208 
SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
seem, to throw off the lint when detached from the seed. 
Whereupon, Mrs. Miller, who was standing by, seeing 
the difficulty, reached out for a common hair clothes 
brush, applied it to the teeth and caught the lint. Mr 
Whitney, with delight and excitement, exclaimed — 
“Madame, you have solved my difficulty; with this 
suggestion of the brush, my machine is complete.” He 
then added the brush, on the principle now used, to de- 
tach and throw off the lint from the teeth that remove it 
from the seed. A few years ago, with much trouble, and 
at some expense, I procured part of one of Whitney’s 
original cylinders with wire teeth and sent it to Augusta 
to the Agricultural Fair, for exhibition, where it was lost. 
It must still be in existence, I presume, in Augusta, and 
I hope if found it will be returned, that I may deposit it 
with our Agricultural Society, or some other institution 
where it can be preserved with the care due to such a 
relic. 
When a boy, I saw John Lyon, and though at his 
bouse, liave no recollection about him, except that I saw 
Mr. Lyon who then owned a mill There are many 
persons in this county who knew and recollect all about 
him, and of his supplying the county with the few saw 
gins then used. But I have elicited no tacts worth re- 
cording, except from Samiul T. Burns, his brother-in- 
law, and who worked in his shop at gin making, and 
from Thomas Anderson who is now over eighty years 
old. Both these gentlemen afein full possession of their 
faculties, and their word is beyond suspicion, even if there 
were a motive for misrepresentation. 
Almost anything now concerning the early history of 
the great staple, and the invention which has contr buted 
so much to its value, is of interest. Therefore, the excuse 
for stating what otherwise rni^ht appear trivial. 
Mr. Burns promised me a written memorandum, 
some time since, wliich not having come to hand, I have 
concluded to delay my communication no longer for it. 
But he told me in convt rsation, that the saw gin was 
ffrst made in semi circles and fastened on the cylinder. 
Edward Lyon, the brother of John, was a smooth tac< d 
young man, who dressed himself in woman’s clothes 
so as to get in with them who only Wliitney would let 
see the gin in operation, as was related to me by Mr 
Talbot, and mentioned in a communication 1 made to the 
Cultivator \n 185’i. 
Thos. Anderson and Bolling Anthony, in 179G, were 
CO partners merchandising jit the residence of Anthony, 
some six miles north-east of this place. He thinks they 
were the first who bought cotton in the county. After 
they got a saw gin, they paid two dollars and fifty cents 
per hundred pounds in the seed. Lint Cotton sold in the 
county for about twenty-five cents per pound. In June, 
1797, he went to Virginia with two loads of ginned cot- 
ton, of two thousand pounds each. He gave two dollars 
per day for wagon, team and driver, and found them. 
He had to go on ahead of the teams and provide depots 
of provisions for their consumption. He went to Bedford 
Court House, in Virginia, and sold out all his cotton, by 
retail, in a day and a half, fur fiity cents per pound. He 
loaded back at Calloway’s Iron Works, Rocky Mount, 
Virginia, with iron, at $112 per ton. He made by his 
trip of forty-eight days, one thousand dollars clear, “ but 
a heap of it was cut money.” 
Mr. A. says they first ginned with rollers, one hand 
to a pair. They had twelve pairs, and ginned from 
seventy-five to a hundred pounds a day Ihey had to 
keep a hand all the time turning rollers, they burned out 
by friction so fast. They got McCloud to make them a 
thirty five saw gin, propelled by water; it ginned some 
twenty-five hundred pounds seed cotton per day. He 
thinks the saw gin did nearly as well then as now, ex- 
cept it napped badly. M’Cioud was sued by Whitney 
for an invasion of his patent. Mr. A. made a sec- 
ond trip to Virginia, with cotton, in October, 1897, 
“but the Carolinians had gone in and glutted the market,'”’’ 
so that he got but forty-tiiree cents per pound. 
Mr. Anderson says, “sometime before,” he thinks a 
year before, he had the saw gin, he v/as at what is now 
known as the Simon’s, or Factory Place, at a battalion 
muster, when Whitney’s gin was" in operation, and iho 
whole baitalion were permitted to go behind ard .see the 
(lakes of cotton thrown off tiie gin by the iirusii, but mme 
were permiited to examine further. This Simon's, o.r 
Factory Place, is the one mentioned by Mr. J’albf't, in my 
interview, alluded to in my communication in 1852. 
Antiquary says, “ About the year 1795, a gentleman 
from Baltitrmre — the father of Judge Bull', of L Grange — 
settled in Columlna county, in thisSiate, and introduced 
the Cotton Gin,” &c. Now, Mr. Anderson shows thaS 
in June, 1797, he had four thousand pounds of cotton 
ginned on a saw gin, and some time before he had it, say 
in 1796, he saw Wiiitney’s gin in operaiinn Now, there 
must necessarily have elapved tvw or ihree years fronv 
the invention of the school teacher, on Sc Sinnuj’s Inland, 
before he could have patented his" invention, j^ot ic into 
practical working order, settle a place in Wilkes, erected 
and set his gin to work. And this corresponds with the 
historical fact, that “ Whitney’s invention came riito ope- 
ration in 1793.” Nov 7, Antiquary says, “About the year 
seventeen hundred and vive/y-five.'’ (The itp.licsare my 
own.) Bull, “ from Baltimore,” settled in Columbia 
county, even aft*!- die saiv gin must have been in opera- 
tion. For McCloud, as .Anderson tells us, before June,. 
1797, had built one. It is very reasonable to suppose 
that some year or two must have elapsed after Lyon had 
invented die saw gin, before other persons could success- 
fully take up the trade. And we must recollect that inas- 
much as Bull came from Baltimore, where — it is to be 
presumed — he had never seen a lock of seed cotton, it 
would be some time before he would successfully direct 
his attention to the invention, to which must be added 
some time in working it out. And this is fortified by 
what Mr Tall'ot said to me, as mentioned in my com- 
munication of 1852, about Billy McLerran, the little 
Irish blacksmith of this county, making the saws for 
Lyon, ‘ the Jiist that ever were made.” 
I think nothing is to be inferred as to xhe priority of the 
invention from the fact tliat Whitney viflVred Bull a con- 
sideration to let judgment go against him. I presume Bull 
was sued for making a saiv gin, as McCloud anil i.ihers 
were in Richmond, Columbia, Burke, and perhaps in 
other counties But I always understood the defences 
were put on the ground that the sow was no violation of 
the wire tooth gin. And I cannot discover why the offer 
might not have l>een, as welt as if (Ms were Bull’s de- 
fenceasifit had been on the ground of prioi ity of inven- 
tion Indeed, it is a mortifying histoiical fact, that 
Whitney never obtained from the justice of her juries or 
the liberality of her legislature, a dollar for an invention 
that was an honor to the State in which it occurred, and 
that has made us all the money we, for half a century, 
have had, or ever expect to have. Notwithstanding ilie 
respectability of the authority given by Antiquary for 
this offer, yet there cannot be much reliance on such tra- 
ditions, for it occurred some “ sixty years since,” and, I 
apprehend, before the author was born. Antiquary, in 
another part of his communication, gives an instance of 
ilie unreliability of siu'h traditions, in his anecdote sub- 
stituting the introduction of a man in female attire, sur- 
reptitiously into BvLL'saxn house, instead eT Lyon into 
Whitney’s, as is so well attested liy Mr Talbot who lived 
in the immediate neighborhood, wlu'se kitehen — I am 
Jilad to say, still standing— is the very gin liouse in which 
the incident occurred — by Burns, the broiher-in-law of 
