Virginia Village Is Believed World's Holly Wreath Capital
PROVIDENCE FORGE, Oct 22- You'd think that the Christmas holly wreath business would be a seasonal fair, but a look at the lone little factory in this New Kent County hamlet will show it's not. The biggest production comes in the months after New Year's, and it's all due to a preserving formula concocted by a local man.
Providence Forge is a crossroads village, population under 200 on Route 60 and the C&O, but it may well be the holly wreath capital of the world. Its one industry, housed in a two-story 100-foot square cinderblock building alongside the railroad tracks, annually produces 100,000 holly wreaths, from pie-plate size to some almost too big to get in the door. And even though only 50 people are ever employed in the plant at one time, the cash benefits of this agricultural are go a great deal further.
About 150 residents of New Kent and Charles City Counties gather native holly near their homes eight months out of the year. Then, between farm, fishing or trapping chores, they make neat wreaths which are preserved and painted by several processes in the plant of
Providence Forge's hotel, orchard, coal pile and wreath factory owner, Charles Evans Hughes.
` Name is Accident
Mr. Hughes, who says his name "just happened," and has no connection with his famous namesake*, is more generally know as the proprietor of the only rural general store which carries English Spode china, along with fly-paper and horse collars. The fact has frequently impressed passengers on the Richmond-to-Williamsburg buses, which stop at the store, more than anything else on the trip.
"This preserving formula is my own," explained tall-gray-haired and balding Mr. Hughes, looking wisely over his glasses, "Worked out over the years. Got glycerin in it."
Whatever's in it does the job, because Providence Forge wreaths last as long as four years.
"What I can't figure out," Mr.. Hughes said as he made his way past piles of wreaths stacked on the first floor of his low-ceilinged plant, "is why these wreaths are so popular up north for funerals. Down here we celebrate with 'em, but up there they mourn with 'em, too."
Steady Trade
It's this gloomy demand that keeps a trickle of preserved wreaths moving from storage all year around, although the bulk shipping season is from August to December for the celebrant trade.
"I'll sell 'em a 41-incher, double faced, if the undertaker wants it," Mr. Hughes confided. This model is the B-29 or Big Bertha of holly wreaths, and it costs him $2 each. Preserved, painted, berries added, boxed and shipped to the wholesale market, he sells them for $90 a dozen.
First step in the process is the making of wire metal hoop, in eight sizes (from 14 inches to 42 inches in diameter) which are taken out the piece-workers in the rural areas. Holly can best be picked from August to the following April, since it changes leaves during the Summer. Once made, the wreaths are picked up by Mr. Hughes' truck and paid for at the rate of 7 cents to $1, for single-faced wreaths.
Once in the plant, they're dipped in the preserving solution and hung up to dry for several days. Then comes the final dip into dark green enamel- and after another three days they're ready for artificial red berries, bought from a New Jersey plant, to be tied on.
The wire-strung ceilings of the plant, from which the wreaths are suspended in storage, are now half bare, as the shipping demands eats up last Spring's production. By Christmas they'll almost all be gone.
What amazes Mr. Hughes about the business is the abundance of holly.
Ample Supplies
"The supply seems to be increasing, he said, "after 30 years' of taking it, we've found that holly trees will put new branches out for broken ones every years. The pickers say it's everywhere."
Natural berries are relatively rare in the wreath brought into the Providence Forge factory, and Mr. Hughes has found addition of the artificial berries a necessary part of standard production.
He's be told by his buyers who are located in every principal city in the United States, and some in Canada, that his output is the largest of any one holly wreath manufactury. Asked for the name of the plant, America's No. 1 holly wreath tycoon scratched his head in a puzzled manner.
"Dunno," he said "Never thought of a name for it. I guess you'd call just call it Hughes Factory."
-Richmond Times-Dispatch, Oct 23, 1946
Charles Evans Hughes died in 1987 at the age of 94. He had lost most of his businesses after a series of legal issues in the late 1950's.
* This is a reference to Charles Evans Hughes the Republican presidential candidate who lost to Woodrow Wilson in the 1916 election.
