He worked in the carpentry shop, remember? But there’s so much more to know about J. Y. Hamrick, and Don Bailey relates it in this profile, in our History section.

Joe Miller, a former general manager of the mill, sat down some years back and wrote about the day he moved his family to Cliffside, who his neighbors were, and when the mill moved from terry cloth to denim. Here’s his story.

Have you heard about our fund-raising campaign? (We’ll keep reminding you every chance we get.) We’re trying to raise at least $18,000 to hire expert developers to revise, upgrade and optimize this website, so, if the need arises, someone else can easily maintain it. Click on this link— http://bit.ly/RCcampaign — to learn more about it. And please, make a contribution, and tell your friends and relatives about our need. As shown on the image at left, we had a pretty good first week.

If anyone is hesitant to use their credit card online, they can mail us a check to “Society,” 10612 Round Rock Rd., Charlotte NC 28277.

His story was new to us, until a descendent of Richard Meredy Jolly (1842-1928) sent me the book “The Story of My Reminiscences.” Mr. Jolly wrote the 50-page book in 1924 when he was 82. There have been multiple editions published over the years, and, using the latest (2009) edition, we’re republishing it here. The author writes of his ancestors, descendants, friends, neighbors and his experiences in a long and eventful life.

Another memoir—a much more recent one—is Carmel Honeycutt’s “Growing Up With Vernon,” an account of his boyhood in the ’30s with his older brother. Carmel wrote this in 2005 at the request of Vernon’s daughter, Linda, who wanted to know more about her father’s early life.

So many have lived and worked in Cliffside, then died or moved away, and are in time forgotten. One on-going effort of this site is to rekindle the memories of as many as we can. Here’s a profile of one who left Cliffside during the early 1940s, but who some still remember, Robert Andrew (Andy) Love, Jr.

As far as we know, Cliffside High did not publish a yearbook for the class of 1925, but they issued elegant diplomas. The name of the senior was embossed in gold on the rawhide cover of his document. We’ve come across the one belonging to Addie Festus Dobbins, one of the eleven graduates in ’25.