Elkin Manufacturing Company

On March 24, 1865, Union Gen. George Stoneman led 6,000 cavalrymen from Tennessee into southwestern Virginia and western North Carolina to disrupt the Confederate supply line by destroying sections of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, the North Carolina Railroad, and the Piedmont Railroad. He struck at Boone on March 28, headed into Virginia on April 2, and returned to North Carolina a week later; his raid ended at Asheville on April 26, the day Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston surrendered to Union Gen. William T. Sherman near Durham. At Elkin Manufacturing Company, a cotton mill where 60 women produced Confederate uniform cloth, manager Richard Ransome Gwyn lived in a Greek Revival house up the slope. On April 1, 1865, a 2,000-man detachment of Stoneman's cavalry raiders under Col. William J. Palmer rode into Elkin. The mill workers welcomed the Yankees, who seized 500 bales of cotton and flour, meat, honey, butter, molasses, tobacco, and chestnuts, and Palmer ordered three gristmills to grind meal for his men. Gwyn quartered the officers at his home. Local tradition held that a common bond of Freemasonry may explain why Palmer spared the mill, but it is more likely that he declined to destroy the factory because Gwyn was a cooperative and influential community leader; Palmer had written in an earlier instance that he tried to leave such gentlemen as far as possible unmolested so they could teach nobility by example to their communities. Stoneman, bivouacked on the south side of the high-water Yadkin River, signaled Palmer late in the day that the level was falling, and the command crossed the next morning using a ferryboat rope before the reunited cavalrymen continued on their road.

Elkin, North Carolina · United States