NATHAN LYONS. 287 



that cotton planters are indebted for that indispensable ma- 

 chine, the cotton gin, now in such general use. It is just 

 cause of reproach to any people, to forget or to refuse due 

 honors to their own benefactors ; and it is for the purpose of 

 retrieving 1 , in some sort, this country from such a reproach, 

 that I would now solicit for publication in the Soil of the 

 South, a brief memoir of Nathan Lyons, a man whose invent- 

 ive genius, it is asserted, first contrived the circular saw for 

 separating the seed from the cotton wool. 



Eli Whitney, of Connecticut, doubtless developed the first 

 idea of a machine for ginning cotton by the use of a single 

 revolving cylinder armed with iron points or teeth, acting in 

 connection with fixed bars, and a bush to extricate the cotton 

 wool from the teeth of the revolving cylinder. For this inven- 

 tion he obtained a patent right of exclusive use and sale, and 

 erected one or more machines at Augusta about the close of 

 the last century, or the first of this. A" glimpse of this ma- 

 chine, it is said, suggested to the quick mind of Lyons, the 

 substitution of a circular saw, for the wire hooks or card-teeth 

 contrivance of Whitney. Although the invention of Lyons 

 had a practical value incomparably greater than that of Whit- 

 ney, it was never patented the inventor contenting himself 

 with such profits as might accrue from the manufacture and 

 sale of saw-gins at his own shop. Though Whitney is admit- 

 ted to be fairly entitled to the honor of originality, except a 

 grant of money from the government of South Carolina, it is 

 not believed that he ever derived any considerable pecuniary 

 profits from his patent. He instituted suits against many 

 persons in this State who were using Lyons' saw-gin, but it is 

 not known that he recovered in a single instance. The ablest 

 counsel could not make our juries believe that Whitney's 

 model was the same piece of machinery with Lyons' saw-gin. 

 Since the days of Lyons, Griswold, Taylor, Reid, Oglesby, 



