The Carnes family moved to Gastonia from the Waynesville area in Western North Carolina where father James Washington Carnes was a farmer. James and wife Lura had 7 daughters: Dollie, Willie, Nova, Mary, Sallie and Annie (plus daughter Flossie who was older and lived elsewhere).
James Carnes
James Washington Carnes was born in Georgia in 1869 and lived with his mother and grandmother on a farm in Shoal Creek, GA. By the turn of the century he was living and working as a farmer in Haywood County, NC. He married Lura Fulbright in 1895, and continued farming as their family grew. In 1919 or 1920 he moved his family to Gastonia where he worked as a spinner at the Loray Mill. Within the mill, spinners tended to the mule-spinning frame that spun roving into yarn, and then wound the yarn onto bobbins. His job duties also included detecting breaks in the roving, stopping the machine and piecing together the broken roving ends, as well as replacing full bobbins with empty ones. After returning to the village of Clyde in Haywood County in 1921, he continued farming until his death in 1954.
Lura Carnes
Lura Carnes was born Lura Fulbright on August 10, 1870 in Haywood County, NC. She grew up in a farming family and married James Washington Carnes in 1895. She had six daughters with James before moving to Gastonia in 1919 in search of work. While most women stayed home and tended to the house and children, Lura was rare in the fact that she also worked at the mill as a spooler, in the same department as her daughters Dollie, Willie and Nova. Spoolers tended to machines that wound yard from skeins onto spools or cones. They would first hang the skeins of yarn on racks and beat, shake out and straighten the yarn to facilitate the winding. After inspecting the yarn for defects, they would then thread the end of the yarn through guides and turn it around a spool or cone to begin winding. Lura returned with her family to their hometown, where she continued living on the family farm until her death in 1959.
Dollie Carnes
Dollie Carnes was born on March 16, 1899 in Haywood County, NC. She moved to Gastonia to work at the Loray Mill with her parents and sisters when she was 17. Like her mother and older siblings, she worked as a spooler in the mill. Spoolers tended to machines that wound yard from skeins onto spools or cones. They would first hang the skeins of yarn on racks and beat, shake out and straighten the yarn to facilitate winding. After inspecting the yarn for defects, they would then thread the end of the yarn through guides and turn it around a spool or cone to begin winding. She barely worked at the mill for a year before returning to her hometown area to marry Vernon Hamilton Banks in 1920. She was unique for a woman at the time in that she graduated from high school when most students, especially poor, rural students, stopped going to school at around the 8th grade. Together Dollie and her husband had a son, Vance. Dollie continued to live in the rural Beaverdam community of Haywood County until her death in 1987.
Willie F. Carnes
Daughter Willie, like all of her siblings, was born in the Haywood County area in 1905. When the family moved to Gastonia in search of work in 1919, Willie got a job as a spooler with her mother and sisters. Families often worked in the same room of the mill like this. Spoolers tended to machines that wound yard from skeins onto spools or cones. They would first hang the skeins of yarn on racks and beat, shake out and straighten the yarn to facilitate winding. After inspecting the yarn for defects, they would then thread the end of the yarn through guides and turn it around a spool or cone to begin winding. All of the Carnes girls remained in school while working at the mill, and most were schooled through high school, which was a rarity for rural women during the time period. At 17 years old, Willie married hometown boy Junius Delmer McAllister. Willie and Junius had a daughter, Dollie, likely named after her sister. Willie died young at the age of 22 from Pellagra, a condition common in malnourished people resulting from low Niacin intake.
Nova Carnes
Although listed as Nova in the 1920 Census, she was born Geneva Ellen Carnes in rural Haywood County, NC in 1907. Like her sisters, she not only worked in the Loray Mill as a spooler, but she did so while keeping up with her schooling. Spoolers tended to machines that wound yard from skeins onto spools or cones. They would first hang the skeins of yarn on racks and beat, shake out and straighten the yarn to facilitate winding. After inspecting the yarn for defects, they would then thread the end of the yarn through guides and turn it around a spool or cone to begin winding. After returning to where she grew up, it seems that, unlike her sisters, Geneva did not continue going to school after the 10th grade. Geneva married Lawrence F. Cheney and had a daughter named Dorothea. They lived on the same farm as her parents and her sister Annie (and her family) in 1940. Geneva died in 1995 and is buried in the family cemetery in Haywood County.
Sallie Carnes
Sallie Pearl Carnes was born on February 8, 1911. When she was 8 years old her family moved to Gastonia in search of work, but Sallie was still too young to join her parents and sisters in the mill. Sallie married Bruce Robert Medford at a young age. According to death records, Sallie died of acute alcoholism in 1940 at the age of 29.
Annie Carnes
The youngest of the Carnes children, Annie, was born in 1916, not 1913 as the 1920 census shows. She was too young to work in the mill with her family when they lived in Gastonia. After they returned to Haywood County she married Hugh Thomas Russell Sr. in 1934. Together they had 2 children, son Hugh Jr. and daughter Sallie Louise whom died at only 2 years old. Annie and her husband lived on her parents’ farm with her sister Geneva and her family as well. Annie died in 1969 and is buried in the Fulbright family cemetery on Lake Junaluska in Haywood County.
Researched and written by Karen Sieber