounds water just below the mouth of Polecat Creek.

The Worthville mill dam still stands just northwest of the site of the former bridge which carried NCSR 2128 across the river, just to the East of the Worthville cotton mill, originally known as the John M.Worth Manufacturing Company, and built in 1880. The mill at Worthville was built at a site know before the Civil War as “Hopper’s Ford” (See the entries at p. 128 of my survey book, entries R:48 and R:49).

By the way, a Fulling Mill was necessary to clean and thicken the weave of woolen cloth. Woolen cloth is a relative rarity in Randolph County today, but the presence of a woolen mill indicates that in the 19^th century there were not only handweavers producing enough cloth that a mill could be profitable, but that farmers kept sufficient sheep to produce the wool needed to weave the cloth.  At a fulling mill, woolen cloth was washed in a nasty-smelling combination of boiling urine and fuller’s earth, to remove the natural grease from the wool; then the cloth was beaten in troughs by wooden hammers lifted and dropped by a water wheel.

This is the only Randolph County fulling mill of which I’m aware… do you know of others?