(Advertisement for Rock Island Manufacturing - Branson & Farrar's North Carolina Business Directory for 1866-'67, Containing Facts, Figures, Names and Locations by Levi Branson.  Documenting the American South, University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.)

Manufacturing and Industry in Charlotte

The railroad had an immediate effect on manufacturing and industry in Charlotte.  The number of skilled crafts and tradesmen decreased on average as ready-made goods flowed into town.  New structures were going up all over Charlotte and the growth in population created a need for a constant supply of building materials.  Saw mills and brick yards were established to take advantage of the increasing demands.  Charlotte's businessmen took their first tentative steps into manufacturing, opening two textile mills and a steam flouring mill to process local agricultural products for domestic use and to ship to larger markets.  The textile mills were established before the tracks of the Charlotte and South Carolina Railroad had been laid.  The Catawba Manufacturing Company, built in 1848 by Charlotte merchants H.B. Williams, Peter M. Brown, and W.H. Neal , produced cotton yarn.  It was located on the Catawba River, roughly eight miles west of town in the Steele Creek district.  John A. Young, R.C. Carson, and Z.A. Grier constructed the Rock Island Woolen Factory in 1849.  Rock Island produced woolen and cotton goods.  In 1855, merchant Leroy Springs built a steam flouring mill in town near the railroad tracks between East Trade and East Fifth Streets.  The mill was sold in 1858 to John Wilkes who increased his profits by adding an establishment that made the barrels used to ship the flour.  Wilkes also owned the Mecklenburg Iron Works which built machinery and agricultural implements until it was taken over by the Confederate Government in 1861 and used to make naval ordnance.

 

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