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Did You Know: Cotton economy — Part I

By Janet Morrison
Did you know?
Did you know that 50 years ago most of the fields around Harrisburg were planted in cotton? As late as the early 1960s, some Harrisburg school children had to miss all their classes for two or three weeks in the fall because their families depended upon them to pick cotton.

Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1792. Born in Massachusetts, he took a tutoring job on a plantation in Georgia after graduating from Yale. He immediately saw the need for a mechanical way to separate the cotton fiber from the cotton seed, which was a time-consuming task by hand. He invented the cotton gin and sought a patent. 

Cotton production in the U.S. began to double in every decade after 1800, in large part to the cotton gin. It proved to be a double-edged sword, though. 
The increase in cotton production resulted in an increase in the slave trade. 

By 1850, the U.S. produced three-fifths of the world’s cotton. Unfortunately for the South, most of it was shipped to New England or to England to be milled into fabric. 

The first cotton mill in Cabarrus County began operations in Concord in 1840 at the corner of present-day Church Street and McGill Avenue on the site of Locke Mill of more recent memory Locke Mill was converted into offices and condominiums a few years ago.

Building that first mill was a formidable and risky undertaking. The spinning frames were shipped from Fishkill, N.Y., by sea to Georgetown, S.C. From there, up the Great Pee Dee River to Cheraw, and from Cheraw to Concord by six-horse wagons. The engine that ran the steam-powered plant was shipped by sea to Wilmington and up the Cape Fear River to Fayetteville. From there, it was transported by horse and wagon.

When the 1850 U.S. Census was taken, Concord Manufacturing Company reported that its steam-powered cotton factory employed 15 males and 55 females. The males were paid an average of $12.47 per month and the females were paid an average of $4.91 per month.

When the 1850 and 1860 U.S. Censuses were taken, Cabarrus County had not yet been divided into townships. Looking at the names in the 1850 Census Schedule of Industry, it appears that there was only one cotton gin at that time in Township No. 1. It was owned and operated by Samuel Wilson, a 59-year-old farmer who was born in Lincoln County, N.C.

Wilson’s cotton gin was on McKee Creek near where present-day Peach Orchard Road crosses the creek. In 1850, Wilson reported having processed 24,000 pounds of seed cotton valued at $30,000 in the previous year. The water-powered gin employed an average of four men who were paid an average of $15 per month. The gin produced 1,080 bales of ginned cotton. His cotton gin and grist mill together were valued at $43,200. One of Wilson’s employees was his 20-year-old son, John N.D. Wilson.

In the mid-1800s, some cotton gins were powered by water while others were powered by horses. In his 1948 paper, “Some Sketches of Rocky River Church and Vicinity,” William Eugene Alexander described how a horse-powered cotton gin worked:
“It took four horses, hitched two abreast, and it took two boys to drive them. There was one gin run by water power on the river near the site of Black’s mill. There were no lint condensers to the gins, but the lint was blown out into the lint room like a snowstorm, and a hand would gather it up in a basket and carry it to the cotton press out in the gin yard, where it was baled. The press was constructed with a large wooden screw pin, 10 or 12 inches in diameter. This press was probably 18 or 20 feet high, and was manipulated by means of long levers, to which a mule or hose was hitched for power.”

Alexander remembered that Sandy McKinley (his great-aunt’s husband) and Pinkney Morrison (his grandfather), both of Township No. 1, had horse-powered cotton gins. Those gins might have been for private use. 

Part II in this series about the old cotton economy of Township No. 1 of Cabarrus County will examine the cotton gins listed in the 1870 U.S. Census.

Bibliography
Cabarrus Reborn:  A Historical Sketch of the Founding and Development of Cannon Mills Company and Kannapolis, by James Lewis Moore and Thomas Herron Wingate, 1940.
“Some Sketches of Rocky River Church and Vicinity,” by William Eugene Alexander, 1948.

http://www.archives.gov

Seventh Census, Cabarrus County, North Carolina - 1850, transcribed by Betty L. Krimminger and James R. Wilson, 1985.

Eighth Census, Cabarrus County, North Carolina - 1860, transcribed by Betty L. Krimminger and James R. Wilson, 1987.

By the Old Mill Stream, by The Stephen Cabarrus History Club, Harrisburg School, 1968.