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A cotton gin gets a new lifeby
Bob Bowman | |
There
was a time in East
Texas when
almost every farming town had a cotton gin where farmers had their cotton
cleansed of field debris and processed into bales that could be sold and converted
into money that kept the family prepared for the winter months.
But most
of the cotton gins have disappeared
as relics of our agricultural past.
Thanks to the Depot Museum
at Henderson, a cotton gin
has now taken its place among other relics of the past, including a peckerwood
sawmill, a dog-trot home, a railroad depot, an oil derrick, a working printing
shop, a doctor’s office, a broom factory, a syrup mill, a carousel and an outhouse.
The cotton gin at Henderson was moved from Mount Enterprise, a community about
19 miles south of Henderson.
For years, it sat beside U.S. 259, slowing rusting away.
Today, it occupies
a prominent place beside the Depot Museum and the town’s library. It is one of
the few restored gins in East
Texas.
In
their heyday, cotton gins were
not only essential to the cotton economy; they
became gathering places for townsmen and farmers alike. They came there to look
at the year’s cotton crops, to exchange gossip
and talk politics.
With their massive machinery, the gins were exciting
to watch. Unprocessed cotton, usually straight
from the fields, was dumped into one end of the gin and emerged as white bales
that went to mills where clothing and other cotton goods were manufactured.
Sue
Weaver, director of Henderson’ Depot Museum, said the restoration cost of the
Mount Enterprise gin, once owned by Mark Bates, was around $100,000, plus dozens
of donated services.
The gin was built on a concrete footprint of the Mount
Enterprise gin. “We hope to make it a working gin when we’re finished,” said Weaver.
“It’s the biggest project ever undertaken by the Museum.”
“Regrettably,
we couldn’t save the original tin building. It had rusted over the years, so we
had to build a new tin building,” said Weaver.
If you want to visit the
Museum, drive to 514 North High Street in Henderson.
You can’t miss the cotton gin beside the street. | |
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