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MEMORIES OF WILLIAM C. HALL
This is a living document in that a person's memory of events may allow the information below to be updated or expanded over time. If updated, the revision number will change. This is revision 1, dated September 6, 1999.
By William C. Hall, Burlington, NC [photos]
My grandfather, William Thomas Hall, was born in 1853. He was the foreman on the Holt farm and would furnish the wagons pulled by horses and mules that were used by the Glencoe Mill to haul the cloth to the freight depot. On the return trip, they would bring back cotton and coal. They made two trips every day. The old Holt Farm is now Green Acres.
My father, Alfred Hall, worked in Glencoe for 53 years until it closed. He lived on the back street in the house used to make the movie "The Gardener's Son." Our family moved across the river to the first house on the same side of NC62 as Glencoe. I grew up there, but played in Glencoe all of my childhood.
The company store was the local hangout. Mill workers could put their purchases "on account." The charge slips were given to the office manager and the amount was deducted from the worker's pay. The mill paid them in cash. The village "post office" was located in the right front corner of the store. The mail slots were arranged alphabetically for each family. The only telephone in the area was in the store and mill workers could use it there. If some one needed a doctor, they had to go to the store and get the store clerk to make the call (doctors made house calls in those days...)
At Christmas, the mill owners would give all the worker's children a large bag of fruit, candy, and nuts. For poor kids of that day, who didn't get everything like they do now, that was a real treat!
The road into Glencoe was very crooked and made of dirt. It was straightened in the 1940s and paved in the 1950s.
The Carolina Mill dam was about 200 yards below the highway 62 bridge. There was another dam about a mile up the river from Glencoe where a power plant operated to make power for the Lakeside Mill near Burlington. There was an old rubber-tired truck with chain driven wheels that was used to bring cloth from Lakeside Mill to Glencoe for finishing.
Fort Snug was further up the river from the dam. It was a private club owned by the Holts. This is where Robert Holt entertained clients who came to buy cloth or sell raw goods to the company. There was a carport for buggies and a stable for horses. It was a large building with 10 to 15 rooms and a porch around the whole building. A spiral stairway inside led to a tower on top that had windows on all sides. The entire place was very elegant. [picture] Later, people were living in the building and it burned. The remains of the old power house dam are about 100 yards down river from where the house was. The site is now part of the golf course.
In the 1950s, the Glencoe Methodist Church was getting in bad shape. The wall facing the mill was bowed out and the members were not able to repair it. The members decided to reorganize and try to get help in building a new church. Land was found in the Green Acres area, and on February 12, 1961, all members of Glencoe Methodist Church became charter members of the new St. Luke's Methodist Church.