By Robert Sullivan

robert.sullivan@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — In the coming years, the site of the former Kesler Cotton Mill may be a community unto itself, with the city currently planning to have approximately 150 homes constructed on the property. However, at one point in Salisbury’s history, the mill was the center of a thriving mill village, a history that is still documented in the Kesler Manufacturing Company and Cannon Mills Plant #7 National Historic District.

The mill was officially constructed in 1895 by a long list of community stakeholders, with local farmer, mortgage-broker and former Confederate soldier Tobias Kesler as the primary owner. Other prominent stakeholders included Napoleon Bonaparte McCanless, D. R. Julian, O. D. Davis, and Rev. Francis Murdock, according to the Edith Clark History Room.

In August of 1895, the Kesler Manufacturing Company purchased five acres of land between Park Avenue and East Cemetery Street and built the first mill building. Simultaneously, the Central Land Company was building 22 frame mill houses and a frame mill store along Park Avenue, just to the west of the mill building.

The Kesler Mill struggled while under the ownership of Kesler Manufacturing, with the mill not being able to establish itself as profitable. In 1899, mill tycoon and Kannapolis founder James William Cannon obtained the mill and turned the business around, eventually being able to expand and build a second mill and a new office along with purchasing the houses and store built by the Central Land Company. The company then began expanding the mill village, with the village containing approximately 70 homes by 1910.

Many of those early 20th-century homes can still be found in the area surrounding the now-vacant Kesler Mill property, especially in the adjacent 700 block of Park Avenue. According to the National Register of Historic Places inventory form for the historic district, many of those homes were actually built by private owners and then sold to Kesler Manufacturing Company.

For example, the home that can still be found at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and Park Avenue was built by local carpenter S.W. Henry in 1910. Henry died later that year and left the home to his daughter Maggie, who operated the home as a boarding house for Kesler Mill workers before selling the property to Kesler Manufacturing in 1922. The house is now privately owned.

Mill villages such as the Kesler village dotted North Carolina’s landscape, as the plentiful textile milling companies recognized that the towns they were moving into, such as Salisbury, did not contain the housing needed for a massive influx of mill workers. Mill owners therefore built rows of almost identical single-family houses surrounded by company-owned or -sponsored amenities, typically including stores, churches, schools or recreational facilities, typically a YMCA.

The Kesler village included all of these amenities, many of which no longer exist. While the Park Avenue United Methodist Church, originally Holmes Memorial Methodist Church, was built independent of the village in 1899, James Cannon eventually sponsored the church. The church shut down over a decade ago. The building, located at the corner of Park Avenue and North Shaver Street, is now owned and operated by Grace Deliverance Tabernacle.

According to the National Register inventory form, the company also owned and operated a school at multiple locations throughout the village, although none of the school buildings existed by the middle of the 20th-century. The company did not operate any recreational facilities in the area, but it did sponsor a nearby ballfield, which no longer exists.

The community had multiple iterations of mill stores, with the original being built in the 300 block of North Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and being demolished in favor of more mill houses, which are still present. That store was originally a joint grocery store and barber operated by E.L. Kimbell, according to the National Register inventory. The second store is a brick building still standing near the corner of Park Avenue and North Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue which is now owned by the city of Salisbury.

James Cannon died in 1921, with the ownership of his various mill companies, including Kesler, passing to his son Charles A. Cannon. Charles Cannon consolidated the various companies into the Cannon Mills Company, renaming the Kesler Mill to Cannon Mill #7.

When Charles Cannon died in 1971, the company was handed off to Don S. Holt. After the passing of the Cannons, the Cannon Mills Company passed through plenty of hands before the closure of Cannon Mill #7 in 2003.

Later in 1971, Pacific Holding Corporation bought the mill and continued to operate it as Cannon Mills. The bed and bath portion of the company was purchased in 1986 by Fieldcrest Mills, who operated it until the company was sold to Pillowtex in 1997. Pillowtex would then operate the mill until it was forced to file bankruptcy in 2000, with one of Rowan County’s largest employers shutting the mill down in August of 2000. The mill would remain in a form of limbo until December of 2002, when the company announced it sold the property before announcing in July of 2003 that the 108-year-old mill would be officially closed.

When the mill was closed, 4,000 people from throughout the area lost their jobs. Salisbury Post articles from that year showed the effect on the community, as articles highlighted food drives, tips for people struggling to pay rent, requests and grants of financial aid from the federal government and profiles of hundreds of Rowan County residents who were left without jobs.

The mill would remain vacant until 2009, when then-owner FCS Urban Ministries demolished the mill buildings. Between 2009 and the city’s acquisition of the property in 2019, neighbors and other community residents continued to ask the city to either force the owners to clean the property up or help the community do it themselves.

The property has since been subjected to a large-scale brownfield clean-up project, which aimed to remove debris and pollution that had been present on the property.

The empty land is now the subject of a solicitation for development partner proposals, which asks interested developers to apply to develop the property.

The current plans for the property aim to turn the property that once served as the center and catalyst of a historic mill community into another community of itself, with 147 units, including: one senior rental project with approximately 60 units, one family rental project with approximately 80 units and up to seven affordable homeownership units.