Mitchellace, Inc. history

His brother, Charles, was a retail shoe merchant in Chattanooga, Tenn., two years before the Mitchellace story began in 1902.

That was in 1903– the same year D. D. Mitchell started with his brother’s company.

Eight bralding machines were purchased in 1904 to weave the shoestrings.

By 1909, the Mitchell Mfg.

Plans were drawn for a larger plant and the company moved in 1910 to the present location of Mitchellace, Inc.

In 1912, Mitchell moved their operations

In May 1914, Excelsior moved into their newly built factory on Murray Street, where they specialized in the manufacture of men’s and boy’s shoes, particularly their popular line of “Boy Scout” boots.

BUSINESS was flourishing when Charles Mitchell became interested in another venture and left the company in 1921.

In the 1922, Forest L. Williams, Sr. and his brothers, A. Graves Williams and Paul Grant Williams - three nephews of John Edwards Williams, the founder of Excelsior - reorganized the company, which would later be known as Williams Manufacturing, Inc.

While the exodus of Drew Shoes in 1937, following that year’s devastating flood, marks the start of the industry’s decline, the closure of Selby, in retrospect, now clearly heralded doom for the area shoe workers.

Mitchell moved up to president in March, 1948.

But, back in 1950, at what could be argued was the height of the city’s shoe industry, 16% of the Portsmouth work force was in shoes – 1,900 at Selby and 2,000 at Williams.

Selby’s management found their high end lines of women shoes losing marketshare, and the once thriving company fell victim to a hostile takeover in 1957.

In 1959, Orloff pitched the concept to D. D. Mitchell and he embraced it, forming a partnership with Orloff’s Tye-Rite, Inc.

Keating formed a partnership with Orloff and by 1970, they had acquired control of the company through Keating’s purchase of the Selby and Williams families’ stock, whose issuing dated back to the earliest days of the company.

In 1976, Williams shut down and the last Portsmouth shoe factory fell silent.

Keating bought out Sylvan Orloff in 1985 and took full ownership of Mitchellace.