A Look at a Southern Mill Town, 1916

I grew up in the country about 5 miles from a small town called Ware Shoals, SC. I was very surprised and pleased to find a newspaper piece online from 1916 which describes the town at that time, when my father would have been 5 years old.

The piece starts out by stating that when Jason MacEnroe came to Ware Shoals in 1904, there were only 2 white men there. I think this is an odd statement, because my family (all white) had been living within five miles of the place for a little over 200 years at that point. There had to have been at least a hundred white men, women, and children in the neighborhood of the town at that time.

At any rate, the article discusses the building of the cotton mill, which was still the major employment for nearly the whole town when I was growing up there. My father worked there his whole life from age 15 to age 63, when he had to retire, except for when he was in service in World War II.

The article says that the place was a wild and wooly area in the early 1900's, because three counties joined there (still do, I think,) and offenders could easily slip from one to the other. It was against the law to sell liquor, but "some mean liquor is shipped to this point," says the article. The "whisky houses" got around the law by "sending a person a gallon of liquor every time four of his friends order one each."

At the time of the article, 1916, the town was planning to build the school building where I attended High School, at the cost of a whopping $20,000!

"The people here are proud of their community and hold their heads up. They have a beautiful community, good streets, electric lights in the homes, bath and sewer arrangements. The people appear satisfied and contented," oppines the article.

"The climate here is good, the drainage perfect, the cottages neat and premises well-kept and the health fine."

The town had a big department store (which closed when I was a kid,) a bank, an ice factory, a cotton gin, and a sanitary meat market.

The article says the ice plant was a great boon for the town, since people could get ice at 35 cents a hundred and it would be much more expensive shipped.

But my favorite part dealt with the building of the Community Building, which had just been completed in 1916. Named Katherine Hall, it was still the center of social activity for Ware Shoals young people when I worked there selling movie tickets, tickets for the swimming pool, and running the concession stand from the time I was 15 until I went away to college at 18. This was the late 1960's.

The article gloats about the fact that "The People's Amusement Hall" cost an unbelievable $40,000! The wall fixtures alone cost $1,000!

It was (and is) a handsome building.

The writer (who has no byline) explains that at first the mill owner, Mr. Riegel, only set out to build an ordinary gathering place for his employees, but then he decided to add a movie theatre. That was pretty farsighted in 1916! We were still showing movies in that same small theatre when I worked there in the 1960's. In 1916, the building was the headquarters for the boy scouts and other organizations and that was still true when I worked there. There was a pool hall in the basement, too, but only males were allowed in there..in the 60's! I don't know when they added that feature.

Anyway, things really didn't change that much in Ware Shoals over the years. There's no longer an ice house, a company store (although the building is still there,) or a cotton mill. Riegel Mills burned to the ground not too long after I moved away in the 90's. But the people still live in the "cottages" and Katherine Hall is still in use. There are only about 3,000 people there now, and I go back maybe once a year. But I enjoyed the trip into the rural Southern past.