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November 17, 2009

Historical Society honors Bandy

Rachel Brown

B.J. and Dicksie Bandy were falling further into debt with the country store they operated, but they were determined to pay back everything they owed.

“It was a hard time,” their son, Dalton businessman Jack Bandy, told members of the Whitfield-Murray Historical Society on Tuesday. “This area was in a very tough depression.”

The family found relief in the 1920s when they borrowed some patterns from one of the Dalton area women who made handmade tufted bedspreads using a technique called “candlewicking” — so named because the threads used to make the bedspreads were the size of candlewicks.

Dicksie Bradley Bandy is one of two Dalton area women honored through the online museum Georgia Women of Achievement. The other is Catherine Evans Whitener, the Whitfield County resident who as a teen taught herself how to do tufting and began a business that was the forerunner to the modern carpet industry.

Museum executive director Shelli Siebert said a selection committee accepts nominations each year and picks three of them for recognition. A display depicting photos and short biographies of 41 of the women was at the historical society meeting and will be at the Crown Garden and Archives for at least the next month, said executive director Erik Gallman.

Historical society president Ellen Thompson said she’s glad the group was able to hear Bandy speak.

“We wanted to focus on the textile industry, and we knew that Jack’s parents had played a pivotal role, and we wanted to hear him tell about it from his perspective,” Thompson said.

According to the site, www.georgiawomen.org, Dicksie Bradley Bandy was born in Bartow County in 1890, and her husband, Burl J. Bandy, began buying chenille bedspreads during the Great Depression from local hand tufters and marketed them in Northern cities. As their business prospered, the Bandys bought and developed industrial sites in Dalton, Rome, Cartersville and Ellijay.

Bandy said his parents’ business, B.J. Bandy and Co., survived from about 1920 to the 1940s. When Congress passed minimum wage requirements, the handmade bedspread industry dwindled, he said. However, it was the forerunner to the chenille business which later led to the rise of the tufted carpet industry and Dalton’s salvation from economic depression.

Bandy’s mother was also noted for her work in the Dalton Regional Library and Salvation Army as well as for leading the effort to restore the Chief Vann House in Spring Place. She was inducted into the Georgia Women of Achievement in 1993.

In March 2001, Whitener, born in Whitfield County in 1880, was also inducted into Georgia Women of Achievement.

Dalton resident Patty Spanjer said she’s been a historical society member for decades.

“I tell people all the time that basically a 13-year-old girl was responsible for this huge industry,” she said of Whitener.

Varnell area resident Jean McDonald said her two great-aunts made handmade bedspreads and knew Whitener.

“I’m no philosopher for sure, but you can really see the wonderful influence these women have had,” she said.

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