Raw Cut - Issue No. 004

Start with the name. Saxapahaw. It belongs to the Sissipahaw people, the Algonquian-speaking nation who lived along this bend of the Haw River long before anyone thought to dam it. The name stayed. The people were displaced. That story is told across the street from the mill, in a tiny schoolhouse built in 1929 to educate the children of mill workers. It ran until 1949. Now it's a museum. A small, careful, now two-room building, that holds the memory of a community that grew up around cotton and yarn, and the people who made both.

The mill itself starts in 1844, when John Newlin and his sons erected a one-story brick building on the riverbank. Four years later they built a wooden dam, harnessing the Haw's current to power the belt-driven shafts that spun cotton into yarn. It worked well enough that by 1859 they'd added two more stories and moved into weaving and dyeing. On heavy production weeks, the river ran colors - blue, gray, sometimes red - from whatever was in the dye house. During the Civil War, Newlin and Sons supplied yarn and cloth to the North Carolina Confederate Army. Workers lived in company houses just outside the gates, built by the mill for the people the mill needed. The town organized itself around the spindles. That's how mill towns worked.

The mill changed hands over the years, as mills did. By the early 1920s it had gone into bankruptcy and sat empty for three years. Brick walls standing, water still running past, nobody inside.

In 1927, B. Everett Jordan, a textile man who'd worked his way up from floor sweeper to plant superintendent, co-founded the Sellers Manufacturing Company with his uncle Charles V. Sellers and took the Saxapahaw property over. He arrived with his wife Katherine and did more than run a successful operation, though he did that too. He built a community center. Supported the local schools and churches. The mill shifted to high-end combed yarns and prospered. Jordan's reputation grew alongside it, eventually launching him to the United States Senate in 1958, where he served North Carolina until 1973. His sons took over for a few years when he left for Washington, but then sold to Dixie Yarns in 1978. A tornado closed it down in 1994.

In 1995, Mac Jordan (B. Everett's grandson) convinced his father John to buy the property back from Dixie Yarns for $385,000. John hadn’t fully let go anyway. He’d held onto the mill houses when the family sold the operation in the 1970s, still collecting rent, still part of the town. Bringing the mill back made sense.

What's there now: The spinning mill has been converted into apartments and condos. The old dye house is where the life is. The General Store, a gourmet cafe sourcing locally grown food, blended with the charm of a high-end, local convenience store. A whole-animal butcher sourcing from farms within five miles, making charcuterie in-house. The Haw River Ballroom, a three-level music venue. A brewery. A coffee shop. A Saturday farmers market through the summer. The company houses are still standing, and still lived in, a short walk from where the spindles used to run.

I walked through on a Sunday, looking around the old schoolhouse that is now the museum. The director happened to be there, heard us talking about why I'd made the drive, and, in spite of being closed, invited us in. She spent the next hour walking us through the history of the mill, the town, and the people who built both.

No confirmed documentation connects Saxapahaw's cotton directly to Cone Mills' White Oak operation in Greensboro. But the geography makes the case. This river. This cotton. This regional supply chain. The same textile economy that turned NC into the fabric of American workwear ran through mills exactly like this one.

I went because this is what Raleigh Denim is built on. Knowing where things came from, and caring that some of it is still standing. Saxapahaw is still standing.

B. Everett Jordan would probably recognize it.

Two weeks in. The Fader is on a farm, worn most days, no washing, no exceptions on that front. The Rookie is still unhappy about the no-wash rule, but he’s making adjustments. He's also unhappy that the tapered fit won't clear his work boots, which means he has to change out of The Fader on days that require serious footwear. He skips them entirely on fertilizing days. Even natural fertilizer has opinions about raw denim. The pockets are too shallow and pulling wrong. He's already talking to the jeansmiths at Raleigh Denim about getting the bags extended. Two weeks in and the list is the same.

Here's this week’s dispatch.