The Alabama - Georgia Manufacturing Company

The Alabama - Georgia Manufacturing Company. . , According to Joseph L. Lanier, "The cotton textile industry came to East Alabama, in the valley of the Chattahoochee River, in 1866, soon after Appomattox. Two separate groups of local planters and merchants took stock of their ruined plantations and businesses and found enough capital to start two mills. Perhaps they did not realize the fact, but their action was symbolic of the New South - a South to be based on progressive agriculture and expanding industry." August 1866, Alabama Governor Robert M. Patton and Judge William Chilton presided over cornerstone laying ceremonies for The Chattahoochee Manufacturing Company in Langdale and The Alabama- Georgia Manufacturing Company in River View. The Langdale ceremony was in the morning, and after a noonday barbecue attended by some 2,000 people, a similar ceremony occurred in River View. The sites for both plants were grist mills before the war. Both mills were powered by water wheels turned by the Chattahoochee River and initially made osnaburgs, a type of coarse cloth. Later the mills converted to flat duck, a fabric in great demand on the frontier for tents, covered wagons and many other purposes., Reverse Side , LaFayette Lanier gained a family interest in the Alabama-Georgia mill by marrying Ada Alice Huguley, daughter of the company's president. In the Panic of 1873, both mills closed and Lanier and older brother Ward Crockett became interested in the Chattahoochee mill. In 1880, the mills reorganized as West Point Manufacturing Company. In the early 1890s, the River View mill was forced to close, but under LaFayette Lanier's leadership, reorganized and incorporated as the Galeton Cotton Mills, a subsidiary of West Point Manufacturing Company. Later, the mill secured its third charter from the State of Alabama, becoming the Riverdale Cotton Mill. In 1921, Riverdale became a division of West Point Manufacturing. Riverdale converted from duck to toweling in 1936. The River View mill is four stories high. Each story has a ground floor entrance, making the mill unique enough for a listing in "Ripley's Believe It or Not” in 1939. Because of the river boundary line, a portion of the mill is in the state of Georgia.