Alamance County is a county in North Carolina. As of the 2020 census, the population was 171,415. Its county seat is Graham. Formed in 1849 from Orange County to the east, Alamance County has been the site of significant historical events, textile manufacturing, and agriculture.
Derwent Valley Mills is a World Heritage Site along the River Derwent in Derbyshire, England, designated in December 2001. It is administered by the Derwent Valley Mills Partnership. The modern factory, or 'mill', system was born here in the 18th century to accommodate the new technology for spinning cotton developed by Richard Arkwright. With advancements in technology, it became possible to produce cotton continuously. The system was adopted throughout the valley, and later spread so that by 1788 there were over 200 Arkwright-type mills in Britain. Arkwright's inventions and system of organising labour was exported to Europe and the United States.
Alamance is a village in Alamance County, North Carolina, United States. It is part of the Burlington, North Carolina Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 951 at the 2010 census, up from 310 at the 2000 census.
Burlington is a city in Alamance and Guilford counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the principal city of the Burlington, North Carolina Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Alamance County, in which most of the city is located, and is a part of the Greensboro-Winston-Salem-High Point CSA. The population was 50,042 at the 2010 census, which makes Burlington the 17th largest city in North Carolina. The Metropolitan Statistical Area population was over 150,000 in 2010.
Haw River is a town in Alamance County, North Carolina, United States. It is part of the Burlington, North Carolina Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2010 census the population was 2,298.
Thomas Michael Holt was an American industrialist who served as the 47th Governor of North Carolina from 1891 to 1893. Formerly a North Carolina State Senator and Speaker of the House of the North Carolina General Assembly, Holt was instrumental in the founding of North Carolina State University, as well as in establishing several railroads within the state and the state's department of agriculture. Holt was also responsible for the technology behind the family's Holt Mills 'Alamance Plaids,' the first colored cotton goods produced in the South – a development that revolutionized the Southern textile industry.
The Haw River is a tributary of the Cape Fear River, approximately 110 mi (177 km) long, that is entirely contained in north central North Carolina in the United States. It was first documented as the "Hau River" by John Lawson, an English botanist, in his 1709 book "A New Voyage to Carolina." The name is shortened from Saxapahaw, from the Catawban /sak'yápha:/, "piedmont, foothill", from /sak/, "hill", plus /yápha:/, "step". The river gives its name to a small town that formed on its banks.
A mill town, also known as factory town or mill village, is typically a settlement that developed around one or more mills or factories, usually cotton mills or factories producing textiles.
The Boston Manufacturing Company was a business that operated one of the first factories in America. It was organized in 1813 by Francis Cabot Lowell, a wealthy Boston merchant, in partnership with a group of investors later known as The Boston Associates, for the manufacture of cotton textiles. It built the first integrated spinning and weaving factory in the world at Waltham, Massachusetts, using water power. They used plans for a power loom that he smuggled out of England as well as trade secrets from the earlier horse-powered Beverly Cotton Manufactory, of Beverly, Massachusetts, of 1788. This was the largest factory in the U.S., with a workforce of about 300. It was a very efficient, highly profitable mill that, with the aid of the Tariff of 1816, competed effectively with British textiles at a time when many smaller operations were being forced out of business. While the Rhode Island System that followed was famously employed by Samuel Slater, the Boston Associates improved upon it with the "Waltham System". The idea was successfully copied at Lowell, Massachusetts, and elsewhere in New England. Many rural towns now had their own textile mills.
Henry River Mill Village is a small textile village in Burke County, North Carolina. It is an unaltered but now-decaying example of an early industrial environment in Burke County. Today the remaining buildings of the Henry River mill village are traces of the industrial heritage of the county.
Helmshore Mills are two mills built on the River Ogden in Helmshore, Lancashire. Higher Mill was built in 1796 for William Turner, and Whitaker's Mill was built in the 1820s by the Turner family. In their early life they alternated between working wool and cotton. By 1920 they were working shoddy as condensor mule mills; and equipment has been preserved and is still used. The mills closed in 1967 and they were taken over by the Higher Mills Trust, whose trustees included historian and author Chris Aspin and politician Dr Rhodes Boyson, who maintained it as a museum. The mills are said to the most original and best-preserved examples of both cotton spinning and woollen fulling left in the country that are still operational.
Linwood is a village with its own post office in the towns of Northbridge and Uxbridge, Massachusetts.
Rocky Mount Mills, located in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, was the second cotton mill constructed in the state of North Carolina, dating back to 1816. Capitol Broadcasting Company bought the 150-acre (61 ha) mills in the 2007 and has since redeveloped it into a mixed-use campus of breweries, restaurants, lofts, office, and event space.
Glencoe is an unincorporated community in Alamance County, North Carolina, United States on North Carolina Highway 62, north-northeast of downtown Burlington.
The Saco-Lowell Shops was once one of the largest textile machine manufacturers in the United States. It was formed in 1912 with a merger between the Lowell Machine Shop with the Saco-Pettee Machine Company. At its peak in the 1920s, the company had manufacturing facilities in Lowell and Newton, Massachusetts, and Biddeford, Maine. The company maintained their executive office at 77 Franklin Street in Boston, and also had a southern office in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The Nottingham Industrial Museum is a volunteer-run museum situated in part of the 17th-century stables block of Wollaton Hall, located in a suburb of the city of Nottingham. The museum won the Nottinghamshire Heritage Site of the Year Award 2012, a local accolade issued by Experience Nottinghamshire. The Museum collection closed in 2009 after Nottingham City Council withdrew funding, but has since reopened at weekends and bank holidays, helped by a £91,000 government grant, and run by volunteers. The museum contains a display of local textiles machinery, transport, telecommunications, mining and engineering technology. There is a display of cycles, motorcycles, and motor cars. There are examples of significant lace-making machinery. It also houses an operational beam engine, from the Basford, Nottingham pumping station.
Kearsley Mill is a 240,000 sq ft (22,000 m2), late period cotton mill located in the small village of Prestolee in Kearsley, Greater Manchester, part of the historic county of Lancashire. A near complete example of Edwardian mill architecture, the building now functions as headquarters for a number of businesses and is still used in the continued manufacturing and distribution of textiles by Richard Haworth Ltd Est (1876), part of the Ruia Group. The mill is a Grade II listed building.
Buffalo Mill Historic District is a national historic district located at Buffalo, Union County, South Carolina. The district encompasses 190 contributing buildings and 2 contributing structures associated with the Buffalo Mill textile mill complex and mill village. The mill complex includes the main mill, mill office, power house, ice factory, mill warehouse, company store, and company bank/drug store. The main mill building features applied stylized Romanesque Revival detailing. The mill village housing varies from large, free-classic, Queen Anne style supervisor's houses, to shingle-style bungalows, to simple, one-story, workers residences. The village also includes a school and a baseball field/park.
Glencoe Mill Village Historic District is a national historic district located at Glencoe, Alamance County, North Carolina. It encompasses 48 contributing buildings and 6 contributing structures built between 1880 and 1882 in Glencoe.
The Granite Mill is a historic building located in Haw River, North Carolina. It is a complex of interconnected and free-standing manufacturing and storage buildings built between 1844 and 1990. The original mill was built in 1884.
