The history of the Southern cotton mills of the period embracing the thirty years following 1810 is rather hazy.[32] Facts important to this discussion, however, stand out. In the first place, there seems to have been a good deal of moving about from this water-power to that, the machinery being hauled from place to place with apparent convenience.[33] A founder would sell an enterprise, build another and sell it and build a third.[34] It was difficult to convey machinery to the factory when purchased at a distance. That for the Mount Hecla Mills about 1830 was shipped from Philadelphia to Wilmington, North Carolina, up the Cape Fear river to Fayetteville, and then across country by wagon to Greensboro. Machinery for the Hill factory in Spartanburg county, consisting in 1816 or 1817 of seven hundred spindles, had to be brought by wagon from Charleston.[35] Some of the machinery for the Michael Schenck mill, built near Lincolnton, North Carolina, in 1813, was bought in Providence and hauled by wagon from Philadelphia.[36] For this mill a portion of the machinery was built by a brother-in-law of Schenck, and when the dam broke and it became necessary to rebuild further down the creek, a contract was made with Michael Blom, a local workman, for additional machinery.[37] Other mills had locally manufactured equipment. Spindles for the original Bivingsville mill are said to have been made in a blacksmith shop.[38] "Much machinery for the early cotton mills was made by the local blacksmiths. They were important men in the community and often grew prosperous."[39] In those days the blacksmith was a more skillful mechanic than in these, but the machinery they produced must have been crude even for that period.