Osborn - World of the Tenant Farmer. Cotton farming was vital to the industrial development of Texas, and in Bastrop County it was one of the more lucrative industries.
But before the advent of mechanized harvesting, it required hard, grinding labor to bring in a cotton crop. Between 1840 and 1865, the work fell on the available pool of African-American slaves. But after Emancipation and the abolishment of slavery in 1865, cotton growers turned to tenant farming as a means of securing the needed labor. The tenant system was popular throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century and into the first-half of the twentieth century. In many instances, as was the case with T. During the late-nineteenth century, many of the tenant farmers were former slaves, but in time many of these workers left for better jobs in the developing cities.
Modern machinery…has made it possible for one man to cultivate a great deal of land, but there has been no development along the line of picking and chopping cotton. History. <span><a target="_self" href="/index.html">Home</a> | <a target="_self" href="/Events.html">Events</a> | <a target="_self" href="/Leasing.html">Leasing</a> | <a target="_self" href="/Concerts.html">Concerts</a> | <a target="_self" href="/photography.html">Photography</a> | <a target="_self" href="/History.html">History</a> | <a target="_self" href="/Links.html">Links</a> | <a target="_self" href="/contact.html">Contact Us</a></span> Cotton mills became the key to industrializing the post-reconstruction South in the 1880s.
Promoted by local investors to turn agricultural products into finished goods, cotton mill fever spread across the cotton producing states of Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas. By the early 1900s, Texas embarked on a twenty-year cotton mill campaign. Within Collin County, cotton was grown, picked baled and compressed in preparation for outside markets for processing. Untitled Document. Have you ever thought about where the clothes you and your family wear come from, or the dressing you put on your salad, or the sheets you crawl under at night before you go to sleep?
It comes from cotton! Cotton…the most important and widely used fiber ever known to man. Cotton is used for thousands of things, including clothes, space suits for astronauts and ingredients in the food we eat. How it is grown, cultivated, harvested and finally processed into cloth and other co-products is what you will be learning about in this story of cotton and Cotton’s Journey - A Field Trip in a Box.
Cotton is a plant, it grows wild in many places on the earth, but it has been known about, cultivated and put to use by people of many lands for centuries. Scientists and historians have found shreds of cloth or written reference to cotton dating back at least seven-thousand years. Cotton was grown by American Indians in the early 1500’s, documented from sightings by the Coronado expedition 1540-42. Picking Cotton By Hand In The South. Working In The Cotton Fields When we got to the field to work, each person was given a big sack to hold the cotton as it was picked.
These were just big sacks with a strap that went over the shoulder. That left both hands free to pick. No one wore gloves. Sharecropping and tenant farming. Sharecropping was common throughout the South well into the twentieth century, and required the work of entire families.
In this famous photograph, a six year-old girl picks cotton in Oklahoma. (Photograph by Lewis W. Hine. More about the photograph) Texas Cotton Gin Museum. Frequently Asked Questions The following questions have been compiled from those asked during tours at our visitor center and museum.
If you would like further information on any of the questions listed below – or if you would like to ask a question of your own….please contact us at our e-mail address and we will be glad to get an answer back to you. Send inquiries to: burtoncottongin@earthlink.net When do you plant cotton? In the Burton area cotton was planted during the full moon of Easter (Good Friday) or usually around the first of April.
Another Cotton Picking Day! by Norris Chambers (Old Timer's Tales) Very few people under the age of "Senior Citizen" have ever picked cotton.
The cotton patch is now harvested by machine, about the same way as grain, potatoes and other back breaking gatherings. But it wasn't always that way. Cotton matured in the early Fall, and when it matured, that was the time to pick it. 31295013672232.