An Introduction to the Roswell Manufacturing Company

An Introduction to the Roswell Manufacturing Company. . In 1832, the State of Georgia held a lottery to distribute land located north of the Chattahoochee River. This land was formerly part of the Cherokee Nation. The Cherokee Indians were removed to land west of the Mississippi over the route, which became known as the “Trail of Tears”., Roswell King was a dealer in cotton, rice, and lumber form the Georgia coast and a director of the Bank of Darien. While traveling through North Georgia on a business trip for the bank, King recognized great manufacturing potential in the abundant natural resources along Vickery Creek. The area provided an ideal setting for textile mills to produce goods from locally grown cotton., As early as 1835, Roswell King, with the help of his son Barrington, purchased land from the original land lottery owners to establish a manufacturing company and to create the town that bears his name. He invited affluent family members and friends From coastal Georgia to invest in the mills and to build homesteads in the new settlement that he referred to as “The Colony”. The town was a planned community with a park or town square that separated the homes of the founding families from the mill village or “Factory Hill”., The Roswell Manufacturing Company, incorporated in 1839, was one of the earliest textile mill enterprises in Cobb County (currently Fulton County). The 1839 mill employed approximately 30 hands and achieved a capital of $80,000 by the mid-1840s. In 1853, the company built a second factory and had capital of $220,000. Mill workers, numbering 250, turned out shirting, osnaburg (a course heavy cloth), sheeting, and yarn. At the beginning of the Civil War, the company owned two cotton mills, a flour mill (Lebanon Mills), a blacksmith shop, a machine shop, a general store, and apartments and houses for 400 mill operatives., The appearance of the complex changed over time due to the ravages of the Civil War, natural disasters, periods of economic growth and depression, and the development of new technology. The 1854 machine shop and an additional cotton mill, constructed in 1882, are the only intact structures remaining., (captions) , Letterhead of the Roswell Manufacturing Company, 1920. Courtesy of the Roswell Historical Society / City of Roswell, Roswell Bank Collection., Woodcut Engraving of Roswell Manufacturing Company, ca. 1854. Courtesy of the Roswell Historical Society, Visual Arts Collection, Barrington King (1798-1866). Courtesy of the Roswell Historical Society, King, Baker, ad Simpson Families Papers, Roswell King (1765-1844). Courtesy of the Roswell Historical Society, Visual Arts Collection