Textile manufacturing in Martinsville and Henry County grew from an early mill in the building now known as the Clocktower Building, which Rucker & Whitten Plug Tobacco built at the turn of the century for tobacco use before its conversion to Martinsville Cotton Mill in 1909. The area's textile success was driven largely by William L. Pannill and Robert L. Walker, who mentored others including Walker's son, Samuel Stanhope Walker. After studying at the North Carolina School of Textiles and working as a spinning room foreman at his father's mill, Samuel Walker saw the business sold after Robert Walker was killed in an accident involving the company safe. In 1928 Samuel Walker founded Virginia Underwear Corporation with William Pannill's help, producing women's and boy's underwear and children's sleepwear on Pannill Knitting Company property. Called on in 1941 to lead the struggling Bassett Knitting Corporation, Walker helped create Bassett-Walker Knitting Company, which later merged with his renamed Walker Knitting Company in 1964 as Bassett-Walker, Inc. Under later leadership including L. Dudley Walker, the company expanded through the 1960s and 1970s, added hundreds of thousands of square feet, employed more than 7,000 people, and by 1968 enjoyed strong sales of sweatshirts, jackets, knit slacks, and t-shirts. Sold to VF Corporation in 1984, the company ceased operation in 2002. For more than seven decades in the 20th century, Martinsville and Henry County were home to prominent textile manufacturers whose combined workforce at its height exceeded 20,000, helping transform the area from rugged farmland into a modern community with high employment and home ownership.