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Collection: John A. HUSS Collection
1860-1905
Gaston, Lincoln, and Mitchell counties (N.C.)
Physical Description: 185 items (bills and receipts, tax receipts, accounts,
and printed tradesmen's circulars)
Acquisition: Gift, Miss Charlie Russ, Gastonia, N.C., 1943
Description: These manuscripts are from the lives of John A. Huss (1831-1903)
and his son, Clifford Judson Huss (1875-1932), grandfather and father
respectively of the donor. The papers are fragmentary and random represen¬
tatives of the family's business life while resident in Lincoln (to mid-
1862), Mitchell (1862-1869), and Gaston (1884-1905) counties, N.C., and in
Notasulga, Macon County, Alabama (1869-1884).
«
For the most part the materials date from Huss' stay in Mitchell and
Gaston counties. A handful of bills and receipts are related to a general
store at Lincolnton that he operated in conjunction with "Eagle Mills", a
flouring mill with two sets of stones. They include a listing of 1860
purchases for the Eagle Mills store from various merchants, primarily in
Charleston, S.C. (though some goods were purchased at Charlotte, Lincolnton,
and Shelby, N.C.), and three invoices for bonnets, men's ready-made clothing,
and boots purchased from firms in Baltimore in 1861. Huss might or might not
have had a silent partner in these Lincolnton operations in the person of
one of the owners of the Lincolnton Cotton Mill — Lysander Doolittle Childs
(1813-1879). Certain it is that after the local cotton mill was destroyed
by fire in late June 1862, and Childs had left Lincolnton for Columbia, S.C.,
where he and two partners purchased the Saluda Cotton Factory in mid-October,
Huss simultaneously left, also, and moved to Childsville, Mitchell County.
Here he continued operating a flouring mill and a general store, as well as
attending to some of Childs' interests in Mitchell County.
Huss remained at Childsville throughout the Civil War. In addition to
a few documents relating to the affairs of ;Childs , the collection includes six
receipts dated in August and September 1864 for foodstuffs impressed for
use of the 68th N.C. Regiment of Volunteers while stationed In Mitchell
County to repulse raids in the area by federal forces under command of
Colonel George W. Kirk. It also includes nine receipts for taxes paid by
