Company towns

The Fries Textile Plant Records includes correspondence, production data, personnel ledgers, photographs, legal and financial materials, internal reports, blueprints, and other administrative materials. The collection provides a complete history of the company's operations, from its founding at the turn of the twentieth century until its closure in the 1980s.

The collection contains a letter from Sessler Watkins, of Cary, West Virginia, to his mother, Mrs. J. B. Watkins of Troutville, Virginia, describing Watkins' experiences living and working in a company-owned mining town in West Virginia.