Allanstand Cottage Industries

Allanstand COTTAGE INDUSTRIES

Allanstand was the creation of Frances Goodrich who settled in the Brittain's Cove region of Madison County, N.C.. She came to the North Carolina mountains as a social worker employed by the Women's Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church around 1895. While there, she became enchanted with the local traditions of weaving and other mountain craft. She writes in her monograph Mountain Homespun, published by Yale University Press in 1937 about her experiences working with local craftswomen:

"We were meeting one afternoon each week at the cottage for sewing and chatting and for a short religious service, closing in time for all to get home for the evening milking and other chores. Few women could come to the Sunday School or preaching services after getting the children "fixed to go" and with the dinner to prepare, so that this mid-week meeting was valued both socially and religiously. consulting together we found that there was one loom in the Cove, stored away in a barn loft, and Aunt Jane knew how to weave "plain cloth." The loom was set up in our library with much talk of "harness" and "gears" and "sleys" and "rakes" and "temples." [p.22]

Goodrich through her interests began the collection of local practice and patterns and through her efforts, much of what is known about mountain craft began to be documented. Using the old patterns and practice, Goodrich soon trained many of the community women to reproduce work for a market and a thriving industry was established. This industry was named "Allanstand Cottage Industries" after the earlier name of the place known as Allan's Old Stand, an overnight respite for drovers on the Old Drover's Road that ran from Greenville, South Carolina to Greeneville, Tennessee.

Again, in the words of Frances Goodrich, the purpose of the Allanstand Cottage Industries was to

"...bring money into communities far from market and to give paying work to women in homes too isolated to permit them to find it for themselves; to give to these women a new interest, the pleasure of producing beautiful things, the delight of the skilled worker and artist of feeling themselves sharers in the work of the world; to save from extinction the old-time crafts while producing things of value and beauty."

A sales shop was soon established in near-by Asheville, N.C. and by 1908 a building was constructed in Asheville to house the shop. By 1917 the industry was incorporated and had, by all accounts, a thriving clientele. Individuals such as Mrs. Woodrow Wilson purchased items from the shop for herself and later in 1913 even upholstered furniture in the so-called "Mountain Room" of the White House with Allanstand mountain homespun.

In 1931 the Allanstand Cottage Industries were incorporated into the newly founded Southern Highlands Handicraft Guild, an organization that still thrives today. Frances Goodrich in that year turned over the rights and the title of the Industries to the Guild and said of that transition

"It [Allanstand Cottage Industries] was given to the agency which offered the greatest promise of carrying on our purpose, the Southern Mountain Handicraft Guild, then newly formed. It has amply fulfilled my hopes."