Rocky Mount Mills

ESTABLISHED 1818
Carded Cotton Yarns
Rocky Mount, N. C.

[Illustration:

Wellford Price - Secretary, W. J. Laughridge - General Superintendent, Ronald E. Stevens - Assistant Treasurer, Hyman L. Battle - Treasurer and Manager
]

[Illustration:

WILLIAM HENRY SUMMERS, twenty-three years service, trucks a bale of cotton from the storage warchouse to the bale opening room.
]

[Illustration:

JONATHAN CLEE EDWARDS, seven years service, feeds cotton into an opening machine which starts the process of mixing, blending and cleaning the fibers.
]

[Illustration:

WILLIAM DOUGLAS HAYES, mechanic, six years service, cleans out a picking machine which continues the cleaning and blending process and rolls the cotton into batts called laps.
]

[Illustration:

ROY EUGENE HOPEWELL, fifteen years service, operates a carding machine. Here the lap is fed between revolving cylinders covered with thousands of wire teeth to clean and card the fibers into a web which comes off in the form of a tangled mass called card sliver.
]

[Illustration:

EULA WILLIS BLAYLOCK, five years service, runs a drawing frame where several card slivers go through the first process of parallelizing the fibers into a strand called drawing sliver.
]

[Illustration:

TOMMIE LEE THOMPSON, twenty-five years service, operates a roving frame. Drawing sliver is drafted between rollers to reduce it into a finer strand called roving. For strength the roving is twisted slightly as it is wound on bobbins.
]

[Illustration:

JOE TALBOTT, nine years service, removes, or doffs, full packages of varn from a ring spinning frame. Here roving is drafted between rollers into yarn and spun onto bobbins.
]

[Illustration:

RUTH WILLIAMS HOWELL, seventeen years service, tends an automatic winder. This complex machine automatically ties and winds yarn from a spinning bobbin to a large tube for case of handling in the next step.
]

[Illustration:

LEWIS HOWARD WOOD, eleven years service, reties broken yarn ends on a twisting frame. Supply tubes are placed at the top of the frame in the creel. Two or more strands are drawn down between rollers and twisted together as they are wound onto bobbins as plied yarn.
]

[Illustration:

MARY LOUISE LANGSTON, nine years service, runs a high speed winder to transfer plied yarn from twister bobbins to cones or other type packages as requested by customers. WILLIAM DAVID HOWELL, mechanic, twenty-seven years service, adjusts a part on the machine.
]

[Illustration:

1. Cotton Storage Warehouses; 2. Waste Mill; 3. Cafeteria; 4. Main Mill; 5. Power House; 6. Main Office; 7. Finished Yarn Storage, Shipping and Supply Room; 8. Testing and Experimental Laboratory; 9. Personnel Building.
]

[Illustration:

LEWIS CLIFTON WOOD, six years service, reties broken yarn ends on a warper. Hundreds of strands are drawn from cones and wound side by side on a huge spool, or beam, which will go into a loom in some customers weave mill.
]

[Illustration:

JACOB BATTLE AVENT, shipping clerk, eighteen years service, enters bale and case descriptions on a shipping ticket to fill a customers order.
]

[Illustration:

TROY LEE PHELPS, Assistant Production Manager, twenty-three years service, and DAVID H. RACKLEY, Test Clerk, eight years service, test yarn in the laboratory.
]

[Illustration:

ALEXANDRIA MALPASS, two years service, turns a piece of metal on a lathe in the machine shop.
]

[Illustration:

HYMAN L. BATTLE, Treasurer and Manager, twenty-eight years service, awarded watches in 1947 to those employees with fifty or more years service. They were Charlie Blanford, 51 years, Minnie Hudson, 51 years, Herbert Davis, 55 years, Tom Pittman, 54 years, and Eppie Knight, 56 years.
]

[Illustration:

Supervisors at a meeting in the training room are: Mildred Lee, R. N., Jim Leonard, Ben Trueblood, E. E. Wood, Joe Gilbert, Hattie Sanders, L. B. Edwards, P. F. Morris, Linwood Massengale, Wade Hall, Harold Tuttle, Roscoe Queen, Clyde Strange, Wilson Malloy, W. A. Price, A. D. Abernethy, C. K. Pettitt, W. L. Jones, Troy Phelps and John Scott.
]

[Illustration:

MISS MILDRED LEE, R. N., six years service, treats an employee for a minor injury in the clinic.
]

[Illustration:

First shift lunch period in the cafeteria.
]

[Illustration:

The mills in 1865. These buildings were burned in 1869. Grist mill at left and cotton mill at right.
]

[Illustration:

The mill today.
]

[Illustration:


Photo of ducks]

Rocky Mount Mills

ESTABLISHED 1818

Carded Cotton Yarns

Rocky Mount, N. C.