Stores, factories, banks, railroads, TVA, commerce.
Among the businesses that took advantage of the power in the flowing waters of Spring Creek was a substantial flour and feed mill operated for decades by the Hindman family. The business began with Samuel Hindman, a millwright who came…
Barton Agricultural Works traced its beginning to 1881. By the early twentieth century, its stationery proudly advertised the company as the manufacturer of “The Celebrated Barton Cultivators.” But the story may actually begin a few years earlier. On September 24,…
Long before downtown Florence became the center of business activity that we know today, much of the commerce of the young town took place below the bluff, along the Tennessee River. And it wasn’t limited to the Florence side. During…
Thomas McGough (1906-2001) purchased the Florence bakery from M.P. Curran in 1941 and 5 years later, phased out the baking side of the business when he incorporated the Southern Frigid-Dough company. Operating as a licensee of American Frigid-Dough, they wholesaled…
While one enterprise on East Tennessee Street named the Florence Bakery existed from the late 1890s until it burned down in 1912 (owned by Mr. J.E. Bowers), it isn’t the same bakery we’re writing about in this post. Success story…
In the 1800s, before cars had been invented, one way people got around was in wagons. Florence had several wagon and buggy manufacturing companies throughout the 19th century (most pre-1870). But the biggest and most famous of them was the Florence Wagon Co.
In the late Spring of 1926, a new creamery called the Florence Milk Company was established. Organized out of five separate dairies which were: Clear Creek Dairy Farms, Springdale Dairy, Sweetwater Dairy, Meadow Brook Dairy, and Young Bros. Dairy.
In 1888, noted engineer and builder, J.W. Nichols, was awarded the contract for erecting the Florence Shoe Factory. The company has a capital stock of thirty thousand dollars (equivalent to over $750,000 in today’s dollars), and built a first-class factory.
The Florence Gas Light and Fuel Company was incorporated in 1891, under the laws of the state, with a capital of $55,000 ($1,447,368 in 2015) The plant was most admirably located on Water Street, adjoining the property of the Leftwich Lumber company on the banks of Sweetwater
Built as a roller-grain mill (as opposed to a millstone-based mill) that specialized in milling both wheat and corn, the Florence Milling Company had storage enough to keep 25,000 bushels of grain and their facility was three stories of the most technologically advanced milling techniques available at the time.