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Item# 19234
Price: $250
JAMESTOWN / N.C. // JAN / 16 dotted-rim large balloon postmark (one of only three known utilizing this style device) with neat matching PAID (no rate) listed as type A in CSA catalog, CV $250, on folded business LETTER dated January 15, 1864, but docketing says 1865 (we all know how that happens). Typed transcript included – concerning looms and yardage. Addressed to Mess. F&H Fries, Salem, NC from D[uncan] A. McRae for Mendenhall & McRae. Ex Kathleen Staples textile collection. $250.
F&H Fries Cotton and Woolen Mills was among the most important supplier of wool and cotton goods to the Confederate Army. In 1840, Francis Levin Fries (1812-1863) opened Fries Woolen Mill in Salem, N.C. He was experienced as a cotton agent for the Salem Manufacturing Company, which was owned by the Moravian Church. By 1860, the floor capacity of the Salem mill was 24,000 sq. ft. and Francis had added a dye house, drying house, and warehouses. The looms were powered by steam. During the war, the Fries mill worked almost exclusively for the Confederacy. It employed white laborers as well as enslaved and free blacks. Some wool goods were even reportedly smuggled through Union lines. The Fries papers are housed in the Moravian Archives in Winston-Salem, N.C., the N.C. Division of Archives and History at Raleigh, and the Wilson Library at UNC at Chapel Hill. Mendenhall & McRae had a contract with Major James Sloan, quartermaster at Greensboro, to manufacture gray cloth for Confederate uniforms. The QM office employed tailors to cut uniforms from patterns. The pieces, thread, buttons and other accessories were then sent to local women for sewing and paid according to the number of uniforms completed.