Supplemt to reed hook.

[Stoney]

In a post in What Is It, I showed a reed hook used by my dad and me in cotton mills.  Cotton Mills moved South in the 1880's for cheaper labor and to be closer to where cotton was grown.  by the 1920's Huntsville had 8 mills running.  My great grand dad Brazelaton was the mill Doctor, my great uncle Sibley was a loom fixer and my grand dad Mayes was a weaver in Dalles mill.

In 1914 a shuttle smashed (cotton lint stuck the shed together see post on reed hook) and came out at about 100 miles an hour.

Shuttles were made of dogwood and tipped with steel. 

It hit my grand dad in the temple and damaged his brain.  In those days the only thing they could do for brain damage was send him to the Insane Asylum in Rome, GA.  He died there during the Influenza outbreak of 1918.   


This is Lincoln Mills, the largest mill in Huntsville.  My dad met my mom in Lincoln.  My dad was a weaver and my mom was a battery hand.  The round device that holds the bobbins is the battery and the person that keeps the batteries filled with bobbins is the battery hand.


When my aunt Evelen married , she started working in Merrimac Mill.  My dad went to live with her when he was 7 and worked as a sweeper.  He worked 12 hours a day 6 days a week.

By the 1940's Huntsville Manufacturing had bought the old Merrimac Mill and by the 1970's was the last cotton mill in Huntsville. I was the last generation in my family to work in the mill.  I started as a blow-off hand cleaning cotton lint off looms and then trained as a loom fixer.  Working in the mill is hard and dangerous work.  Everyone gets hurt .  I was lucky I only got a finger crushed.   It is 96 degrees and 96 percent humidity is the mill all the year around.  The normal work week was 8 hours a day 6 days a week.  You could work as much as you could stand.  I would work 2nd shift and double on 3rd, working 96 hours a week.