Having a Blast Traditional Cache

Cannon Memorial Park

This is small 3 inch spare key cache box. No pen. Should be a quick parl and grab.

In 1900, when Thomas Marcellus Denning (1870-1962), whose grand 1924 Spanish Revival house can be seen from here on the corner of Franklin and 2nd St., arrived in Albemarle to work as superintendent of the newly-established Wiscassett Mills, he brought long experience and a surprisingly mature perspective to his post. The Wiscassett Mills Company, incorporated in 1898 and placed in operation as a textile plant in 1899, was second only in Albemarle to the Efird Manufacturing Company established in 1896. Both of these mills were found 2 blocks west of here between Little Long Creek and Depot St. Parts of the 2 original Cannon Mill plants can be seen on the original Wiscasset Mills site, while much of the remaining Efird Mills are still in use under new ownership.

These pioneering concerns in the industrialization of the Stanly County seat both reflected major investments by James William Cannon (1852-1921), the legendary North Carolina textile entrepreneur based in Concord, the seat of adjoining Cabarrus County. From 1900 until his retirement at the age of ninety in 1960, Mr. Denning was an important face of Wiscassett Mills in Albemarle, and he was heralded at his death two years later as "Albemarle’s ‘grand old man of the textile industry.’"For most if not all of his period of employment, and until his death, he was addressed by the honorific "Captain." Thomas Marcellus Denning junior was born in Rockingham County, North Carolina, on 4 February 1870 to Thomas Marcellus Denning (b. ca. 1836) and his wife Mary Ann Vanhoy (b. ca. 1840).2 The known details of his life from birth to his relocation to Albemarle are few and chiefly those contained in "a brief autobiography, prepared by Cap’n Denning himself," which was published in the Stanly News And Press on 11 March 1960. The circumstances by which Mr. Denning came to the notice of the management of the Cannon Manufacturing Company in Concord are unknown. In the account of his career published in the Stanly News And Press on 14 March 1950, obviously based on Mr. Denning’s recount, he remembered that "In February, 1900, C. C. Barnhardt, then general superintendent of Cannon Manufacturing company offered . . . (him) the position of superintendent of Wiscassett Mills company." Mr. Denning began work in Albemarle on 12 March 1900.   

When Mr. Denning assumed this position as superintendent of Wiscassett Mills, his was one of the two principal Albemarle-based administrative positions in the company, each of which complemented the other. From the organization of Wiscassett Mills in 1898 until his death in December 1921, James William Cannon (1852-1921), the principal stockholder, and a resident of Concord, North Carolina, held the presidency of the firm. His letterhead identified him as president of thirteen textile manufacturing companies, including manufacturing plants in Concord, Kannapolis, Mt. Pleasant, China Grove, Salisbury, and Thomasville, North Carolina, together with the Efird Manufacturing and Wiscassett Mills companies in Albemarle, and the Imperial Cotton Mills in Eatonton, Georgia. He was succeeded later as president by his youngest son Charles Albert Cannon (1892-1971), who consolidated eight of the Cannon-dominated textile mills into the Cannon Mills Company in 1928. For now unknown reasons, the Efird and Wiscassett companies remained outside the consolidation for their entire history of operation. While the majority interest in the Efird Manufacturing Company would be sold in 1947 to the American Yarn Processing Company and merged in 1952 as American and Efird Mills, the Wiscassett Mills Company remained under Charles Albert Cannon’s direction until his retirement in 1962--the year of Mr. Denning’s death. For almost his entire period of employment with Wiscassett Mills, from 1900 to 1960, Mr. Denning, answered to but two presidents of the company.5 In the hierarchy of plant operations here, as elsewhere in the Cannon textile empire, the secretary-treasurer of Wiscassett Mills Company, was the local, on-site financial officer. John C. Leslie was the secretary-treasurer of Wiscassett Mills when Mr. Denning joined the office. Mr. Leslie left Albemarle in about 1903 to take charge of a New York City sales office for Cannon textiles and he was succeeded as secretary-treasurer for a brief period by Joseph Franklin Cannon, the eldest son of the company president. James Alonzo Groves (1873-1955) assumed the office of secretary-treasurer in about 1903 and held the position until retiring in 1945.

As superintendent of Wiscassett Mills, Mr. Denning oversaw production at the plant and its constituent mills and the work of its offices, warehousing and related physical facilities. The construction, management, and maintenance of mill housing was one of his chief responsibilities, one that he recalled for the newspaper reporter in 1950 when the Wiscassett worker housing comprised "364 modern dwellings situated in the northwestern section of Albemarle. Through the use of trees, shrubbery, and landscaping, the village is rapidly becoming one of the prettiest sections of the city." In 1900, when Mr. Denning came to Wiscassett Mills, the population of Albemarle was about 1,800. Within five years, by 1905, the population would swell to about 3,000. Much of this increase was housed in company-owned housing that had been announced at the time of the company’s organization in 1898.

Overseeing the construction of the first of two mill villages erected for mill operatives occupied his first years of employment, simultaneous with the expansion of the manufacturing complex. The Wiscassett Mills housing occupied acreage generally north of the plant and a village common, now known as Cannon Memorial Park, where the Wiscassett School and other village institutions, including First Street Methodist Church, were located. In about 1920 the pavilion was constructed at the corner of North 2nd St. and what is now CB Crook Dr to house many of the community functions. Housing for management and supervisors, including two houses built for and occupied by Mr. Denning and his family, encircled the village common.

The Wiscassett Mills Company was highly successful from its start, and its profitability prompted further expansion in the 1910s. This effort took the form of enlarged production and processing facilities at the main site, flanked by the rail lines of the former Yadkin/later Carolina and Northwestern Railroad and the Winston-Salem Southbound, and at a new, nearby plant for hosiery production located several blocks to the east, on Montgomery Avenue, between North Third and North Fourth streets, that was served by a spur of the Carolina and Northwest Railroad. Housing for the hosiery mill division is said to have been constructed by a hired contractor, D. A. Holbrook. It comprised a village occupying the blocks adjoining the new mill. These expansions, largely completed in 1918, sparked an economic boom in Albemarle that continued through the 1920s.

While the Wiscassett Mills were Albemarle’s second oldest textile manufacturing company by date of operation, the concern quickly became and remained the largest industrial concern in the county seat and its largest employer in the period leading up to World War II and afterward. The status of the company is reflected in articles and listings in the 60th Anniversary Edition of the Stanly News And Press, Section 6, "Industry in Albemarle and Stanly County," published on 16 August 1940. In the listing of "Industrial Plants in Stanly County," Wiscassett Mills Company (cotton yarn) is first, followed by the Knitting Department of Wiscassett Mills Company (hosiery division). The Efird Manufacturing Company, producers of cotton yarn, was listed in third position while the Lillian Knitting Mills Company, which also produced hosiery, was given fourth place. These positions have their parallel in the roster of "Stanly’s Industrial Leaders," described as ". . .men who hold key positions in the industrial establishments in Stanly county, to whom we give recognition today for the part they have played and are playing in the development of Albemarle and Stanly County." James Alonzo Groves, secretary-treasurer of Wiscassett Mills, who was also a principal owner of Stanly County’s Oakboro Cotton Mills and a benefactor of Morrow Mountain State Park, was at the head of the list. Thomas Marcellus Denning, then general superintendent of Wiscassett Mills, occupied second place on the roster, and he was followed by his son Wade Fulton Denning (1895-1993), who had succeeded his father as superintendent of Wiscassett Mills. The Wiscassett Mills officers were followed in the listing by those of the Efird Manufacturing Company, including Arthur Knox Winget, and the Lillian Knitting Mills Company, respectively, and those of other concerns in Albemarle and Stanly County including the Carolina Aluminum Company at Badin. The Lillian Mills executives, Hubert Clinton Patterson (1887-1959) and Arthur Low Patterson (1877-1972), were the sons of Ibsen Franklin Patterson (1842-1896), who was a partner with James William Cannon in the organization of Patterson Manufacturing Company at China Grove, North Carolina, in 1893. In 1940, when Albemarle had a population of 5,625 and Stanly County had a population of 32,834, the Wiscassett Mills employed 1,700 persons while the Efird Manufacturing Company had 900 employees.

When Mr. Denning came to Albemarle in 1900 he was married and the father of two children. In about 1894 he married Bettie Wilson Strickland (1872- 1967), the daughter of Andrew and Cemanthia (Todd) Strickland and a native of Wake County, North Carolina. Wade Fulton Denning was born in 1895, and the family increased in 1898 with the birth of Erdene Beatrice Denning (1898-1987). Mr. Denning apparently first came alone and boarded for a period at the home of John W. and Ida M. Bostian which stood in the northwest corner of North Second and North streets, within easy walking distance of Wiscassett Mills.9 Thereafter, and until about 1916, Mr. Denning and his family, increased by the birth of three more children, Mabel Heitman Denning (1901-1989), Ralph Erwin Denning (190_-1994), and Elbert Hubbard Denning (1909-1998), resided in company owned housing.

The expansion of Wiscassett Mills facilities in the 1910s also produced new housing for officers of the company including a handsome Colonial Revivalstyle residence for Mr. Denning. In the event that house was the first of two that Louis Humbert Asbury Sr., the Charlotte-based architect, designed for Mr. Denning. In fall 1915 Mr. Denning commissioned the new house which would be built on a company-owned lot at company expense. The 1.42-acre parcel, conveyed to the Wiscassett Mills Company by James William Cannon, his wife, and others on 10 November 1915, lay on the east side of the 500 block of North Second Street at the head of the mill village common that became Cannon Memorial Park. Construction on the house was probably begun about that time and completed in the first half of 1916. The Denning family’s new weatherboarded frame house comprised a two-story hip-roof main block with an expansive one-story porch that wrapped the corners of its three-bay west façade and carried east on the side elevations to abut shallow two-story gable-front ells. The porch, typical of its era, featured Tuscan columns on brick plinths linked by a turned railing that also incorporated a porte cochere on the south elevation. A low granite masonry wall, with piers framing the inset driveway entrance and steps down to the sidewalk, retained the front lawn along North Second Street. The house at 506 North Second Street was home to the Denning family for some nine years.

In about 1923 Thomas Marcellus Denning decided to build a new residence for his family and acquired a choice lot for the house from Wiscassett Mills. He selected a rectangular lot on the south edge of the mill village common, in the southwest corner of North Second and Franklin streets and about a half-block south of his company-owned dwelling. He turned again to Mr. Asbury for the design of this new house, a brick residence of Spanish Colonial character with brick elevations and green tile roofing. This project, dated 3 July 1924, is job number 577.12 This new house, two stories in height and with a three-bay east façade, had a full façade porch which engaged the one-story sun porch on its south side and a porte cochere of similar dimensions on the north side with a half-circle drive entering and exiting onto Franklin Street. A garage of like design, with its own driveway off Franklin Street, was erected to the rear of the house, at the west edge of the lot.