The Decline of King Cotton
Around 1920, the boll weevil began to infest the cotton bolls forming on the young plants and this prevented the bolls from forming good cotton lint. According to the late Allene Turlington Honeycutt, the young children on her dad Sheriff Will Turlington’s farm would walk down the rows of cotton and examine the bolls forming on the cotton stalks to see if a weevil had punctured the tender young green bolls. If it had been infested by the weevil, the damaged boll was pulled off and dropped into a small pail and the bolls were later burned.
The boll weevil, which resembles a very tiny anteater and is said to have originated in Mexico, resulted in many families in the Coats area losing their farms. To get the needed fertilizer and seeds for growing the crops, the farmer would often mortgage the farm. When the crop failed due to boll weevils, poor weather conditions or other circumstances, the farmer lost the farm to the ones he owed money for the seeds, fertilizer bills or other obligations.
When researching old grantor-grantee records in Lillington Courthouse for our Heritage of Coats, NC book, we found so many names that had MD (Mortgage Deed) beside the land transaction; hence, many farms were lost due to the infestation of the tiny boll weevils.
I grew up on a farm where tobacco and cotton were grown. In fact, my granddaddy Ben F. Johnson owned and operated a plantation cotton gin as did my father until about 1926 when Dad added tobacco after being encouraged to do so by Joe Penny, one of his older mentors after my grandaddy died when Dad was only 20 years old.
Did any of you grow up on a farm? I am trying to remember if cotton seeds were sewn and had to be thinned out the width of a hoe blade. Early on cotton was picked by the hands of people- initially by enslaved people on the larger plantations- or by the farmer’s family on other farms. This was before the boll weevil entered the picture.
Three inventions affected cotton production- Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, the tractor and the mechanical cotton picker.
According to one story, Eli Whitney was inspired by watching a cat reach through the wire of a chicken coop and pull out only feathers. That idea led him to create a machine with teeth and mesh that separated cotton seeds from the lint, or fibers. Does a single cotton boll always contain five locks, each with about seven or eight seeds and 10,000 to 20,000 fibers?
Some interesting tidbits about separating the seeds from the lint is that early on it is said that children had to pick the seeds from the fiber and that each one had to pick out enough seeds to fill one of their shoes before going to bed. It is also written that a person could separate the seeds from the lint (fiber) and produce one pound of lint per day, but a cotton gin could produce 50 pounds of lint per day. The lint was used in making textiles from threads of cotton. Some seeds were used for planting next year’s crop and making cottonseed oil. What happened to the cotton hulls? Can you believe that cotton was used in highway construction in earlier days? What did ginners get to gin the cotton? Does 2/5 of profit from farmers to gin cotton seem exorbitant?
Do any of you know when the tractor and mechanical cotton picker were introduced to our area farms? Let’s make that the topic of a future column.
Around 1920, the boll weevil began to infest the cotton bolls forming on the young plants and this prevented the bolls from forming good cotton lint. According to the late Allene Turlington Honeycutt, the young children on her dad Sheriff Will Turlington’s farm would walk down the rows of cotton and examine the bolls forming on the cotton stalks to see if a weevil had punctured the tender young green bolls. If it had been infested by the weevil, the damaged boll was pulled off and dropped into a small pail and the bolls were later burned.
The boll weevil, which resembles a very tiny anteater and is said to have originated in Mexico, resulted in many families in the Coats area losing their farms. To get the needed fertilizer and seeds for growing the crops, the farmer would often mortgage the farm. When the crop failed due to boll weevils, poor weather conditions or other circumstances, the farmer lost the farm to the ones he owed money for the seeds, fertilizer bills or other obligations.
When researching old grantor-grantee records in Lillington Courthouse for our Heritage of Coats, NC book, we found so many names that had MD (Mortgage Deed) beside the land transaction; hence, many farms were lost due to the infestation of the tiny boll weevils.
I grew up on a farm where tobacco and cotton were grown. In fact, my granddaddy Ben F. Johnson owned and operated a plantation cotton gin as did my father until about 1926 when Dad added tobacco after being encouraged to do so by Joe Penny, one of his older mentors after my grandaddy died when Dad was only 20 years old.
Did any of you grow up on a farm? I am trying to remember if cotton seeds were sewn and had to be thinned out the width of a hoe blade. Early on cotton was picked by the hands of people- initially by enslaved people on the larger plantations- or by the farmer’s family on other farms. This was before the boll weevil entered the picture.
Three inventions affected cotton production- Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, the tractor and the mechanical cotton picker.
According to one story, Eli Whitney was inspired by watching a cat reach through the wire of a chicken coop and pull out only feathers. That idea led him to create a machine with teeth and mesh that separated cotton seeds from the lint, or fibers. Does a single cotton boll always contain five locks, each with about seven or eight seeds and 10,000 to 20,000 fibers?
Some interesting tidbits about separating the seeds from the lint is that early on it is said that children had to pick the seeds from the fiber and that each one had to pick out enough seeds to fill one of their shoes before going to bed. It is also written that a person could separate the seeds from the lint (fiber) and produce one pound of lint per day, but a cotton gin could produce 50 pounds of lint per day. The lint was used in making textiles from threads of cotton. Some seeds were used for planting next year’s crop and making cottonseed oil. What happened to the cotton hulls? Can you believe that cotton was used in highway construction in earlier days? What did ginners get to gin the cotton? Does 2/5 of profit from farmers to gin cotton seem exorbitant?
Do any of you know when the tractor and mechanical cotton picker were introduced to our area farms? Let’s make that the topic of a future column.
