The Daily Citizen, Dalton, GA

Local News

Discussion

Welcome to our online comments feature. To join the discussion, you must first register with Disqus and verify your email address. Once you do, your comments will post automatically. We welcome your thoughts and your opinions, including unpopular ones. We ask only that you keep the conversation civil and clean. We reserve the right to remove comments that are obscene, racist or abusive and statements that are false or unverifiable. Repeat offenders will be blocked. You may flag objectionable comments for review by a moderator.
comments powered by Disqus
February 28, 2011

Carpet ‘just a big bedspread’

Rachel Brown rachelbrown@daltoncitizen.com

Catherine Evans Whitener wasn’t driven to create a multi-million dollar business by selling her hand-made bedspreads, but that’s what she ended up doing, said Randy Patton, a professor of history from Kennesaw State University.

Patton spoke to a gathering of about 60 Thursday night at Dalton State College as a guest speaker in the Dicksie Bradley Bandy Lecture Series designed to educate the public on Dalton’s history and especially its heritage as the world’s carpet capital.

“It started out as the bedspread capital of the world,” Patton said. “If you look at a piece of carpet, it’s just a big bedspread.”

Whitener is commonly credited as the mother of the carpet industry, but her story is one that would be incomplete without her sister-in-law, Addie Cavender Evans, Patton said. Evans was the marketing brains of the family’s home-based industry, while Whitener handled the “manufacturing” side.

It began when 15-year-old Catherine made her first candlewick bedspread after admiring a similar spread she saw at a cousin’s home. Candlewicking is a form of embroidery done with yarn, and Whitener is known for slightly changing the technique to make it more efficient. A nearly identical technique is used to make most carpet.

Whitener was born in Whitfield County in 1880 and began popularizing the handmade spreads as she trained other men, women and children in the region in the technique. The spreads became a popular way for families to supplement their income while working at home and were far more than a hobby craft.

“People were always looking for ways to generate more cash income,” Patton said. “This was often hard work. This was not something they did to soothe their soul ... 10-hour days devoted to craft work were common.”

Many would hang the finished products outside for passersby to purchase during the 1920s and onward.

By the 1940s, U.S. Highway 41, or Dixie Highway, was known as “Peacock Alley” for the peacock designs found on many of the spreads. It’s a name Patton said was actually preceded by the less glamorous but more popular term “Bedspread Boulevard.”

Some spread makers were on contract for various department stores where the spreads were sold to the public for $5 or $6 in the early 1920s. By 1934, the process became automated, and hand-tufted spreads became less common.

Text Only
Local News