Cotton Gin House

Cotton Gin House. . The cotton gin house was built around 1900 as part of the Wyatt family's extensive property improvement. It served as a utilitarian gin for Oak View and neighboring farms. Neighbors brought their cotton, and farm managers George W. Williams and James A. Jones placed it in a numbered stall marked with the person's name until it was ginned. You can still see the black numbers marked on the beams inside the cotton gin house today. , Cotton was ginned on the second floor and dropped through a large hole in the floor. On the first floor, wage workers baled the cotton and loaded it onto waiting wagons. Farmers would drive down Poole Road to sell the cotton at City Market. This building was used seasonally; at the center of activity in the fall, it was quiet for the rest of the year. By the 1920s this was no longer a central building on the property, as the Boll Weevil had threatened much of North Carolina's cotton crop. To compensate the farm had shifted to concentrate on raising beef cattle and growing pecans and other produce to supplement the farm's income. ,

“The boll weevil got so bad they discontinued the cotton, and ah, turned it all into a vegetable farm. All kinds of vegetables that was in this part of the country and sold them wherever they could get a market for them, if it was Rocky Mount, or if its was Durham, or Raleigh.” – Kiva Jones, Daughter of James A. Jones, Farm Manager of Oak View from 1919 to 1940

, [Captions] , . Top: Before computers, farmers kept handwritten logbooks to keep track of the farm business. The books were valued so highly that farmers passed them on as real property whenever they sold the business or passed away. The legal term for a logbook in sales transactions and wills was Vade Mecum, which is Latin for “a book or thing that a person constantly carries with him.” , . Bottom: The Cotton Boll Weevil forced many families to find another source of income. By the 1930s, the Cotton Gin House was no longer the center of activity on the farm. The Time Book to the right and below illustrate the shift to an hourly wage, as well as the need to diversify crops. To the left are the vegetables planted, such as eggplant, collards, peppers, and tomatoes, and to the right are the hours worked and corresponding pay.