December 18, 2009
Coats Museum News
From time to time, we have museum visitors who inquire as to what was originally on the site of the Coats Museum. That question affords the volunteers with the opportunity to tell the visitors about one of our early cotton gins in the area since the Coats Cotton Museum is built on the site of the W.H. Wiggins cotton gin.
According to Mark Parrish, B.F. Parrish sold this cotton gin to W.H. Wiggins about 1908. Dan Stewart lived across the road in the Stewart Hotel and was author of “Thank you Lord for a Good Life.” Dan wrote that in 1911, W.H. Wiggins was at an event at the Coats District #3 School when he was summoned to his cotton gin where a problem with machinery had occurred. Mr. Wiggins was dressed in a suit, the jacket having tails. When Mr. Wiggins was attempting to correct the problem, the tails on his jacket caught in mechanism and he was hurled round and round, hitting his head and; hence, he was killed. Was Wiggins the grandfather of Max, Godfrey, Levin and Charles Beasley?
We know that later the Lee Moore Oil Company had oil tanks on that site until that land was given to a group of citizens representing all the clubs in town to be used for the benefit of the community around 1980. Then in 1990, that group gave the deeds to the land to the Coats Museum for the establishment of a museum for the benefit of the community.
Others wonder when cotton came to the area. This I do know. Malcolm Fowler, noted Harnett historian, stated in his book, They Passed This Way, that when the early settlers came to our area prior to the early 1800’s, they had been approached by the Quakers in Bladen County to stay there and grow cotton-a plant whose lint by far surpassed the flax fiber. We also know that by 1890, there were 9,281 acres of cotton planted in Harnett County that produced 3,627 bales of lint. By 1911, there were 42 gins in the county according to the NC Business Directory (Harnett). The cotton ginners in the Grove area were Ennis and Norris, Benjamin F. Johnson, D. (Debro) Turlington, S.C. Neighbors, William Richardson Sorrell, B.F. Parrish, L.L. Turlington and Sandy Adams. According to the Harnett Industrial Report (1913), published by a Dunn newspaper, the cotton poundage had increased from 1000 pounds per acre to 2,232 pounds under the guidance of Demonstration Agents. W.H. Turlington of Turlington was an agent as was the father of Rev. J.M. Mewborn who married the granddaughter of W.H. Turlington.
In 1926, 50,000 bales of cotton were produced in Harnett, but the number dropped to 29,681 in 1929. The number increased to 31, 023 in 1930; dropped to 29,517 in 1931 and fail drastically to 22, 610 in November of 1932. The lowest number of bales produced in a quarter of century in the nation occurred in 1935 when only 615,000 bales were ginned. By 1939, tobacco overtook cotton as the money crop to raise.
Some visitors ask how much seeded cotton could a person pick in a day. Locally, Clara Cobb Barbour was said to be able to pick 300 pounds. At the price of picking per 100 pounds at $3.50-how much did Clara earn in a day? Others have asked how many bolls of cotton were in a pound. The answer would depend upon the quality of the cotton but could run from 50 to 80 bolls for a pound and it took about 1200 pounds of seeded cotton to make an approximate 500 pound bale of ginned cotton.
The cotton gin workers were paid 60 cents a day in 1920. This was the same year that the prominent Coats businessman, T.V. Stewart, opened his 41 bale cotton gin in Coats. Cotton prices dropped from spring 40 prices to fall prices of 5 cents in that same year. Stewart had joined John McKoy Byrd and N.T. Patterson in ginning cotton in Coats.
Cotton affected the opening of school in the county. If the cotton was still in the fields, schools were sometimes delayed until late September in white schools while the students in the colored schools sometimes did not attend school until October.
Cotton had affected the economy of Harnett County. In 1929, the Erwin Mill was the largest taxpayer in Harnett and paid a tax bill of $90,000. Boll weevils were a farmer’s nightmare. A short cotton crop could result in the loss of the farm if it had been mortgaged to get credit to purchase seeds, fertilizers and other farm needs to operate the farm.
Hence, the farm families went into the fields to check the stalks and cotton bolls for signs of boll weevils. The infested bolls, whether on the stalk or on the ground, were collected into bags or buckets and were burned. Crushing a boll weevil between the thumb and forefinger was commonplace. The laborious task seldom eradicated the weevils; hence, the farmers turned to toxic means to destroy the pest. The Harnett County News in 1939 gave the recipe for a lethal mixture to kill the weevils.
The mixture for three applications on one acre included 3pounds of calcium arsenate, 3 gallons of black strap molasses, and 3 gallons of waters. The mixture was sometimes hand mopped while some farmers had had an apparatus like the one donated by Bobby Norris to the Coats Cotton Museum.
Visit our Cotton Museum to see the story of cotton from seed to products made from the lint. The plantation gin was given to the museum by Mack and Juanita Hudson. Visit the www.coatsmuseum.com to view more about the cotton and the heritage of our Coats community.
Please be mindful that this article appeared in the Daily Record in 2009.
From time to time, we have museum visitors who inquire as to what was originally on the site of the Coats Museum. That question affords the volunteers with the opportunity to tell the visitors about one of our early cotton gins in the area since the Coats Cotton Museum is built on the site of the W.H. Wiggins cotton gin.
According to Mark Parrish, B.F. Parrish sold this cotton gin to W.H. Wiggins about 1908. Dan Stewart lived across the road in the Stewart Hotel and was author of “Thank you Lord for a Good Life.” Dan wrote that in 1911, W.H. Wiggins was at an event at the Coats District #3 School when he was summoned to his cotton gin where a problem with machinery had occurred. Mr. Wiggins was dressed in a suit, the jacket having tails. When Mr. Wiggins was attempting to correct the problem, the tails on his jacket caught in mechanism and he was hurled round and round, hitting his head and; hence, he was killed. Was Wiggins the grandfather of Max, Godfrey, Levin and Charles Beasley?
We know that later the Lee Moore Oil Company had oil tanks on that site until that land was given to a group of citizens representing all the clubs in town to be used for the benefit of the community around 1980. Then in 1990, that group gave the deeds to the land to the Coats Museum for the establishment of a museum for the benefit of the community.
Others wonder when cotton came to the area. This I do know. Malcolm Fowler, noted Harnett historian, stated in his book, They Passed This Way, that when the early settlers came to our area prior to the early 1800’s, they had been approached by the Quakers in Bladen County to stay there and grow cotton-a plant whose lint by far surpassed the flax fiber. We also know that by 1890, there were 9,281 acres of cotton planted in Harnett County that produced 3,627 bales of lint. By 1911, there were 42 gins in the county according to the NC Business Directory (Harnett). The cotton ginners in the Grove area were Ennis and Norris, Benjamin F. Johnson, D. (Debro) Turlington, S.C. Neighbors, William Richardson Sorrell, B.F. Parrish, L.L. Turlington and Sandy Adams. According to the Harnett Industrial Report (1913), published by a Dunn newspaper, the cotton poundage had increased from 1000 pounds per acre to 2,232 pounds under the guidance of Demonstration Agents. W.H. Turlington of Turlington was an agent as was the father of Rev. J.M. Mewborn who married the granddaughter of W.H. Turlington.
In 1926, 50,000 bales of cotton were produced in Harnett, but the number dropped to 29,681 in 1929. The number increased to 31, 023 in 1930; dropped to 29,517 in 1931 and fail drastically to 22, 610 in November of 1932. The lowest number of bales produced in a quarter of century in the nation occurred in 1935 when only 615,000 bales were ginned. By 1939, tobacco overtook cotton as the money crop to raise.
Some visitors ask how much seeded cotton could a person pick in a day. Locally, Clara Cobb Barbour was said to be able to pick 300 pounds. At the price of picking per 100 pounds at $3.50-how much did Clara earn in a day? Others have asked how many bolls of cotton were in a pound. The answer would depend upon the quality of the cotton but could run from 50 to 80 bolls for a pound and it took about 1200 pounds of seeded cotton to make an approximate 500 pound bale of ginned cotton.
The cotton gin workers were paid 60 cents a day in 1920. This was the same year that the prominent Coats businessman, T.V. Stewart, opened his 41 bale cotton gin in Coats. Cotton prices dropped from spring 40 prices to fall prices of 5 cents in that same year. Stewart had joined John McKoy Byrd and N.T. Patterson in ginning cotton in Coats.
Cotton affected the opening of school in the county. If the cotton was still in the fields, schools were sometimes delayed until late September in white schools while the students in the colored schools sometimes did not attend school until October.
Cotton had affected the economy of Harnett County. In 1929, the Erwin Mill was the largest taxpayer in Harnett and paid a tax bill of $90,000. Boll weevils were a farmer’s nightmare. A short cotton crop could result in the loss of the farm if it had been mortgaged to get credit to purchase seeds, fertilizers and other farm needs to operate the farm.
Hence, the farm families went into the fields to check the stalks and cotton bolls for signs of boll weevils. The infested bolls, whether on the stalk or on the ground, were collected into bags or buckets and were burned. Crushing a boll weevil between the thumb and forefinger was commonplace. The laborious task seldom eradicated the weevils; hence, the farmers turned to toxic means to destroy the pest. The Harnett County News in 1939 gave the recipe for a lethal mixture to kill the weevils.
The mixture for three applications on one acre included 3pounds of calcium arsenate, 3 gallons of black strap molasses, and 3 gallons of waters. The mixture was sometimes hand mopped while some farmers had had an apparatus like the one donated by Bobby Norris to the Coats Cotton Museum.
Visit our Cotton Museum to see the story of cotton from seed to products made from the lint. The plantation gin was given to the museum by Mack and Juanita Hudson. Visit the www.coatsmuseum.com to view more about the cotton and the heritage of our Coats community.
Please be mindful that this article appeared in the Daily Record in 2009.
