|
14
<br /> ORANGE COUNTY LOCAL LANDMARK APPLICATION DAVIS FARM COTTON GIN AND PRESS
<br /> Chapel Hill Township." Although the Davis Cotton Gin and Press was never listed in these
<br /> directories, family tradition claims that it was in production until at least the early 1930s.'7
<br /> Despite the fact that cotton production in Orange County had increased in 1909 from where it
<br /> had been in the late-nineteenth century, this rise was short-lived. As throughout the South, cotton
<br /> production was brought down by the boll weevil. Weevils that attacked cotton bolls entered the
<br /> United States from Mexico in the late-nineteenth century. First spotted in Texas, they had spread
<br /> to all the major cotton-producing areas in the country by the 1920s.18 That is when they first
<br /> struck the Piedmont, bringing cotton prices down from thirty cents a pound in 1910 to twenty-
<br /> five cents a pound in the late 1920s, By 1932, the price per pound had dropped to ten cents. After
<br /> ruining cotton fields throughout the 1930s, cotton farming in Orange County largely ceased.19
<br /> In 1925, Robert A. Davis had eight acres planted in cotton. In that year the average for Chapel
<br /> Hill Township, one of Orange County's largest cotton producers, was 3.7 acres, so Davis
<br /> cultivated more than twice the average. According to the North Carolina Farm Census for the
<br /> years 1925, 1935, and 1945, 1925 was the only year in which the Davises were recorded as
<br /> growing cotton. By the 1935 census, cotton cultivation in Chapel IIill Township had dropped
<br /> considerably from its level ten years earlier.20
<br /> According to a 1939 report prepared by Orange County agricultural agents Don S. Matheson and
<br /> Joe N. Howard, cotton as a money crop was rapidly being displaced by tobacco, livestock, and
<br /> poultry. In 1929, the county had planted a total of 3,206 acres of cotton and had sold 1,349 bales.
<br /> Because of the boll weevil, the agents predicted a harvest of only about 400 bales in 1939. They
<br /> considered the shift from cotton production to be very important, as cotton was one of the main
<br /> sources of income for many farmers. Between the boll weevil and the low price of cotton, it had
<br /> become very difficult for farmers to get even the cost of production out of raising that crop.
<br /> Thus, the county's agricultural extension program had begun to encourage farmers to substitute
<br /> livestock and poultry production for cotton. This had favorable results, with the gross income
<br /> from the increase of livestock and poultry in the decade after 1929 being at least four times the
<br /> lost income from cotton.2 1 By 1945, only 126.5 acres of cotton were being grown in Chapel Hill
<br /> Township, representing only eight percent of the 1,540 acres planted in 1925.22 Thus, the
<br /> recommendations made by the county agriculture agents to farmers in 1929 were both timely and
<br /> good.
<br /> "The North Carolina Year Book and Business Directozy(Raleigh: The News and Observer Publishing Company,
<br /> 1907, 1915,and 1916).
<br /> 17 Charles W. Davis Jr. Interview by Laura Phillips, September 12, 1991.
<br /> 1a Dominic Reisig,"The Boll Weevil War,or Now Farmers and Scientists Saved Cotton in the South," in The
<br /> Abstract,May 17,2017.
<br /> 19 Richard L. Mattson,"History and Architecture of Orange County,North Carolina," September 1996,pp.42-43,
<br /> froin John L.Bell Jr.,1-fard Thnes: Beginning of the Greal Depression in North Carolina, 1929-1933 (Raleigh:N.
<br /> C. Division of Archives and History, 1982),pp. 5-11.
<br /> 211925 Farm Census for North Carolina; 1935 Farm Szovey of North Carolina Townships.
<br /> 21 Don S. Matheson and Joe N. Howard,"1939 Narrative Report,"Orange County,North Carolina, pp. 11-12.
<br /> 22 1946 Farm Census: 1945 Crop lnventojy for North Carolina.
<br /> 11
<br />
|