Continental Cotton Gin Good as New

Image Gallery The gin and engine building at the Gaston Agricultural, Mechanical and Textile Restoration Association

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When Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in the late 1700s, his invention re-created the American cotton industry. Two hundred years later, a vintage cotton gin in North Carolina re-creates the past. 

"The cotton gin was somewhat revolutionary for the industry," says Dr. Ray Medford, Gastonia, N.C. "It allowed farmers to grow a lot more cotton, and do a lot more with it. But when the boll weevil hit in the late forties, it really caused a great deal of problems for the southeast. In our county, it was the end of cotton."

Ray is one of a handful of members of the Gaston Agricultural, Mechanical, and Textile Restoration Association (GAMTRA) in Gaston County, N.C, who made it their goal to find and restore a cotton gin for their group. None of those involved in the project had any actual experience with a cotton gin. But what they lacked in experience, they made up for in sheer determination.

The group's hand-fed, single-stand gin (and its companion bale press) was made by the Continental Cotton Gin Company between 1900-05. Single-stand gins were developed for use on individual plantations. Their "big brother," the four-stand gin - actually, four gins running simultaneously - was a commercial operation drawing growers from a large area. Later gins were almost always four-stand, Ray says.

The number of saws (in a cotton gin, circular saw blades separate the fiber from the seed) in the Continental gin - 50 - also gives clues about the machine's past.

"Most single stand gins had 80 saws," Ray says, "which gives more capacity."

The GAMTRA gin was found in Crawfordville, Ga. The H.C. Langford family was instrumental in procuring the gin for the group. (H.C. Langford is since deceased; his sons, Bill and H.C. Jr., remain active in GAMTRA.)

"I was told about it by a friend who'd seen it from a deer stand on the property," Ray recalls. "The trees had really grown up around it."

The gin was originally purchased by a black doctor, J.W. Gaines, "who had, as best as we can determine, 19 children, to help with the enterprise," Ray says. "As far as we know, the Gaines family was the only one ever to operate the gin."

And no one, he says, had operated the gin for at least 50 years. Restoration work was badly needed.

"There were two major challenges when we got our gin," Ray says. "The saws were extremely rusty, extremely dull. But we found an elderly gentleman, in his late seventies if not eighties, who borrowed a saw sharpening machine designed specifically for cotton gin saws, and he sharpened all our blades."

The saw sharpener was a story in itself, he says.

"It's an original piece," he says, "a hand-operated thing with lots of whirligigs."

The other major hurdle? "Just behind the saws, there's a cylinder the width of the machine (about six feet), covered longitudinally with brushes. Mice had eaten all that horse hair," Ray says. "We had a great deal of difficulty finding someone to make brushes like that. When we did, the price quoted to rebuild the brushes about knocked our socks off."

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