Cone Mills Corporation (and predecessor Proximity Manufacturing Company and its other subsidiary and affiliated companies) manufactured denim and other textiles chiefly in North Carolina and South Carolina. Moses Herman Cone (1857-1908), Ceasar Cone (1859-1917), and other Cone family members began investing in the textile industry in the late nineteenth century and for much of the twentieth century were world leaders in textile manufacturing.

Moses Herman Cone (June 29, 1857 – December 8, 1908) was an American textile entrepreneur, conservationist, and philanthropist of the Gilded Age who was active in the southern United States. He began his career in sales and became an innovator who offered finished clothing, which was unusual in an era when textiles were normally sold as unfinished cloth.

Cone manufactured unusual textile fabrics and founded a company that became a leading manufacturer of denim. His company was a major supplier to Levi Strauss and Company for nearly a century.

Moses met and married Bertha Lindau. In the 1880s the Cones then moved to Eutaw Place in Baltimore, conveniently the same street where the Lindaus lived. They became neighbors. Bertha was one year younger than Moses.

In 1890 Moses and his brother Ceasar were contemplating even grander ventures and formed the Cone Export & Commission Company in New York City along with Anderson Price and Jay C. Guggenheimer as the other major stockholders. They developed what was called the "Plaid Trust" which was a commission clearing house to stabilize the production market on checks and plaids. They were a marketer of Southern cloth mill-goods to South America in competition with Great Britain. Initially the par value of the capital stock of their new company was fifty dollars per share. There were 20,000 shares of the company, so the value of this new firm was placed at one million dollars. Eventually they took in another forty mills over time to capture control of this market, but their ambitious goal was never fully achieved.

Mr. Cone and his wife had no children and donated substantial property upon their deaths. Their home Flat Top Manor has become a North Carolina tourist attraction that receives 250,000 visitors a year. It forms part of Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, which is run by the National Park Service. Their donations founded the Moses Cone Health System, a private not-for-profit health care system based in Greensboro, North Carolina and its principal facility The Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital.

Moses died at age 51 in 1908 of pulmonary edema at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
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Photo
"NOTABLE NEW YORKERS"
Circa 1896-1899
Personal Collection

View of enclosure for cemetery.

View of bronze plaque and of Mountains from back of monument.