Jacquard weaving

The jacquard loom (France, 1801) was the first machine that operated using punched cards -- the original computer.  A modern computer operates this loom in NCSU's College of Textiles.  Thanks to Jim Watson for my tour of the weaving, spinning, and knitting labs.

Cicero

My grandfather, Cicero, lived in Brookford, where his father was mayor, music teacher, and overseer in the spool room at the mill.  When Cicero was seventeen, his mother hired a traveling photographer to take his picture.

Cicero Conley "CC" Church
May 5, 1896 - October 6, 1962
"He was always jolly."



Out-of-focus box camera,
History Museum of Burke County.

What not to call a mill worker

A hand.  "They aren't hands," Jim Watson says.

The kindness of strangers

Dyke Little, Brookford Cotton Mill,
where my grandmother first worked.

Last week I took a field trip to the Catawba Valley, where my grandmother was raised and where Mill Mothers opens.  I was overwhelmed with kindness everywhere I went.  In Glen Alpine, Morganton, Brookford, and Hickory, people told me stories, bought me meals, invited me into their homes.  Special thanks to:

-- my cousin Debbie Chapman, who gave me good directions.

-- Dyke and Jackie Little, my lunch companions and guides in Brookford.  Dyke is the author of Brookford Memories. 

-- Jane Hogg, proprietor of the Inn at Glen Alpine, the former home of J.D. Pitts, the man who built and, for a while, owned most of the town.  From the sumptuous Queen Anne Room -- lace curtains, beaded bedding -- I looked out toward the South Mountains, toward the farm where a hundred and ten years ago my grandmother was born in a small, weatherbeaten house without electricity or running water.

-- Mary Haller, Charles Graham, Mike Roper, and the entire breakfast crowd at The Depot Restaurant.

-- Nancy and Bobby Arrowood, and Nancy's third graders who worked with her on a history of Glen Alpine.

-- Betty Fowler at Old Mill Antiques.

-- Robert Pruett at the History Museum of Burke County.

Glen Alpine

Glen Alpine, ca. 1900

Harvest in Catawba Valley -- Burke County.

Brookford

Postcard: Brookford Mill and Company Store