How cotton built Rome
In 1873, the Steamer “Undine” pulled into Rome and began unloading her cargo. Her manifest listed 40,000 roofing shingles, 625 animal pelts, 250 bags of wheat, 50 cowhides, 50 baskets of poultry, 200 bushels of corn and 27 passengers. Her main cargo was the 357 bales of cotton from downriver. Its value alone justified the cost of her construction, thus making her a paying investment.
Cotton was to Rome, and Georgia, what gold was to California and oil to Texas. It was the lifeblood of trade and industry.
The Coosa River was navigable for 200 miles downriver, and the Oostanaula for almost 100 going upriver. To produce the number one steamboat cargo, the rich river bottoms and the red upland hills had been planted, “chopped,” plowed and picked of their white staple harvest. No other product of the day had such a real value.
“I’ll pay you in the fall,” was the chant of the small farmer to the merchant from whom he bought his seed and fertilizer. In high-sided wagons bagged in jute or burlap, these “plantation” bags of unginned cotton made their way to Rome where the buyers were.
A worldwide industrial revolution was underway. Rome’s cotton sailed to English mills at Manchester and Liverpool and European markets in Antwerp and Genoa. It went to Canada and to New England where the nation’s first cotton mills turned out a flood of cloth for a nation that was rising from war and Reconstruction.
Fortunes were made in Rome in buying and selling cotton. Astute businessmen like Alfred Shorter, Augustus R. Wright, J.L. Bass, John J. Seay, the Rounsaville brothers, the Coopers, Mitchells, Kings and Hoyts all cashed in on the rise of cotton in some fashion.
Cotton hit Northwest Georgia like a ton of bricks. The first little steamboat, the Coosa, made her appearance in 1845. By 1847, 12,000 bales of cotton had been shipped upstream. In 1873 there were six steamboats bringing, in addition to supplies and produce, approximately 30,000 bales of cotton, which didn’t count the wagons of small farmers packed into the Cotton Block ready to sell their cargo.
Articles in local newspapers were daily announcing things like “the Sidney P. Smith” left Sunday for Cedar Bluff and returned yesterday with 200 bales of cotton.
One of Rome’s cotton tycoons was Theodore Howel. He was born in Cherokee County in 1845, but made his way to Rome after the Civil War, somewhere around 1868. He was just a country boy, but he knew cotton. In 1873 he entered the field as a cotton buyer with Capt. J.J. Williams. Three years later he was a recognized shipper. He founded the Howel Cotton Co. to handle his growing business. In 1888 he had branches in Memphis, Tennessee; Little Rock and Pine Bluff, Arkansas; and Anniston, Alabama. His main office building stood at Court and Howard Streets here in Rome.
He acquired a 90-inch compressing machine that would squeeze a bale of cotton to one third its original size, making it easier to handle and more resistant to soaking up rain or seawater.
Howel’s warehouse took up nearly a block. It was located on East First Street, between First and Second Avenue. Years later this property would house First National Bank.
During the years before and after World War I, a familiar daily sight began at daylight at the Howel warehouse. A fleet of heavy, mule-drawn wagons and drays lined up alongside the building, receiving five-bale loads of cotton. These drays were owned by E.R. Bosworth and made a routine trip down South Broad with school kids running along, yelling, and dogs barking, to deliver the day’s allotment of raw cotton to Anchor Duck Mills for the day’s spinning.
The Rome Tribune ran stories on Howel Cotton Co. in 1902 and again in 1911 as one of the leading firms in North Georgia. Yes, Theodore Howel had made himself a wealthy and respected man, but died in 1895 at the age of 50.
There were other cotton factors of the day. H.H. Smith, M.R. Pentecost & Orr and Martin Graham & Co. were listed as cotton brokers. Warehousemen of the 1890s were the Printup Brothers and the Rounsaville brothers.
The Rounsaville brothers had a firstrate business but still handled less than half the cotton coming to Rome. Their warehouse was equipped with sprinklers and employed 25 clerks. They also had a grocery business at the same site, which the Rome Tribune reported grossed half a million dollars a year.
During the busy season, the Tribune was reporting as many as 1,500 to 2,000 bales a day shipped from Rome by railroad.
Rome was advanced in the cotton market. The Rome Cotton Exchange was organized in 1878 with J.W. Rounsaville as president. The Tribune reported in 1888 that M.E. Pentecost was president and W.F. Barber as secretary. The thing that sets them apart, reported the Tribune, is they receive daily cotton quotations from all over the world. One enthusiastic journalist in a special edition stated that the Rome territory was averaging some 80,000 bales of high quality cotton annually, bringing in a total of 9 million. He went on to state that “probably no town in the south offers better facilities for shipping the fleecy staple.”
Surprisingly, the south’s production of cotton increased enormously after the dissolution of the slaveholding system. The New York Sun reported that during the last 15 years of slavery the South raised 46,675,591 bales of cotton; during the first four years of freedom, it raised 56,438,335 bales or nearly ten million more, and during the years of 1880-81 it will probably increase again by one third. The Sun stated that their authority, a Mr. Edward Atkinson computes the 9,762,744 bales, worth in gold, over 650 million. And little Rome, Georgia was certainly getting her share.
That’s all for today folks. I’m out of space. Let’s continue next week and get into the twentieth century. Be thinking about how cotton impacted your life. Let me hear from you on social media.
Mike Ragland is a former Cave Spring city councilman and a retired Rome police major. His most recent book is “Living with Lucy.” Readers may contact him at mrag@bellsouth.net or mikeragland.com.