Cotton Ginning Time

Cotton Ginning Time. . The cotton gin included the ginning machine, press, and buildings that housed the machinery and cotton. High cotton prices in the 1850s led Phanor Prud'homme to expand his enslaved workforce. Enslaved worker Raymond was trained to run the gin in 1854. Another gin, located south of the Overseer's House, was under construction by 1859., The Civil War made it impossible to send cotton to market, so it was stored at a gin. The 1864 Red River Campaign brought the war and its destruction to the plantation. Confederate troops burned gins and cotton in late March to keep the valuable crop out of the hands of United States troops. In April, retreating U.S. soldiers burned buildings and crops. By the time U.S. forces left the area, the Prud'homme's gin and cotton had been burned., The end of the war brought few changes. Cotton remained an important cash crop. Many formerly enslaved workers continued picking, ginning, and pressing cotton at Oakland as sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and day laborers., "I had almost 900 bales of cotton, a fortune at this moment, but all that was destroyed by the flames of the Yankees and the Confederates." , Phanor Prud'homme Letter, July 22, 1865, Captions , (Photo #1) Photo courtesy Library of Congress, 1890s , (Photo #2) The cabin of Gabe Nargot, who was the cotton gin engineer from the 1920s to the early 1940s. Although the cabin no longer stands, the brick piers marking its size and location remain. Barbe, Gabe Nargot's grandmother, was kidnapped from Africa and enslaved at Oakland by 1809. Photo courtesy Prud'homme family