The marketing and consumption of the output of the old mills is a matter of broad interest. The statement which serves, perhaps, to indicate most nearly a genuinely commercial character in this regard, is that of Mr. Clark growing out of his reference to the establishment of General David R. Williams, near Society Hill, Darlington County, South Carolina. It was on his plantation, and was water-driven. "... in 1828 he was turning his cotton crop, of 200 bales annually, into what was said to be the best yarn in the United States. He marketed part of his output in New York and wove part of it into negro cloth for home use.... Twenty years later the factory was still shipping yarn to New York, and also making cotton bagging for the neighboring plantations.... By the middle of the century their (small Southern mills such as this) product is said to have controlled the Northern yarn market. This market they were able to enter because they had been supported through infancy by the local demand for yarn for homespun weaving--a support they did not entirely dispense with until after the war. Yarn was traded by the mills for homespun linen warp, and woven with that warp into strong cloth for country use. The family weavers who did this work were paid for their labor in cotton yarn."[42] Other evidence hardly supports a belief that the Southern mills of this period took so large a part in supplying the yarn market of the country; on the other hand, local consumption and the link with domestic industry, which even in the quotation above goes side by side with the wider sales, was prevalent. How closely these old mills were joined with the countryside is seen in the fact that into their coarse, homely fabrics went hand-spun linen warp. The domestic character was ingrained. Of the Rocky Mount Mill in North Carolina it is said that "For some years prior to and during the Civil War, the mill was a general supply station for warps which the women of the South wove into cloth on the old hand looms. A few of the braver women who were left at home with only the feminine portion of their families or the sons too young to fight, sometimes made trips alone many miles through the country to get warps for themselves and neighboring families." So beneficial did this old habit prove during the war that a cavalry troop of six hundred federals was sent up from New Bern in 1863 and burned the mill.[43] Mr. Thompson says of this same mill that until 1851 slaves and a few free negroes were worked in it. This distinguishing difference of the old mills from those of the great period, when the labor of negroes was far from the thoughts of the builders and managers, will be dwelt upon in another place. Here again is noted the fact that the mill supplied coarse yarns for neighborhood consumption, and it is said moreover that making only twelve to fifteen hundred pounds of 4s to 12s daily, the mill could not get a steady market for its wares.[44]