Person:George Anthony (9)

Contributed by Mary Ellis in 1998: by Mable S. Lassiter Monday Oct. 1, 1990 Burlington, NC Times-News

In April, 1861, the warm days had set the witch hazel buds free in Alamance County along Gunn Creek, and the fertile fields had been plowed for early spring planting when George W. Anthony, a robust and husky boy for his 18 years, made his decision to enlist with the Confederacy. The odor of freshly turned ground had lost its attraction for him. The lazy days fro finishing in Alamance Creek no longer interested him, for there was no peace in the South with the outbreak of total war so evident.

For a long time he had been hearing his folks discuss the possible secession of our state, his friends taking constantly of joining up, and his youthful mind had meditated seriously over the confusion in which the North and south were involved. On May 16, 1861 his decision was made. He put the farm and his father's cabinet making business behind him and took his stand for what he believed to be the only just cause. He'd leave his mark with the confederacy as long as he was part of it, he vowed to his family that early May morning before he walked to Burlington and joined Col. Charles F. Fisher's Infantry regiment which had been quickly assembled here at Company Shops. George Anthony was now a Confederate soldier assigned along with many of his friends to Co. "F" under Capt. J.W. Wilson. During a two-months period, Col. Fisher, president of the railroad at Company Shops, had recruited a full regiment, two companies of which included men and boys from Alamance County. Shortly thereafter, this group was marching up through Virginia enroute to Manassas. According to "Southern History," the quiet Sabbath morning of July 21 presented a scene of grandeur and beauty as the Confederate forces moved into what history would remember as the First Battle of Manassas. The plains, broken by a wooded country, were bounded as far as the eye could reach to the West by the azure peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains. To those politicians and fancy dressed ladies in carriages who had come out from Washington that day to witness the "routing of the Rebels," the First Battle was designed to be a holiday exhibition. The battle raged for three days, however, with heavy losses in men and equipment. By 2 o'clock that afternoon, according to the account given in "Southern History," Col. Fisher's Sixth N.C. Regiment, to which George Anthony was attached, had come up, and every regiment on the field shared the main attack against the Federals. he was there as the open ground was swept clear of the enemy, and the plateau remained in Rebel possession, Many of the Alamance County boys were killed, but George Anthony made his first mark that day as he fought with the torn and thinning ranks of his regiment whose leader, Col. Fisher, was among the casualties.

The war moved through the autumn and winter and many skirmishes. The Sixth N.C. Infantry Regiment was once more in battle at Seven Pines from May 31 to June 1, 1862, a bloody engagement fought near Richmond between the Federals under Gen. Joseph E. Johnson. On into the Battle of Malvern Hill the N.C. boys marched, sharing the brunt of the conflict and always leaving a definite imprint on their having served, so determined was their stand, so decisive their purpose. he following June found Gen. Robert E. Lee's forces moving across into Pennsylvania, attempting to carry the war into the enemy's home territory as they approached Gettysburg. George Anthony was one of the group who fought in the three-day battle with Gen. Lee opposing the command of his military friend, Gen. George G. Meade. In later years Anthony used to relate how his unit bivouaced near a smouldering campfire on the second night, and how he reached in his pocket for a wrinkled letter from home. Someone could read it for him. Instead he pulled out a clenched fist filled with wheat kernels he'd gathered in a Virginia field as his company marched through. He stood up that night, according to his story, arched his arm high an scattered wheat kernels all about him as his comrades watched. He gave no reason for his actions but simple returned to his seat by the fire, the letter in his hand.

When the conflict had ended, it was a decisive victory for the Union forces, a battle in which the death quota for the South showed more than every fourth fallen man to be a North Carolinian. Anthony and many of his Alamance County friends were fortunate that day - they lived but were captured and taken to prison at Point Lookout, Md. where his time was not entirely wasted. There he learned to read and write, to save his tobacco allotment and barter it to other prisoners until he had cultivated many qualities of a capitalist. Even remaining as a prisoner of the Yankees until the surrender at Appomattox provided benefits. A quarter of a century later, George Anthony had become a successful businessman in Alamance and Orange counties. Life for him during Reconstruction days wasn't bad, for his knowledge of capitalism gained in the prison had aided him in gaining a foothold in the business world following the war.

Twenty-five years after he had been a part of North Carolina's stand at Gettysburg, George Anthony had a longing to go back, to return to the scene of the battle that vividly marked the turning point of the war, a conflict where the best the South could muster was not good enough to repulse the Federals. Yet, the Alamance county native experienced no sense of defeat or loss of pride when he went back to the battlefield that summer on a sightseeing trip, only a deep satisfaction in having been a part of the history that was made there. But the Gettysburg area was no longer the thick woods bordering open fields with rambling stone walls forming boundary lines; no longer the spaces where Pickett's charge was made that day with thousands of Tar Heels stepping out in direct line of Yankee fire. George Anthony looked around at Longstreet's headquarters as he stood at a gun emplacement behind a bulwark where he had stood a quarter of a century before. The fields were fruitful now with summer harvest. There was no longer a scene of mangled bodies or the cry of suffering men. He shadowed his eyes and tried to let the past slip away from him as he planted his feet where General Lee had stood that day of the battle and gazed across to where General Meade gave orders in the cemetery. Patches of wheat formed ripe, golden boundaries, wheat that perhaps could have come from the seeds thrown out many years before by his own hand. The day was quiet as Anthony walked across the battlefield where peace had settled over the rolling hills looking away to the blue mountains. The Gettysburg battlefield was now a park, honored and hallowed in memory, and it was not necessary for the marble statues and markers to remind him of the struggle.

Here George Anthony had left his mark, just as he said he would that May morning in 1861 as he left his home on Gunn Creek. And the route from Alamance to Gettysburg had been long and tiresome.

Burlington Times-News Mill's legacy to live on in pieces By Robert Boyer / Times-News May 8, 2007 3:00 AM (The remains of Standard Hosiery Mills stand on East Webb Avenue in Burlington. Current property owner, Tim Griggs, wants to save the mill’s tower and restore a 126-year-old section of the mill.)

Like a bombed-out war relic, the remains of the city's oldest mill stand along the 800 block of East Webb Avenue in Burlington.

It won't stay that way, says building owner Tim Griggs.

Griggs is a businessman who lives between Graham and Swepsonville. Among other things, he wants to save the mill’s tower and restore a 126-year-old section of the mill.

Griggs bought the former Standard Hosiery Mills in February 2006 and began demolishing the streetside section. Although much of the mill is gone, parts of it will live on in homes and buildings across the U.S. and in England.

He salvaged the sought-after hardwood floors and bricks and sold them to a South Carolina company, which sold them to builders and others.

Griggs operates OK Sales Inc., a recycling business in a section of the mill built in the 1940s. He runs a car lot on the west side of the lot and owns an adjacent building that he hopes to turn into a museum, shops or a church.

A section of the Standard Hosiery building might predate the city of Burlington. The origin of the building is hard to pin down, but the mill apparently dates to 1881, says OK Sales manager Tommy Gillispie. If so, it might be a mill with a rich and innovative history profiled in “Shuttle & Plow: A History of North Carolina,” a book by Carol Watterson Troxler and William Murray Vincent.

According to the book, Peter Holt bought a property from the North Carolina Railroad in Company Shops that later became East Webb Avenue and broke ground on about two acres in October 1881. He named the operation Lafayette Mills after his son and partner.

George Anthony, Peter Holt’s son-in-law, was another partner. Anthony cut the timber framing; Lafayette Holt designed the original 50- by 250-foot New-England-style mill. Steam engines from Providence, R.I., powered the plant. The younger Holt reconfigured a dismantled, second-hand boiler from Company Shops. The boiler burned cordwood from Anthony’s adjacent lumberyard.

The knitting machines came from New Hampshire and produced tubular knitted fabric that was cut on patterns and sewn into men’s undergarments, as well as knitted stockings. The fabric was the first knitted fabric in Alamance County and possibly the state, according to “Shuttle & Plow.”

The family operated the mill for three years. It was sold at public auction to R.J. Reynolds for $12,040.

In 1885, Reynolds sold the mill to Lawrence Holt for about $17,000.

Standard Hosiery Mills, founded in the village of Alamance, later bought the mill.

In recent years, Falcon Properties Inc. owned the mill and rented sections for storage.

The mill narrowly escaped disaster in February 2000 when firefighters extinguished a smoldering fire before it erupted. Tenants had spotted the fire and called authorities. Concerns about more fires made it tough to rent out space in recent years and the building remained largely empty, Griggs says.

THE SAFETY WORRIES and value of the brick and hardwood floors convinced Griggs to demolish much of the building.

Griggs says he is largely finished with demolishing the mill and is working with city officials and local preservationists to preserve the street side tower and the remaining rear and middle sections. City inspectors have told him the tower is structurally sound, Griggs said. He wants to add clocks and a plaque noting the mill’s history.

He isn’t sure yet whether he can save the tower. “I want to try to make that a tribute to the mill. We want to save it and do what makes everybody happy.”

He also plans to keep a portion of front wall as a fence and restore the facade of the rear buildings, probably with cinder blocks and siding.

Griggs has met city permit and safety requirements and can keep the property in its current state provided it is secured with a fence and can remain in a safe state, says Ray Rice, Burlington’s chief inspector.

The city inspected the mill about two months ago. The power to the remaining sections was off and there were no problems, Rice says.

Rice drives by the building frequently and is concerned about the situation, but says no problems have cropped up since the inspection.

Griggs says he respects the historical significance of the mill and welcomes comments from residents and others who wants to preserve its legacy.