VA-Q5K Schoolfield

Marker text: SCHOOLFIELD

Schoolfield, established in 1903 as a textile mill village, was named for three brothers who founded Riverside Cotton Mills, later Dan River Mills. By the 1920s, this company town -- complete with a school, churches, stores, a theatre, and other recreational facilities -- was home to over 4,500 residents, mostly mill employees and their families, living in some 800 rental houses. A strike in 1930-31 ended a decade of employer/employee cooperation known as "Industrial Democracy," yet the community's tradition of neighborhood and family life continued to flourish. Danville annexed Schoolfield in 1951.

Department of Conservation and Historic Resources, 1988