Article Nine Part 2:

GASTONIA: TEXTILE CENTER OF THE SOUTH 

        Soon after he left the management of Loray Mills in early 1904, George Gray, who began work as a child laborer 43 years earlier, accomplished the final dream of his life – that of building his own cotton mill. Along with J. H. Separk and C. J. Huss, the unschooled mechanical wizard incorporated Gray Manufacturing Company (1), the eighth textile mill established in Gastonia, on December 29, 1904 with a paid-in capital stock of $150,000. Gray, as controlling shareholder, was elected its first president and treasurer; L. L. Jenkins, president of First National Bank, vice president; and Joe Separk (2), Gray’s son-in-law, secretary. The first superintendent was Charles M. Dunn, who had been trained by Gray at Gastonia Cotton Manufacturing Co. 

        The 10,000-spindle mill and village, situated on 50 acres of land near Arlington Mills, was unique in two respects. First, it was designed exclusively as a combed yarn mill, whereas only part of Arlington’s production had been devoted to combed yarn. Second, it was to be powered by electricity. Both were firsts for Gaston County. Gray had been among the enlightened Southern mill men who realized that they were losing opportunity by confining their output to low-end trade yarns. He also envisioned that electricity would be an improvement in speed and efficiency over less reliable water and ore-eating steam power. The electricity for the Gray Mill, however, was a hybrid arrangement, being produced at the mill by a traditional steam-powered system fueled by coal. In other words, it was unconventional in that the electricity was not received through the connecting power transmission lines of a commercial provider such as Southern Power Company. It would be another year before such utility lines reached the county through James B. Duke’s aggressive “mill-a-mile” promotional concept targeted specifically toward the textile interests to bring inexpensive, dependable electric power to the Piedmont Carolinas. The Imperial Yarn Mills in Belmont in 1906 has the distinction of being the first mill in North Carolina to be powered by commercial electricity.

        All of the remarkable advancement brought by Gastonia’s first eight mills was only the beginning of its remarkable textile heritage. Equally important was the accompanying evolution of a unique socio-economic movement of far-reaching proportions that would extend across the county and throughout the Carolinas. Joining this evolving heritage in 1905 and 1906 were four other Gastonians, each destined to become part of the legend of the city’s industrial prominence in the formative years.

        The first of these was Arthur Mills Dixon, who returned to Gastonia in 1905 from the University of Georgia to join his father in the management of Trenton Cotton Mills. He began shaping an outstanding reputation for himself, which resulted in the building of Dixon Mills in 1919, executive positions with American Yarn & Processing Co. in Mount Holly, the presidency of almost every textile trade association in the United States and political leadership in the city and state. Druggist Frost Torrence also realized that the future of the region was tied to cotton manufacturing. He seized upon an opportunity in 1905 when he purchased an interest in Avon Mills and took over its management. In 1916 he sold Avon and purchased Ozark Mills.

        Merchant and former Gaston County Sheriff Charles Beauregard Armstrong (3), who organized and built 5,000-spindle Clara Yarn Mills in 1906, followed Dixon and Torrence. The fourth newcomer, Laban Forest Groves, a pragmatic Gastonia businessman, decided to try his hand at cotton manufacturing in 1907 when he built Flint Manufacturing Co. north of town, opening up another major section of the city to development. Not only was he a good merchandiser and manufacturer, but he also joined ranks with Ragan and Gray in building a national reputation for quality in the combed yarn field. Groves went a step further than other manufacturers in realizing the advantages of identifying his yarns with customers. He selected a trademark in the form of an Indian flint stone arrowhead, to give a distinctive identity to the Flint products.

Chain Mills and Independents

        By 1915, Gastonia had a population of nearly 10,000 residents, and again that number in the suburbs. It was home to 13 mills with 200,000 spindles in operation, an increase of almost five-fold in the fifteen years since 1900. There were 5,000 workers employed in the mills, and they supported a village life of many thousands more. As war descended over Europe in 1914, the American economy experienced a huge textile boom, which brought an unparalleled period of prosperity to Gastonia and Gaston County. New mills began to spring up throughout the county, and the older ones were expanding as fast as they could. Money was to be made in spinning and weaving cotton into textiles, and many thousands of people came to join in the abundance.

        The 1910s and 1920s brought a shift in the organizational pattern of many mills. While the earlier mills had been promoted and owned by small groups of individuals with eight or ten outside shareholders, some of the newer mill operators but together chain mills with 25 to 200 shareholders. It seemed everybody from the barber and grocer to the bank president was getting involved. It was Gastonia’s Golden Era.

 During this time three distinct operating groups formed in Gastonia, each aligned with and supported by capital from one of the two leading banks in the city. The business ventures, as well as the political ambitions of each group centered on the bank’s resources and influence.  The First National Bank’s affiliation was composed of Labe Jenkins, Lee Robinson, Joe Separk, Lander Gray and Tom Craig; and the Gray-Separk mills were thus allied in this camp. The Citizens National Bank’s affiliation included Albert Myers, Charles Armstrong, Wiley Rankin, Grady Rankin and Andrew Moore, and they supported the other two groups – Armstrong and Rankin.

        The Gray-Separk group traced its beginning as an operating consortium to 1912, when pioneer George Gray died. His eldest son, J. Lander Gray and his son-in-law, Joseph Henry Separk, took over management of Gray Manufacturing Co., which had been built seven years earlier. This group built or purchased seven additional mills between 1916 and 1923. Parkdale Mills, Inc. was built in 1916; Myrtle Mills, Inc. in 1918; Arlington Cotton Mills and Flint Manufacturing Co. were both acquired in 1918; Arkray Mills, Inc. built in 1920; and Arrow Mills, Inc. in Lincolnton purchased in 1920. At its height, this group operated about 140,000 spindles and employed approximately 2,500 workers.

         The multi-talented Charles B. Armstrong began putting together a chain of Gastonia-headquartered mills when he organized Armstrong Mills in 1912. Under his direction and that of his young lieutenant, Arthur K. Winget, the Armstrong group of mills became an amalgamation of fourteen yarn mills with a combined capacity of 145,000 spindles and 2,500 employees. Monarch Cotton Mills in Dallas was acquired in 1912 and Piedmont Spinning Mills in 1916. Seminole Cotton Mills and Mutual Cotton Mills were built in 1916 and Victory Yarn Mills and Winget Yarn Mills in 1919. In addition, several mills in Rock Hill, South Carolina were purchased between 1918 and 1921, as was High Shoals Cotton Mills at High Shoals in 1920. Theirs was a meteoric rise to a pinnacle of success, followed by an equally swift and dramatic fall.
         The third operating group located in Gastonia was that of the Rankin family. Although each mill was separately incorporated and owned, they were considered a cooperating group. Wiley T. Rankin, who gained his operating experience as manager of Ozark Mills from 1909 to 1916, built Osceola Mills in 1916 and Hanover Thread Mills in 1917 in an area north of town. He also purchased Mountain View Mills near Crowders Mountain in 1918. His three mills had a capacity of 23,136 spindles. His nephew, R. Grady Rankin in conjunction with his brothers, Henry, Lawrence and Pinkney, Jr., sons of Ozark’s founder, built Pinkney Mills in 1916, Rankin Mills in 1919 and Ridge Mills in 1919. Those three mills had a capacity of 25,862 spindles. 

 The chain mill concept did not by any means dominate textile activity in Gastonia or Gaston County. In addition, a number of highly successful and innovative independent unit mills headquartered in Gastonia were developed between 1915 and 1923 that were not controlled by the banks or any political faction. With a combined capacity of perhaps 200,000 spindles and 3,000 gainfully employed workers, they had a huge role all their own in the city and region’s economic and social composition. Foremost among them were Rex and Ranlo mills, Groves Mills, Inc., A. M. Smyre Manufacturing Co., Dixon Mills and Ragan Spinning Company.

 In an area east and slightly north of Gastonia near Spencer Mountain, two of these new mills began to rise on land that had been farmland. The rural setting became known as Ranlo, the “Ran” for John C. Rankin and the “lo” for W. Thomas Love who promoted the Gastonia-headquartered mills. The first, Rex Spinning Company was incorporated June 12, 1915, and the second, Ranlo Manufacturing Co., on November 8, 1916.

 North of Gastonia, near the Flint mill, rose another textile plant that would dominate and characterize the area. Laban F. Groves, who had promoted Flint ten years earlier, along with his eldest son, Henry H. Groves, promoted a new combed yarn mill. Groves Mills, Inc. (4), was chartered April 21, 1916 with a capital stock of $140,000. Soon the founder’s youngest son, Earl E. Groves, joined the organization as treasurer. This well-run family firm expanded into a three-plant network, and the name was changed to Groves Thread Company on June 21, 1931 to reflect their specialized segment of the thread market. This section of Gastonia with its two connecting mill villages became known as Flint-Groves.

         The Smyres became one of the last Gastonia families to enter the mill-building race, but their enterprise became among the best known. On January 21, 1917 pioneer Gastonia merchant A. M. Smyre, in conjunction with his two sons-in-law, David M. Jones and J. Lee Robinson, and his only son, Fred L. Smyre (5), organized A. M. Smyre Manufacturing Co. In an area four miles east of the city along both the Southern and Piedmont & Northern rail lines, the village of Smyre arose. Through the years the company expanded into three plants. In 1981 the mills were sold to Carolina Mills, Inc. of Maiden, North Carolina.

 Ruby Cotton Mills was the next spinning plant to be built in Gastonia. It rose in 1919 on South Marietta Street along the C&NW Railroad, a half-mile south of the Osceola and Seminole mills. Its announcement was followed within weeks by Dixon Mills, Inc., located almost adjacent to Ruby, which was chartered May 6, 1919 with a capital of $300,000. Its promoters were Arthur M. Dixon, an industry leader of unusual accomplishments and operating head of Gastonia’s Trenton Cotton Mills, and his brother, Kay Dixon, a Gastonia banker. The firm operated successfully until its sale to American & Efird Mills in 1946 and in 1957 to U. S. Rubber Co.

        Gastonia banker Albert G. Myers founded Myers Mills, Inc., located on lower York Road a mile south of the Victory mill, June 21, 1919. It was his initial entrance into textiles, which resulted in him heading a group of pre-Depression cotton mills before they were folded into Textiles-Incorporated in 1931. Separately, Priscilla Spinning Company, of which Charles D. Gray was a major principal, became the third factory erected in the developing area known as Ranlo. Like the other plants there, Gastonia interests managed it. Despite its rather troubled beginning, it eventually resulted in a sizable factory and village that gave energy to the area, before it, too, folded into Depression-era Textiles-Incorporated in 1931. 

        The last independent textile mill to be built in Gaston County for the next fifty years was Ragan Spinning Company (6} in 1923. This model combed yarn mill was the work of one of Gastonia’s first and most prolific textile pioneers, 76-year-old George Washington Ragan, and his 24-year-old son, Caldwell Ragan (7). Its location on 113 acres of land bordering the Southern Railway near Bessemer City was the furthest west of any of the Gastonia mills – so far in fact that Duke Power Company had to specially extend its utility lines to accommodate the undertaking. It opened up a completely new area that, despite being quite a distance from Gastonia, was gerrymandered into the city limits some years later for its obvious tax-base advantages. In 1950, the 31,000-spindle plant was sold to J. P. Stevens & Co., Inc. of New York, the nation’s second
largest textile conglomerate.

        Gaston County’s whirlwind era of mill building was over by 1923, but its mixture of benefits and difficulties had only begun, assuring Gastonia and Gaston County’s unique place in history. The building of Ragan Spinning Company in 1923, along with a couple other plant expansions, advanced the county, with its 103 mills and 1,500,000 producing spindles, into first place nationally in both the total number of textile mills in operation and the number of spindles devoted to combed yarn production. The shift of this industry south, an industry that had started America’s Industrial Revolution at Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1790, was now a given fact. Gaston County became the “Combed Yarn Center of America” and
Gastonia’s proud new motto became “City of Spindles”. [INDEX]

Article Twelve (In 3 Parts): 

Part One: Gastonia Merchants Build a City

         Building upon a commercial foundation established by Gastonia’s pioneer merchants in the 1870s and 1880s, other entrepreneurs came to place their stamps upon the flourishing railroad and cotton mill town by the early 1900s and beyond. The old general store concept of merchandising, where small establishments carried lines of goods ranging from food, produce, clothing and accessories to farm supplies, fertilizers and coffins, was becoming obsolete. Gastonians soon demanded a wider variety of goods and services. In their place came stores that specialized in particular lines of business, thus being able to provide wider selections, higher quality and better service. Like most transitions, the change occurred over time. Nonetheless, this advance assured that Gastonia would remain the principal market town in the region west of Charlotte.

         J. Polk Glenn was one of the first to fill this need, when he came from a business in Lowell in the early 1880s to open a fish and oyster emporium. He also had a meat market that supplied the community with the best quality of beef, lamb and pork, and it operated until his death in 1890.  J. Blake Boyd and W. Neill Davis filled the void, and each operated specialty meat markets in the town for the next 25 years.

        These purveyors of fine food were followed in 1899 by Robert C. McLean, who opened the soon-to-be well known grocery store on the south side of the first block of West Main Street. His brother, Leon T. McLean, later joined him and the firm became McLean Brothers. William H. Poole, a native of Haywood County, also came in 1899, opening a grocery market near the Modena Cotton Mills. In 1910 the business moved to the northeast corner of Main and Marietta streets, operating as Poole’s Grocery Store until 1930. Both McLean’s and Poole’s delivered. Their Horse-drawn wagons would go out all through the day, returning from their last delivery late in the afternoon or early evening. Every family ate three meals a day at home, so residents’ food and produce requirements were a necessary and lucrative business.

 Other popular retail grocers included J. R. Baber, J. L. Carson, City Grocery, W. H. Jenkins, S. Mack Pearson, Will F. Pearson and E. P. Rankin. The large wholesale grocers were Albion Grocery Co. (W. J. Clifford and J. O. Rankin), J. A. Glenn & Co. and A. R. Rankin & Co. Their trade covered a wide region of several adjoining counties.
         The company store at Gastonia Cotton Manufacturing Co. evolved into Gray & Love when it moved to the uptown business district in the late 1890s. Located on the south side of the second block of West Main, it became one of the largest retail establishments in the city – the town’s first true department store, with sections for general merchandise, clothing, accessories and food. J. F. Thomson was recruited from Spartanburg County, S. C. to manage it. In 1902 the firm became John F. Love & Co. (1) John Love, its principal owner, became embroiled in financial difficulties involving his promotion of Loray Mills in 1900-1902, and by 1910 the store was bankrupt. Former associates and new owners took over the various departments and ran them independently. 

        Gastonia’s first Jewish resident was David Lebovitz, an immigrant from Russian-controlled Lithuania who came to America in 1889, landing at Baltimore unable to speak a word of English. In 1892 the young man relocated to Gastonia where he set up a small dry goods store. The Hebrew immigrant began to prosper and grow materially with his adopted city. Operating first as D. Libovitz, in later years his business became known as Lebo’s Department Store. It would be another ten years before the next Jewish resident, Harry Schneider, arrived and set up a haberdashery that became a popular institution on Main Street. He operated as H. Schneider Co., but later called his business the French Shoppe.

        During these formative years, another budding entrepreneur found his way to uptown Gastonia. James Lee Robinson arrived from his family’s farm in the Pleasant Ridge section in 1892 to join Captain J. Q. Holland in his clothing store as a junior partner. In 1899, after gaining valuable experience in merchandising, he and his brother, Samuel Alexander Robinson, founded Robinson Brothers, a shoe and gentlemen’s furnishings store in a handsome new two-story brick building on the south side of the first block of West Main (2). Their business became one of the most popular in early Gastonia and the building from which they operated stands to this day as a historic site. 

        Pioneer John Theodore Spencer was joined in the late 1890s by his oldest son, Charles Warsaw Spencer, who, like his father, became well known as a building contractor in Gastonia’s growth from a town to a city. A younger son, Shuford Elmer Spencer, joined them in the early 1900s. When Elmer and another brother, George Rush Spencer, bought Page Lumber Company in 1910, the business became known as Spencer Lumber Company. Elmer’s son, William T. Spencer, joined them in the late 1920s and operated this mainstay Gastonia business until the firm was closed in the mid-1970s. Rufus M. Johnston organized its principal competitor, City Lumber Company, in 1920, and it, too, became an important manufacturer and supplier of building materials.

         In 1899, Robert Benjamin Babington, a Lincoln County native and formerly telegraph operator for the Seaboard Railroad in Mount Holly, purchased the 64-subscriber Gastonia Telephone Company plant on South Marietta Street, which had been started in 1896 by Charles B. Armstrong with 31 subscribers. Over the next 35 years, this inquisitive experimenter of modern communication built the company’s infrastructure to provide improved and expanded telephone service to thousands of Gaston County customers. About 1905, it became Piedmont Telephone & Telegraph Co. with W. T. Love as president and Babington as general manager, and finally it was sold to and became part of the Southern Bell Telephone Co. network in the late 1930s.

        The arrival of the twentieth century saw many progressive changes in Gastonia. The first city bond election was held on August 15, 1899, and it was hailed as the biggest day in its history. The referendum called for $15,000 for electric lights and $50,000 for water and sewer. The election carried by nearly 70 percent of the electorate, and the town of 4,610 residents began to become a city. Harry Rutter came from Pennsylvania that same year to help plan and lay the town’s first electric utility lines to households and businesses. This hard-working Northerner remained in Gastonia to become its Superintendent of Public Works and City Engineer, and in later years served as Gastonia’s City Manager. Soon there were to be paved streets and sidewalks, and already efforts were under way to move the county seat to Gastonia.

        Among the names most seen on Gastonia business houses in the 1900s and 1910s was the Belk chain of stores on the north side of the first block of West Main Street. It opened as Kindley-Belk Bros. Co. on February 25, 1901, the sixth store in the rapidly growing Charlotte chain of department stores. The “Cheapest Store on Earth” became its motto, and W. E. Kindley, who had married the daughter of a pioneer Gastonia dentist, first managed it. This arrangement did not work out, and in 1904 Kindley abruptly withdrew from the firm and it became John M. Belk Co. (3) In 1910 James Houston Matthews, a native of Mecklenburg County, was sent from Charlotte to take charge of the Gastonia store. He became a partner with the Belk brothers, and the name was changed to Matthews-Belk Co. in 1919 to reflect this satisfactory arrangement. Matthews and his family became valued additions to the city, and through his tireless management, the firm quickly became the largest retail establishment in Gaston County. It retains that position today under the management of his son, B. Frank Matthews II, and grandson, Eugene Matthews.

        The Efird Company was another expanding Charlotte chain of department stores that located in Gastonia in 1910 on West Main Street adjacent to Belks. Founded in 1901 by Hugh Martin Efird, he was joined in 1907 by his brothers Joseph B. Efird and Paul H. Efird, the latter opening and managing the Gastonia store. In 1909, upon the death of H. M. Efird, the firm became J. B. Efird & Co. and operated successfully throughout the Carolinas until 1970, when it was purchased by Belk and absorbed into their multi-state organization of 300 stores. 

        Swan-Slater Co., another Charlotte business, opened in Gastonia in 1909 on the south side of West Main Street, providing head-to-toe outfitting for men and boys. M. Fred Kirby, of Mecklenburg County, came as manager of the Gastonia store. A few years later, he and William Y. “Will” Warren bought the store and operated under the name Kirby-Warren Co.

         Van Sleen Jewelry Store, long a prominent fixture in the uptown business district, opened in a building on the south side of the first block of West Main in 1910. Its proprietor, Henry M. Van Sleen, a native of Holland, came to Gastonia from Moultrie, Georgia. In addition to his well-respected jewelry business, he was also a trained optometrist, Gastonia’s first. Torrence-Morris was another early Gastonia jewelry emporium, and was owned and operated by James S. Torrence, Ben T. Morris and William B. Morris, with J. Sidney Winget as clerk and future partner. Both stores provided the best in fine jewelry, silverware and professional optical service to Gaston’s discerning citizens for over 40 years.

        Furniture stores represented another important category of business that anchored the Main Street business district. One of the first to see an opportunity in furnishing the many homes being built in the town was Charles B. Armstrong in the late 1890s. He returned from a short career of peddling goods in Florida to open Armstrong Furniture Co. on Main Street in partnership with Wiley T. Rankin. This was followed in the early 1900s by Gastonia Furniture Co. (owned by Rufus M. Johnston), E. H. Little Furniture Co. and Williams Furniture Co. (owned by John H. Williams and Caleb M. Nolen).  
        In 1907, Edward J. Rankin purchased Little Furniture Co. and changed its name to Rankin Furniture Co. Then, upon his purchase of Armstrong Furniture Co. in 1912, the name became Rankin-Armstrong, a name that would play a visible role in Gastonia retailing for 75 years. Meanwhile, in 1916, Gastonia Furniture Co. on West Main came under the management and ownership of Edwin N. Hahn and Thomas E. Summerrow. In 1916 Richard H. Jacobs came to Gastonia from Greenville, S. C., and established a furniture store. Joe S. Jacobs joined him in 1923, and the partnership soon operated a building on the northeast corner of Franklin Avenue and Oakland Street. It later operated under the name Jacobs-Beal, when Jacob’s son-in-law, Giles D. Beal, was admitted as a partner. [INDEX]

Article Twelve (In 3 Parts): 

Part Three: Gastonia Merchants Build a City

        When automobiles began appearing in numbers, better roads were required. Twenty-six-year-old Neal Hawkins, a Gaston native, was one of the first to enter this lineof work about 1915, using horses and mules to pull his grading equipment for building and improving Gastonia’s streets. Sensing greater potential, he soon purchased mechanical equipment and expanded into engineering, grading and paving highways across North and South Carolina for five decades. In the 1930s and 1940s, this Gastonia entrepreneur also operated a fleet of tanker trucks for hauling gasoline and fuel oil in the southeastern United States.

        Automobiles were no longer a luxury. They had become a necessity in the modern America of the 1920s. Locally, David W. “Big Dave” Smith, formerly a salesman at Parker-King, started Smith Chevrolet Co., the successor to Tom Craig’s Gastonia Chevrolet Co., which had been one of the first automobile dealerships here. Parker-King was the first Ford dealer, and Wilson-Lancaster had the first Buick agency. Henry M. Rankin brought the Chrysler dealership to Gastonia in the early days, J. F. McArver had the Studebaker dealership and W. Hugh Wray the Hudson-Essex franchise. J. Carl Loughridge and R. Scott Loughridge succeeded to the Buick dealership in the 1930s and ran it for thirty years. Cadillacs, Packards and Pierce Arrows still had to be purchased in Charlotte, Winston-Salem or some other large city with a franchise.

        Attractive residential developments began expanding out from the uptown district to outlying areas, those with an essentially rural, casual lifestyle. C. Clyde Armstrong, who ran the family textile interests, his brother, W. Ralph Armstrong, and their brother-in-law, William L. Wetzell, were in charge of Armstrong Land & Investment Co. They were erecting apartments in the city and, by the early 1920s, had started developing Armstrong Park, an exclusive residential development on their extensive land east of the city. Soon other developers put together the equally upscale Forest Hills, Brookwood and Hillcrest subdivisions south of the city, as well as Fairmont Park to the east.

        In 1916 Richard H. Jacobs came to Gastonia from Greenville, South Carolina, to establish a retail furniture business. In 1923 his son, Joe S. Jacobs, who afterward left to operate a chain of laundries in North and South Carolina, joined him. Later it came under the management of the founder’s son-in-law, Giles D. Beal, and the name was changed to Jacobs-Beal Co. Located on the northeast corner of Franklin and Oakland, it was a familiar part of Gastonia’s business district for fifty years. It was also at this time that William Carl Rustin came as a young man from Charleston, South Carolina to open Rustin-Johnson Furniture Store on South Street and then, later, his well-known Rustin Furniture Co. on the north side of the second block of West Main near York Street. Another furniture retailer was Thomas E. Summerrow, formerly with Gastonia Furniture Co., who started Summerrow Furniture Co. in the early 1930s.

        In the mid-1920s Walter P. Moore, Ralph A. Dickson and Samuel M. Stewart established Moore & Stewart Co., for many years a visible wholesale distributor of automotive supplies on the south side of East Franklin Avenue near Marietta (1). Henry Graydon Horne was yet another who found opportunity in the “City of Spindles”, coming from the eastern part of the state to open Horne’s Automotive Store, a fixture on East Main Avenue for 70 years.

        J. Elam Simpson was Gastonia’s energetic movie theater pioneer in the 1920s and 1930s and did a thriving business bringing the best of Hollywood to Gastonia. His theaters at one time included the Ideal (later called the Temple) in the middle of the south side of the first block of West Main, and in the Webb on the east side of South Street near the intersection of Franklin, the city’s two most popular theaters. It was said he could promote the “bang-bang-shoot-um-up” westerns of Gene Autry, Tom Mix and Roy Rogers better than any competitor. Other early theaters included the State on the south side of the second block of West Main; the Lyric east of the Temple on the south side of the first block of West Main; the Carolinian on the north side of the first block of West Main where Belk’s shoe department was later housed; and the nearby Canvas. In my day, the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Temple, Lyric and State cost nine cents and the Webb twelve cents. My quarter allowance allowed me to go to the picture show (that’s what theaters were called then), get a Coca-Cola and a box of popcorn, and still have a little left over to spend at the dime store or Carson’s Sporting Goods store afterward.

        Kennedy’s, Adams’ and Torrence’s drugstores continued to dominate that line of business in uptown Gastonia in the 1930s. Nevertheless, several new ones appeared. Paul G. Caldwell purchased Loray Drug Store in 1919, and the following year founded Caldwell’s Drug Store. Later, the Brown family acquired the company and made it into one of the city’s most popular businesses, eventually purchasing a location on South Chestnut Street, where the store remained until 2000. Norman Morrow had Morrow’s Drug Store, and Fred Moss and his family operated Moss Drug Store for many years. Of all the older firms, only Smith Drugs still operates, and its business is conducted from its original location at 121 West Main Avenue, where it began in 1933 as an adjunct of the old Sweetland Confectionary business. The drugstores of today are mostly operated by national chains. They are extremely efficient but lack the personality and ambiance of the old-time establishments nostalgically remembered by older generations.

        The grocery stores were becoming quite numerous. Most of them were still small independent stores owned by the local proprietor. Convenience was to become the trend with the stores located near the consumer, as they do today. The big chains were just beginning to come to Gastonia and were represented by the Great A & P Tea Co. and Piggly Wiggly, each with two convenient locations on Main Avenue. The largest food emporium in the city during the 1920s and 1930s was that of the A & P on the south side of East Main near the Methodist church in one of G. W. Ragan’s newly renovated buildings. Plato P. Pearson operated his family grocery business on West Airline, and Ennis N. Jackson came from Clover, South Carolina to open Jackson’s Pure Food Service on East Main. McLean Bros. and Poole’s were still in business, and likable Jesse L. Hart was head meat man at the A & P.

        Prominent among the many additions to Gastonia business circles during this growth period were other men who made particularly outstanding contributions to the city’s advancement. In 1920 Allen Harold Sims (1899-1987) came to Gastonia from Cramerton, where he had worked as bookkeeper for Cramerton Mills, to begin a job in the accounting department at Citizens National Bank. Born in Franklin, North Carolina the son of a Baptist minister, this talented man received rapid promotion, and in time worked his way to the highest echelons of the bank. Upon the retirement of Albert Myers in the mid-1950s, Sims was considered the leading financial executive in the county for the next 25 years. In his retirement he became involved in numerous philanthropic activities that were beneficial to Gaston County.

        Nationally-known R. S. Dickson & Co., stockbrokers and investment bankers had its beginning in Gastonia in 1920, when it rented an office on West Main Avenue from G. W. Ragan. Its founder, Rush S. Dickson, a Gaffney, South Carolina native, was buying and selling cotton mill stocks during the turbulent 1920s and quickly discovered that prices could go down as well as up. He learned his lesson well by the time of the 1929 stock market crash and had positioned himself to be able to purchase sound securities cheaply that others were forced to sell. In the mid-1930s he moved the firm to Charlotte, where it became a major investment banking power by the 1950s.

        Two energetic young men, Phillip P. Jackson and Allen H. Smith, started a stockbrokerage business in the 1930s under the name Jackson & Smith. It survived the Great Depression and continues today as Jackson & Smith Investment Securities, LLC on West Main Avenue under the management of one of the founder’s sons, David Allen Smith. It is the city’s only locally owned securities firm.

        Thomas Craig Watson, who was raised in Gastonia by his uncle and aunt, Colonel and Mrs. T. L. Craig, founded Watson Insurance Co., one of the city’s leading insurance agencies in the late 1930s. Today, under the management of his son Tom Watson, Jr., it is the largest independent fire and casualty agency in the county. Another prominent insurance man, James Thomas Comer, came to Gastonia in 1939 as an agent for Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Co. He became a pioneer in developing pension plans for area textile mills and soon founded his own company, J. T. Comer & Associates to continue this work. His son succeeded in the management of the firm until it was sold in 1986 to Dun & Bradstreet Pension Services. J. Stacy Boyce, J. Young Todd, Robert O. Crawford, Robert A. Gordon, Robin B. Babington, George A. Jenkins and Ernest Q. Petry were also leading insurance men in this period.

        Stanly County native Hoyle T. Efird came to Gastonia in 1932 as a tax collector for the state. He decided to make it his home, soon left the Department of Revenue and started Gastonia United Oil Co., a fuel oil distributorship. It continues in business today under the management of his son Tom D. Efird and his grandson Tim Efird. During the late 1940s, Hoyle Efird was elected Gaston County sheriff and served until the mid-1950s.

        Another oil dealer, Forest C. Roberts, came to Gastonia in 1935 and opened Acme Petroleum & Fuel Co., which also continues in business today. Beginning in 1936, they also operated Roberts Service Station on the popular southeast corner of West Franklin Avenue and South York Street, a location that had been the site of the Victorian home of cotton mill owner G. W. Ragan since 1896. Independently, Lawrence S. Rankin opened Rankin Oil Co., the Sinclair Refining Co. dealership in the 1930s. It also operated a well-known uptown Sinclair service station on the southeast corner of West Main Avenue and South York Street, another Ragan-owned property. Today the petroleum dealer is known as L. S. Rankin & Sons and is under the management of a grandson.

        Robert L. Lewis and L. Abernethy Wolfe owned and operated the well-patronized and long-remembered Sunrise Dairy on West Franklin Avenue, and the Rhyne family — Malcolm Albertus Rhyne and his sons Fred S. and Dane S. — continued to manage M. A. Rhyne & Son Dairy on New Hope Road, where Eastridge Shopping Center is now located. Older generations remembers the early morning back-door deliveries of milk and cream in real returnable glass bottles, butter, cottage cheese and other dairy products. The milk was not homogenized back then, and the pale yellow cream rose to the top where it occupied the upper few inches of the bottle. One could use the cream directly from the top, but most often they would just shake the bottle so the milk would be richer in taste.

        Grocers Baking Co., operating under the trade name Holsum bread, was located on West Airline. It had both a wholesale and retail trade. From the 1930s through the 1960s it was owned and operated by Walter J. Carroll and William H. Kelley. Many remember the wonderful, rich aroma of freshly baked bread that escaped from the bakery’s opened windows and could be smelled and savored for blocks around. 

        In 1927 J. Flay Bess, long associated with the old Southern Cotton Oil Company’s Gastonia plant, founded J. F. Bess & Co., the wholesale manufacturer of flour, feed, hay and grain at its extensive plant on East Main Avenue.

        John W. and Arthur E. Culp owned and operated Standard Hardware, the city’s largest at that time, and Charles M. Boyd had Gastonia Hardware, both among the most familiar businesses in the county. Maurice H. Silverstein had moved to Gastonia and started a successful mercantile business in one of the newer Ragan buildings on the northeast corner of Main and Marietta. Leon I. Schneider, son of Lithuanian immigrant Harry Schneider, started a clothing store on West Main in the 1920s. It was popular with Gastonians for fifty years. In 1955 he was elected the city’s first Jewish mayor. In 1937 Morris Levinson opened Morris Jewelry in the former Torrence Drugstore building on the popular southwest corner of Main and South. He and Sydney Kosch soon became partners. It has remained a fixture in Gastonia for over 73 years and is operated today by Kosch's family from a location at 1301 East Franklin Boulevard. 

         Warren Y. Gardner, a nephew of clothier Will Gardner, had taken over his uncle’s Kirby-Warren haberdashery in the late 1920s, with M. Fred Kirby, Jr. as his partner. Located at 203 West Main Avenue, it became known as the Young Men’s Shop, and later, after Warren’s purchase of Kirby’s interest, simply Warren Gardner’s. The friendly Clinton P. Rankin joined him in the 1940s as head salesman. This popular purveyor of men’s fine clothing was operated by Warren Gardner and later his son, Warren, Jr., for fifty years from its original uptown location. George L. Rawlings, a partner with J. Sid Winget in Winget Jewelry Store in the 1930s, had joined with Floyd C. Todd in the 1940s in Rawlings-Todd, a popular dealer in electrical appliances for the home. Another highly regarded retailer during this era was Howard P. Whisnant, a York County native who came to Gastonia in 1931 as owner of Howard Whisnant Furniture Co. and Whisnant-Williams Furniture Co.
        As the 1920s began, Arthur M. Spencer purchased Miss Lillian Atkins’ interest in the old Spencer-Atkins Book Co. (formerly Atkins-Baber) at 223 West Main Avenue and started Spencer-Rhyne Co., sellers of books, stationery and office supplies. Later, his son, Arthur Spencer, Jr, joined him in management. In the 1930s, Oscar G. Penegar arrived from Union County and founded O. G. Penegar Co. on West Franklin near South Street, to sell and service all types of office supplies. In the 1950s, Penegar was joined in the management of the well-known business by his two sons, Oscar Penegar, Jr. and Richard M. Penegar. Both firms dominated their field in the county for many decades. [INDEX]