THE STATE
A Weekly Survey of North Carolina
Enter** u eecond «U.« natter. Jane 1, 1033. at llio Po»to(4r» el lUleich. North
Carolina, nndrr th» Att of March 3. 1BV0.
Vol. VII. No. 5 July 1, 1939
The Cones of
Greensboro
Who» you have road the story of
their uetivif ievs in this State, we
believe you will agree whole¬
heartedly with the* last para¬
graph of Mr. Lawrence's article.
By
К.
C. LAWRENCE
В
Hi people have come cut of Guil¬
ford and have migrated elsewhere:
notably Dolly Madison, wife of
President Madison, most charming
и
lid gracious of all hostesses "f the
White House; nml Uncle Joe Cannon,
Car of the National House of Rep¬
resentative*, who seemed not much
interested in the land of his nativity.
On the other hand some big people
have eomo t" Guilford, such ns Rev¬
erend David Caldwell, whoso log
cabin constituted the foremost educa¬
tional institution in the State, and
where, along with preachers, doctors
and lawyers, five Carolina Governors
were educated. Then there came to
Greensboro from Virginia. Julian
Price who built the Jefferson Standard
and other enduring structures around
Greensboro. And there
саше
also the
Cones.
Came Here in 1845
liermiiii Gone emigrated to America
from Itavaria in 1845. and that Ger¬
man State never did t 'arolina as fine
n service as on the day a passport was
issued in bis inline, lie first settled
in Virginia, then to Jonesboro, Ten¬
nessee, where
Мол
II. and Ceasar.
and other of his thirteen children were
horn. He was in the retail grocery
business there until nfter the Civil
War. when he moved to Baltimore and
founded the wholesale gro
business
of Herman Cone and Son*.
1 1 is older son*, including Moses II.
and Ceasar. travelled through the
South taking orders for groceries. It
was during the period of reconstruc¬
tion when there were no centres of
distribution in the South and little
money. Sometimes it was necessary to
resort to barter. While they were en¬
gaged in travelling for their grocery
business, the Gone sons came in con¬
tact with various owner* of certain
small cotton mills in the Piedmont
Section, such a« Haynes at Cliffside.
Holt of Alamance, Odell at Concord,
and >o on. These small mills usually
ran “company stores” and as cash was
scarce sometimes the Gone* took the
cotton yarn or cloth and sent back
groceries in exchange.
Getting Into the Cotton Business
These were the condition* which in¬
duced Moses II. Gone and bis brother
Ge« *iir I” induce various -mall cotton
mill owners to make contracts with
l hem to distribute their product in the
northern and eastern markets. The
grocery business was therefore din-
Herman Cone, Sr., who came to this
country from Bavaria in 1845.
solve- 1 in 1890, ami the Com- Kxport
and Commission Company wn- organ-
i/.od, a selling agency with main
offices in N'ew York City. This agency
rapidly expanded and soon acted as
sales agents for n large majority of
the Southern mills; in fact all of them
with blit few exceptions.
Governor John M. Mon-bead not
only built our system of internal im¬
provements for the State but lie pio¬
neered in the field of cotton manufac¬
ture. It was at Greensboro that Kdwin
M. Holt of Alamance first saw a
small steam cotton mill (the few small
mills nt that time being usually oper¬
ated by water powoi) and this in¬
spired him to build the fir-t of the
Holt mills on Ilaw River. Close by,
Fries of Winston pioneered not only
in textiles but in power, and he built
the first power plant on the Yadkin
River. Not far from Green- boro. J. M.
Odell laid at Concord the foundation
for what is now tin- empire of the
Cannons.
Tin- Cones came to Greensboro, for
it was then, as now, the (into City,
having seven lines of rail linking it
in every direction with the outside
world, and here the Gone Brothers
began the manufacture of textile-
upon a very uiodi‘4 scale, in a small
mill of 210 lotnn- located on n traet of
laud then far out in the country, bill
now well within the city limit- of
Green-boro. In I
'!*Л
Mose- II. and
Ceasin' Gone decided upon their first
