The Historic Norcross Cotton Gin

The Historic Norcross Cotton Gin. . In the early 1900s cotton was the main cash crop for farmers in Georgia, and to prepare their harvest for market their cotton bolls had to be run through a machine called a cotton gin to separate the fiber from the seeds. The Summerour Cotton Gin, founded by local resident Homer Hightower Summerour and located in this building, provided ginning to local farmers, and it was a common sight to see wagonloads of the crop backed up on Lawrenceville Street each full waiting for processing. After ginning, the fiber was then baled and weighted, ready to ship to market out of the Norcross train depot, which is still standing in the center of town., Homer Summerour, born in 1866, was an experimenter, and in the early 1900s he developed a more productive variety of cotton that he called "Half and Half" - meaning that half the weight of the bolls was fiber, a high ratio for the time. He lived and operated his "Cotton Seed Breeding Farm" on 600 acres of land where Medlock Bridge Road crosses the Chattahoochee River, near Norcross., Half and Half seed collected in the gin was dried and stored, to be sold to customers around the U.S.A> or kept as "Breeding Stock" for the next planting season., Homer died in 1915 but his son B.F. (Benjamin Franklin) Summerour, a graduate of Georgia Tech, carried on the operation of the gin and seed business for many years. he also carried on his father's interest in inventing, developing more seed varieties and holding numerous patents. Summer our seeds were so well-known in their heyday that farmers from across the country could request a sample simply by sending a letter addressed to "Cotton Seed Man" and "Georgia"., Ben retired in the late 1960s, selling the farm on the river to the Atlanta Athletic Club and closing the gin and seed sales business., Ben and his wife, Gradye, in 1922, built the stately brick home at the corner of North Peachtree Street and Sunset Drive, still standing today, and lived in it for over 50 years. Among many civic activities, Ben served as Mayor of Norcross from 1921 to 1924, and was chairman of the Gwinnett County Red Cross during World War II.