ORIGIN OF THE COTTON GIN. 289 



SECTION IV. ORIGIN OF THE COTTON GIN. 



MR. EDITOR : In a last year's number of the Soil of the 

 South, some one has written an article respecting the inven- 

 tion of the cotton saw-gin, and seems to think that Nathan 

 Lyons was the inventor. My father, who settled in this 

 place before the Revolution, (and this is the oldest town in 

 Georgia,) has often told me that Jesse Bull, the father of 

 Col. 0. A. Bull, now of La Grange, and Charles M. Lin, and 

 Lyons, were all interested in the making of the first gin. Mr. 

 Lin is the only survivor of the trio. He is a poor man ; 

 resides in or near Oxford, Georgia. Being on a visit here I 

 had a conversation with him a few days since and gathered 

 from him the following particulars. The first cotton gin was 

 put in operation at the mill on Brier Creek run by water, nine 

 miles below this. This gin was said to be invented by Whit- 

 ney it was not made of saws but with teeth, something 

 like the cotton card it was kept concealed the man who 

 tended it was ordered to let no man in to see it ; women, who 

 wm* many of them very anxious to see it, were admitted 

 at the same time Mr. Bull, being a man of great mechanical 

 genius, was closely engaged trying to construct a machine for 

 separating the seed from the lint. Lyons Ned Lyons was 

 at work with him, and proposed to go in disguise and see the 

 gin then in operation and did dressed himself in women's 

 apparel- went in and examined it this fact is corroborated 

 by Mr. Hobson Bacon, whose brother was hired to tend the 

 gin and he, the brother, was taken sick, and my uncle Hob- 

 son Bacon took his place for a few days during which time 

 many women were in to see the cotton gin. Soon after the 

 first saw gin came out from Jesse Bull's shop, was put up in a 

 bouse on Broad street in this place and was run by this same 

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