Texas cotton gins, scales, boll burners, cotton pickers, articles, images & more. (original) (raw)

100% COTTON

COTTON IN TEXAS

Production, Gins, Scales
and Cotton Related Articles

Long before oil, cattle, and timber, cotton was the Texas economy. Only ten years after Moses Austin received his first grant of land, cotton made up 353,000ofthe353,000 of the 353,000ofthe500,000 of exports that year.

When Southerners moved to Texas, they planted what they knew - cotton. During the Civil War it was Texas cotton moved to Mexico down the "cotton road" that provided the only lifeline to the Confederacy. After the civil war former slaves became free sharecroppers - but the crop still remained cotton.

From .31 per pound in 1865 to only .05 per pound in 1898, cotton prices ruled the Texas economy.

By 1910 half of everything planted in Texas was cotton. By 1928 they had figured out how to irrigate the Panhandle and 17,000,000 more acres were planted.

Here are personal stories of cotton picking and images of artifacts of the cotton industry in Texas. Cotton Gins, harvesters, scales, boll burners, and warehouses. Cotton festivals, "first bale" celebrations and cotton "as art" in murals and architectural details.

� John Troesser

Featured Cotton Articles

• The Boll Weevil by Archie P. McDonald
  Tex Ritter sang this lament decades ago:
  �Oh, the boll weevil is a little black bug, come from Mexico they say, come all the way to Texas, just looking for a place to stay, just looking for a home, just looking for a home.� And the weevil, actually a beetle, found it, much to the chagrin of East Texas cotton growers.
• Cotton Picking by Mike Cox
• Rafting Cotton from Bastrop to Matagorda by Mike Cox
• Women Bandits Hijack Cotton in Civil War Texas by Mike Cox
• The Cotton Pickin� Theater by Bob Bowman
  At Point, a small town of some 700 souls in northern Rains county..., a sturdy old gin has found a new life as an entertainment venue that draws crowds from all over East Texas and performers like Mark Chestnut, Pee Wee Walker, and Gary Busey...
• A cotton gin gets a new life by Bob Bowman
  Thanks to the Depot Museum at Henderson, a cotton gin has now taken its place among other relics of the past
• Baled in a Bale by Mike Cox
  No ginning story can top the occasional tale of a body in a bale.
• Bagdad by Mike Cox
  Cotton, the economic life blood of Texas and the Confederacy, soon made its way to Bagdad by riverboat, ship or ox-drawn wagons. From the Mexican port, it could be shipped to Britain and other European markets.
• Napoleon Bonaparte Wiess by W. T. Block
  Steamboat Captain and Confederate Soldier.
  The epics of William and Napoleon Wiess, which contributed to the cotton steamboat history of East Texas.
• The Legend of Ann Eliza's Grave by W. T. Block
  " As far back as the Texas Revolution, the river's flatboatmen floated their cotton cargoes to the river's mouth at Pavell's Island. "
• Cotton Farming in Verhalen, Texas
• Waxahachie: Where Cotton Reigned King
  Book review
• Our Buick Pickup Truck by George Leste
  We had cotton plants growing on either side of the Buick
• Cotton Days in Flomot

| | Waxahachie: Where Cotton Reigned King by Kelly McMichael Stott Photographs Courtesy of The Ellis County Historical Museum Arcadia Publishing's The Making of America Series. December 2002 | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |

	Cotton gin in oil by Boyer Gonzales, Jr., c. 1937. Anyone knowing the location, please Email jbaker1@suddenlink.net. - James and Kimel Baker