Sagefield Cotton (v)

The financial security of modest but steady little Sagefield Cotton made it possible for Benjamin to receive a private education in Quaker schools in nearby Elon, and then to attend North Carolina State University during the height of the depression. When World War II started, Benjamin volunteered for the Army and wound up in a supply depot in Charleston, South Carolina, managing the procurement and shipment of textiles. He spent the war about 200 miles from Bellemont, a trip he made at least once a month throughout his four years in the service.

The post war years saw Sagefield Cotton return to its original mission of providing quality, versatile household fabrics and by doing so rode the wave of the 1950’s hearth boom. But Emily saw opportunity to do more than just servicing regional stores with finished fabric for towels and linens. In the early 1950’s as Benjamin took over the reins of the mill, Emily pushed him to develop a wider product line, including fabric with pre-dyed yarns and woven plaids. It proved to be the right move and kept Sagefield Cotton upfront as a small, but steady player.

Emily died in 1960 and the following year Benjamin, then 48, married Karla, a school teacher from Greensboro, 20 years his younger and upwardly mobile in a local sort of way. Karla gave birth to Thom, she and Benjamin’s only child, the day after John Kennedy’s assassination.

The world started to change.

(The textile ad is typical of the product lines Sagefield Cotton took on in the 1950's.)