Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Tomlinson of High Point, Inc. Records #4296, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Tomlinson of High Point, Incorporated, and the High Point Historical Society, both of High Point, North Carolina, in February and November 1982, respectively.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Business records--North Carolina.
• Furniture industry and trade--Finance.
• Furniture industry and trade--North Carolina.
• Furniture workers--Labor unions--North Carolina--History--20th century.
• Industries--North Carolina--High Point--History--20th century.
• Tomlinson of High Point, Inc.
• Tomlinson, Sidney Halstead.

In 1900 Sidney Hastead Tomlinson founded Tomlinson Chair Manufacturing Company in High Point, North Carolina, with $8,000 in capital, one two-story corrugated iron building, and about twenty-five workmen. Charles F. Tomlinson joined the company as its secretary and treasurer in 1904, and the two Quaker brothers built the business together for the next thirty-nine years. In 1911 they enlarged their factory by purchasing Globe-Home Furniture Company and beginning a four-year remodeling effort. By 1915 the Tomlinson Chair Manufacturing Company occupied an entire city block.

In 1916 the Tomlinsons expanded their production to include matching dining room pieces and living room suites. In light of continuing diversification, the company was renamed Tomlinson of High Point, Incorporated, in 1934. During the 1930s the company also began to offer a collection of furniture designs inspired by Colonial Williamsburg for which new marketing techniques were developed to display the best designs in furniture galleries.

By 1943 the Tomlinson factory had grown to occupy thirteen acres and to employ seven hundred workers. By the 1960s the company manufactured dining room, bedroom, living room, occasional, and upholstered wood furniture.

For more information see Dorothy Lloyd Gilbert, "Charles F. Tomlinson Civic Leader and Industrialist," We the People Vol. 1, No. 6 (October 1943): 12-13, 28.

This collection chiefly traces the financial development of Tomlinson of High Point, Incorporated from about 1920 through the 1960s. There is only sparse documentation for the evolution of the company in its earliest years, and Manuscripts Department staff knows of no other surviving records of the company.

• M-4296
• V-4296/S-1 - S-36