When three men started a cotton mill in 1899, it’s doubtful they had any idea the impact the mill and its village would have on the history of Wake County and Wake Forest.
An early history of the Glen Royall Cotton Mill
•The mill was founded by three Wake Forest College graduates, Robert E. Royall, Thomas E. Holding and William C. Powell.
•The mill’s purpose was to spin, weave and manufacture cotton materials — specifically cotton muslin.
•The mill and its commissary on Brick Street was designed by C.R. Makepeace.
•Benjamin Thomas Hicks was hired for the construction of the workers’ houses, adjacent to the mill, near the railroad tracks.
•The houses and the commissary were built and owned by the company.
The one-story, four-room dwellings had 10-foot ceilings and centered around a chimney which provided heat through four interior fireplaces located diagonally on the inside corner of each room.
The homes were built with two front doors, designed to accommodate one or two families. Rent was 25 cents per room, per month.
•A school was built for the workers’ children in 1907.
•In 1907 the mill and its village incorporated as the Town of Royall Mills.
The mill’s board of directors served as the town’s board of commissioners. The residents of the new town, the workers, had no say in their town government.
•The streets of the Mill Village were once lined with large oak trees, some of which remained until Hurricane Fran wiped them out in 1996.
•All of the homes in the Mill Village were built with a porch, a signature of the village, from which neighbors communicated.
•Most villagers kept their own gardens with vegetables but also raised animals.
•The company store sold food goods, clothes, candy and other essentials. The commissary was also where workers gathered each week to get paid, which was in cash until the early 1930s.
The company also provided medical care for its workers for 10 cents per month.
Because the company provided work, school, a store and doctor, there was little reason to ever leave the neighborhood, so there was little contact between the villagers and the residents of Wake Forest.
•Wake Forest folk often referred to the villagers as “common” and the term “Mill Hillers” was used derogatorily.
This tension is something villagers prefer not to discuss today as it was so long ago.
•The mill had two churches, Glen Royal Baptist and the Church of God.
•There were ball fields where The Border restaurant now stands on North Main Street and even an official company team.
Carnivals also came to the village in the location where the DuBois Center is now.
•In 1931 the mill went bankrupt; operations changed from the manufacturing of cotton muslin to that of carded yarn.
•The commissary closed in 1934; villagers went to Wake Forest to go grocery shopping seven blocks away. The school also closed that year.
•In 1945, the mill, under new management and having no real reason to remain incorporated, requested the charter for the Town of Royall Mill be repealed by the N.C. General Assembly.
•In the 1950s, labor organizers from the North convinced mill workers to unionize. Those efforts led to a strike lasting for several months.
•In 1976 rumors about the company’s impending closure circulated.
Cotton consumption declined because of the more popular fiber, polyester.
The mill closed the third week of April, 1976.
•In September 1977, after a year of study and debate, the Wake Forest commissioners voted unanimously to forcibly annex the Royall Mills area.
•In 1990, Steve Gould and James Adams purchased the commissary building, turning it into apartments.
•In 1993, Jim Adams, Charles Grand and Jimmy Perry purchased the mill and restored the three-story building into 56 apartments.
•Outside of the Raleigh corporate limit, Glen Royall is the only intact mill left in Wake County.
Growing up in the village
Minnie Lee Mabry, 90, has lived in the Mill Village on and off her whole life.
Mabry was born there. Her mother didn’t go to the hospital, and she had eight babies. One died in infancy.
“We did have doctors come to the house, though,” she said. “All you had to do was put your name on the list in the commissary. That was a great advantage even during The Depression.”
Though outsiders might not have understood, Mabry said life in the Mill Village was a comfortable and familiar place to grow up.
“We had a good time,” she said. “That’s all we knew. We didn’t have to drive, we walked everywhere until my grandpa got sick and moved in with us and brought his Model T. That was when we lived on Mill Street. There were nine of us in four rooms — no modern conveniences at all.”
“We knew everyone; now I don’t know anyone. I would love to get out and visit. I sit out on the porch and pray for them, but I’m not able to go over there and visit the new families.”
Mabry said the village families were very poor during the Depression, but they still made time for fun.
“We had a ball team and some good ball players, too,” she said. “That was a big thing on Saturday afternoons when I was 15 and noticing the boys.
“We had musicians, too, at a band house on North Main Street. They had electricity and baths with showers and we went up there several times.
“We had people up there who were good musicians. That was a big thing for young people with no radio. We just had a phonograph from Sears to play records on.”
And to further the village children’s entertainment, the wife of one of the mill owners took interest in the young women and started a club at the school building. They met once a month and put on plays and other activities.
“That was good entertainment for young women in the village,” Mabry said.
Most children didn’t work at the mill until around the age of 13, but for Mabry, no job was available until her late teens so she stayed in school.
But when it came time for the prom, Mabry needed money so she sold candy bars to neighbors and mill workers and earned enough to buy a dress, her class ring and a coat.
When she was 20, her family needed more space and moved to the house she and her two siblings now reside in at 820 Crowder Ave.
Mabry married at 23 and left the Mill Village. She came back, though, to give birth to her first daughter, and moved again and had her second daughter in Kentucky.
Her husband was in the military as well as the ministry.
Mabry’s husband died in 1972 of a heart attack, so she came back to be with her family in the Mill Village.
In all the years she’s spent in the Mill Village, Mabry said electricity made a big difference in the lives of residents.
She added none of the houses look like they used to when she was growing up.
“I had changed so much myself,” she said.
Mabry was always active in her community and in Glen Royal Baptist Church, but as she aged and injuries sustained in a 1949 car accident caused her continued pain, she eventually had to cut back.
Her older brother served as a town commissioner for a few years, and Mabry has kept a close watch on town politics ever since.
Mabry said she thinks today people in the village feel like they are more a part of the whole town, moreso than they once were.
Mabry still lives in her house at 820 Crowder Ave., with her sister Estelle, 88 and her brother Marlon Cole, 92.
Important to all
The Mill Village meant as much to Wake Forest as Wake Forest meant to the village.
Bruce Keith, whose family owned Keith’s Grocery Store said the village was “a most important part of the town because they supported every one of us.”
“Being in the grocery business 60 years, the Mill Village was very important to the progress of the town,” Keith said. “If we hadn’t had them, Wake Forest might have never grown like it did. We had the support behind us. It was just an important business of the town.”
Keith said he was aware of the tension that once existed between the village and the town, but it was easily overlooked.
“You could have someone against you, but it all boiled down to friends in the end because there wasn’t anything a person could ask for that they (the villagers) would not do for you,” Keith said. “It was a tight-fit community, but yet it was Wake Forest.”
“We had some skirmishes up there, sure, but when the fire department went up there for a call, they came forward to help, not back down. They all were behind each other.”
100 years later
To honor the 100th year of the Mill Village’s incorporation as a town, a committee was formed by Amy Pierce, Joyce Davis, Thelma Wright and others to get the neighborhood together for a day-long celebration.
The centennial celebration will be Nov. 3, beginning at 10:30 a.m. at Glen Royal Baptist Church. The formal commemoration will last until 12:30.
From 1-5 p.m. Mill Villagers will open their doors for a “Meet the village” walking tour. Some houses will be open, with residents showing off their art, or storytelling.
The Wake Forest Historical Association helped to kick off the centennial with its meeting Sept. 8 at 4 p.m. at the Chamber of Commerce.
Pierce started planning the centennial in June but the idea came to her in January or February when she had to look in Jamie Cox’s book for something, and realized it was the centennial year.
“I thought it would be a shame if this went by unnoticed,” Pierce said.
Pierce has lived in the Mill Village for 21 years.
“I was in my 30s and not particularly interested in history or historical things, so moving here shifted me in a new direction, eventually into historic concerns,” she said.
“We just want people to know what a unique historic resource this is. We’re the second Mill Village in Wake County and the most well-preserved. We want them to know what a unique group of people we are, too.
“My hope is that we as a community will get to know each other better.”