​Waco Trivia

* Knitting Mill at Waco. The Waco Knitting Mill has been organized at Waco, N. C., in and is establishing plant of twenty-five machines with a daily capacity of 160 doz'n pairs of half-hose. A one-story and basement building 34x60 feet is being erected, and about thirty-five hands will be employed. The investment will be 5ooo, which is to be increased to 1O,OOO within a year. The plant will be operating in sixty days. \V. A. Goode is president; M.C. Beam, vice president, and M. E. Goode, secretary-treasurer. (This text was printed in a North Carolina magazine dated 1901)

* The Waco Knitting Mill was established in 1901 and employed 25 people who produced hosiery. The building was one story with a basement, and operated six days a week. Mr. M.E. Goode, brother of Dr. Noah Goode, was elected manager from 1901 - 1902. It was a short lived venture. 

• A cemetery was established in Waco in 1887. However, in 1906 a law was adopted, following the typhoid epidemic of 1905-06, prohibiting burials in the Town. The local doctor was afraid the Town’s water might become contaminated from the cemetery. That law still stands in Waco’s books.

• The arrival of the railroad played an important part in the development of Waco. It existed in Lincolnton as far back as 1862. Two years later, the train extended to Cherryville. Finally, by 1865 the railroad had been extended to the Buffalo Paper Mill between Waco and Shelby. Waco operated a passenger and rail goods train depot on Railroad St (now named Putnam St.) until the 1950's.

• The first religious service in the Town of Waco itself was held on June 5, 1886, in Waco Academy. There was once a Waco Presbyterian Church that was established in the 1890s. However, the church was never successful, and on April 12, 1919 25 members from the  Waco Presbyterian Church  were received into the membership of the Cherryville Presbyterian Church.

• Dr. Noah Goode, Waco’s first doctor, not only built the Town’s first bridge, but also donated the property where Waco Baptist Church was built. A son, Dr. W. A. Goode, served Cleveland County in the legislature in 1903. Dr. Noah A. Goode died in 1887 and is buried at Beulah United Methodist Church south of Waco. 

*Dr. William A. Goode, son of Dr. Noah Goode, practiced medicine along side his father in Waco and also played a big part in business development in the early 1900's. He died in August of 1906 and his obituary stated "Dr. Will. A. Goode one of the most popular and well known physicians of the county died Friday at his home in Waco. Mr. Goode had been ill for some time with fever, after which complications set in from which he died. Dr. Goode was 41 years of age. He leaves a wife and six children. He was buried with Masonic honors at Beulah United Methodist Church." It's important to note that in 1906, the United States was in the middle of a Typhoid fever epidemic. 

​Dr. W.A. Goode was the last physician to have a medical practice in the Town of Waco. 

• The First Waco School opened in 1880, and operated in the same location until its closure. The high school opened on August 17, 1903, under the direction of Professor M. B. Clegg. In the mid-1950s, under the direction of its own school board, Waco School held the distinction of having Cleveland County’s first school library, school lunchroom, and Activity Bus.

• A poultry yard was established near Waco in 1902 under the name of W. F. Sisk & Company. Members of the firm were W. F. Sisk, the Reverend Ira Erwin and Horace Sisk.

• One of the earliest laws adopted in Waco prohibited loitering on the bridge crossing the railroad. Some later Town fathers were, however, apparently ignorant of the law, as Town records show that the Aldermen not only met on the overhead bridge to dedicate it on June 3, 1937, but also swore in a new Mayor and three members of the Town Council there.

• Waco owned its own power system until the 1950s, when the system was sold to Duke Power.

*Telephone service in Waco was provided by the Piedmont Telephone and Telegraph Company headquartered  Gastonia. The company was started as the Gastonia Telephone Company in 1899 by Robert Babbington and was reorganized and chartered as the Piedmont Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1902. It was later sold to Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph in 1927. Waco operated it's own telephone exchange from the early 1910's through the 1940's. The Exchange building was located in the 100 block of S. Main Street.

* The 1901 edition of Bureau of Labor and Printing of the State of North Carolina listed the following businesses in the Town of Waco:  Washburn Brothers Lumber; C. Miller Wood Working,Ford & Company Cotton Gin, Hoyle Miller & Sons Cotton Gin, Ewers & Spargo Flower, Waco Knitting Mill and Hord Lumber. 

The Community Gin Company (Waco Cotton Gin) operated from many years by the Boggs Family from Fallston. The cotton gin was located on NC Hwy 150 (Cherryville Rd.) near the old Waco Fire Department. The Waco Cotton gin was torn down in the 1970's.  

* The Town of Waco has employed a various array of public officials over the years. These include a Police officer, Tax Collector, Dog Catcher, and a full School Board that managed Waco School.  For many years the only building the Town owned was a small one room jail that set on what is now Dodd St. 

* Seaboard Air Line Railway passed through Waco from 1865 until it changed it's name to Seaboard Air Line Railroad in 1946. The name changed again in 1967 to Seaboard Coast Line Railroad then through mergers changed again to Seaboard Systems Railroad in 1982. CSX Transportation purchased the railroad in 1986 and CSX trains still pass through Waco today.

Town of Waco

North Carolina

704-435-3923