Cherokee Hosiery Mills Inc history

The march, of course, is well known as the “Trail of Tears”. The mission workers who had established a mission at Will’s Town in the 1820’s protested; however, the forced removal of the Native Americans continued.

What is officially now called DeKalb County was known as Will’s County until 1836 when the name officially became DeKalb County.

In 1838, the Cherokee Indians, native to the area, were rounded up, placed in stockades and then marched to Oklahoma.

In 1885, coal and iron ore were discovered in the area and investors envisioned a Pittsburgh of the South.

The Fort Payne Coal and Iron Company was organized in 1888 and purchased 32,000 acres in and around Fort Payne.

The Mineral Railroad, begun in 1889 and completed the following January, ran from the Alabama Great Southern Railroad in the valley in a northeastern direction to Beeson Gap and eastward to its terminal at the Lookout Mountain Coal Mine.

Fort Payne’s population at the beginning of the new century was approximately 1700, as compared with over 3500 in 1890.

In 1906 he became a photographer and field worker for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). Undercover, disguised among other things as a Bible salesman or photographer for post-cards or industry, Hine went into American factories.

In 1908 the National Child Labor Committee hired Lewis Hine, a teacher and professional photographer trained in sociology, who advocated photography as an educational medium, to document child labor in the American industry.

The Fort Payne mill began operation in 1913 under the name Buster Brown Mill No.

Davis acquired the old industrial building in 1915.

In 1918 Hine left the NCLC for the Red Cross and their work in Europe.

The NCLC later said that Hine's photographs were decisive in the 1938 passage of federal law governing child labor in the United States.

Landmarks of DeKalb County, Inc was organized as non-profit corporation on August 4, 1969, for the purpose of increasing and sharing knowledge of historical information and to encourage preservation of structures of historical significance in the DeKalb County area.