The School of Agriculture of Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, owns a precious piece of our shared American heritage, an old cotton gin. The Continental Gin Company, located in Prattville in central Alabama, made the gin in the 1880s. The University bought and installed it in a two-story gin house in the late 1880s. Students in the University's Experiment Station used it from then until the late twentieth century to process cotton and determine acreage yields and other statistics helpful to Alabama cotton farmers.

Cotton gins process cotton by removing the fiber that grows out of the seed. There are many types of gins but by 1830 the most common type used in the United States was the saw gin. Auburn's gin has forty saws that resemble fine-toothed circular saws. The saws run in between metal strips called ribs individually and a grate collectively. The grate holds back the seed cotton while the saws pull the fiber through the spaces between strips. A large brush whisks the fiber from the teeth. In the case of Auburn's gin, the fiber then collected on a condenser, which compacted the fiber into a thick sheet. Workers pulled the sheet into the adjacent cotton press where pressmen compacted it into a bale weighing about four hundred pounds.

Once common, cotton gins from the nineteenth century are now rare but Auburn University's gin is exceptional. Inside its roll box, the cavity where the ginner puts the seed cotton (cotton after it has been harvested), is a conservative modification patented by Merrill E. Pratt. Pratt was the nephew of Daniel Pratt, an Alabama gin maker and industrialist. He had worked for his famous uncle from the late 1840s, learning the trade by observation and practice. In the 1850s gin makers - the majority of whom were white and black southerners - began marketing "attachments," like Pratt's, promised to increase the quality of the fiber without diminishing the quantity of lint. The fashion for gin attachments peaked in the late 1870s before Pratt submitted his unique patent.

Pratt described the modification in his 1873 patent (U.S. Pat. No. 140,791). "My invention relates to an improvement in cotton-gins; and consists in providing the sides of the hopper with circular plates, which are rotated in any suitable manner within the cotton-box, the heads or sides of the box being cut away to receive the plates in such position that the inner surfaces of the heads or sides of the box correspond with the inner surfaces of the rotating plates. The plates, too, are of such a diameter and placed in such position that their circumferences cover substantially all of the surface of the heads or sides of the box with which the roll of cotton is likely to come in contact when the machine is in operation. The object of the invention is to diminish the friction in cotton-gins of ordinary construction, caused by the roll of cotton within the hopper coming in contact with the interior surfaces of the heads or ends of the cotton-box."

The next five paragraphs of the patent describe the mechanism making reference to the patent drawing, included by law. He used a "ledge," patented by Daniel Pratt in 1857 (U.S. Pat. No. 17,806; extended 1871), which was still "protected by Letters Patent." He claimed only "a cotton-box provided with the revolving plates 'E' let into its heads or sides, substantially as shown, said plates operating as and for the purpose set forth."

Pratt believed that the plates would reduce friction and allow the roll to revolve more freely. A freely revolving roll would present more new surfaces to the teeth, theoretically allowing them to remove more fiber, increasing outturn whether or not they actually increased its value.

For over one hundred years, Merrill E. Pratt's patented gin has sat on the second floor of the gin house across the road from Auburn University's renowned Old Rotation. Its abraded exterior is evidence of its service in the School of Agriculture's Experiment Station; its rusted interior, evidence of neglect now that students use more modern equipment.

Members of the Auburn University community are planning to commemorate Alabama's rich agricultural past in the Agricultural Heritage Park. They have already secured impressive resources and intend among other projects to restore the "Old Red Barn" and the university's dairy barn. They need your financial support as well as your comments. Please encourage them to include Alabama's rich cotton heritage by funding the restoration of the Merrill E. Pratt cotton gin and its installation within the Ag Heritage Park.

For more information on the Ag Heritage Park contact: Chris Gary, College of Agriculture, Director of Development, 317 S. College Street, Auburn University, AL 36849; 334 844-1136 or Martha Patterson, College of Agriculture, Constituency Affairs, 107 Comer Hall, Auburn University, AL 36849; 334 844 3198.

For more images of Auburn University's historic cotton saw gin, follow this link: Merrill E. Pratt Saw Gin