Charlottesville Woolen Mills

Q-24

As early as 1795, several types of mills operated here. In 1847, Farish, Jones, and Co., opened a cotton and woolen factory. John A. Marchant gained control of it by 1852 and renamed it the Charlottesville Manufacturing Company. His son, Henry Clay Marchant, bought it in 1864. Although the Union army burned the factory in 1865, Marchant reopened it in 1867 as the Charlottesville Woolen Mills, which became Albemarle's largest industry. A community grew up around the mill and Marchant built worker houses and a chapel. By the 1880s the mill specialized in making cloth for uniforms; it remained in operation until 1964.

Department of Historic Resources, 2000

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Charlottesville Woolen Mills, National Register of Historic Places Nomination File (02- 1260), DHR; K. Edward Lay, The Architecture of Jefferson Country, Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 2000), 162-165; Andy Meyers, “The Charlottesville Woolen Mills: Working Life, Wartime, and the Walkout of 1918,” Magazine of Albemarle County 53 (1995): 70-113; John Hammond Moore, Albemarle, Jefferson’s County, 1727–1976 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976), 173, 261-262; Harry E. Poindexter, “Henry Clay Marchant and the Foundations of the Charlottesville Woolen Mills, 1865-1882,” Magazine of Albemarle County 14 (1955): 26-45.