Farmers Cotton Oil Company had been in operation only six years when an artist sketched it for the border of T.M. Fowler’s 1908 bird’s-eye map of Wilson. At the time, the tobacco town was also one of the larger cotton markets in eastern North Carolina, and Farmers not only ginned cotton and pressed cotton seed oil, it manufactured fertilizer.
It was also a dangerous place to work. In November 1922, doctors amputated Will Scott’s left hand after it was mangled in machinery at the mill.
Wilson Daily Times, 16 November 1922.
Seven years later, Wade Vick was whirled to death after being caught in a revolving wheel at the compound.
As shown in the 1922 Sanborn fire insurance map, Farmers Cotton Oil Company filled almost the whole block bounded by East Barnes, Grace, Stemmery, and South Railroad Streets. The church at lower right was Wilson Chapel Free Will Baptist.
- Will Scott
Clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.
Still fascinated by that part of town. Some of the railroad tracks are still there.
I didn’t realize that parts of the plant were in operation into the 1980s. In my recollection, it was already abandoned by my childhood in the 1970s.