Agenda 10-17-23; 5-a - Joint Public Hearing with the Historic Preservation Commission Regarding the Proposed Designation of the Davis Cotton Gin and Press as an Orange County Historic Landmark

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12 ORANGE COUNTY LOCAL LANDMARK APPLICATION DAVIS FARM COTTON GIN AND PRESS Charles Davis Jr. died in 2008, and on May 11, 2020, his five daughters and their spouses sold 19.5 acres of the farmstead, including the house and all the outbuildings, to Glen Weston and Payton Alexis Rose, bringing nearly 140 years of verifiable Davis family ownership to a close.' The Roses are continuing to farm the land. Cotton Production and Cotton Ginnie Because the property being designated is a cotton gin and press building, a look at cotton production and the ginning of cotton in Orange County during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first several decades of the twentieth century is important. Agriculture in Orange County, as elsewhere in North Carolina, suffered in the years immediately following the Civil War. For some time, most farmers focused on the production of crops and livestock to sustain their families, while selling any excess. However, as the nineteenth century moved closer to the twentieth, more farmers began to invest in cash crops. The two largest cash crops in the county were bright-leaf tobacco and cotton. Because of the composition of soils in various parts of the county, large crops of tobacco tended to be planted in the north, while cotton was most commonly found in the townships south of Hillsborough, including Chapel Hill Township where Davis Farm is located. In the state as a whole, cotton was one of the crops that regained its pre-war production level by 1870, and by 1880, its production was more than three times what it had been in 1860. However, cotton prices declined from twenty-five cents a pound in 1868 to twelve cents in the 1870s, to nine cents in the 1880s, and to seven cents in the early 1890s. By 1894, the price of cotton had dropped to only five cents a pound. Farmers found it difficult to break even unless they could sell their cotton for at least ten cents per pound.12 In 1880, no cotton was reported in the Agriculture Schedule of the census as being grown on Henry Davis's 135-acre farm (35 acres in cultivation). In 1890, the average farm size in Orange County was 114 acres, and a little over 1,000 bales of cotton were produced. By the turn of the twentieth century, 5,000 acres were being planted in cotton, primarily in the southern townships. By 1909, the number of cotton bales produced in the county had increased to 1,430. However, at the same time, 1.7 million pounds of tobacco were produced.' As a cash crop, cotton could not compare with the production levels of tobacco, and although some fanners cultivated cotton as a cash crop, other farmers planted small amounts of cotton that could be woven into fabric for the family's clothes. To get to the point of being able to make fabric in either large or small amounts, the cotton had to be ginned to remove the seeds. And that is where the Davis Cotton Gin and Press came into play, beginning it appears, in the 1880s. No census records ever mention the Davis cotton gin. That may have been because, although it was serving not only the Davis family but also neighboring farmers according to family tradition, the total amount of cotton ginned was small 11 Deed Book 6657,p.2086. 12 Hugh Talmage Lefler and Albert Ray Newsome,North Carolina: The Histoq of a Southern State(Chapel Hill; The University of North Carolina Press, 1973),pp. 521 and 524. "U.S. Census Agriculture Schedules for 1880, 1890, 1900, 1909,Chapel Hill Township,Orange County,North Carolina. 9