Gin Barn at Magnolia Plantation, Cane River Creole National Historical Park

Visitors to Cane River Creole National Historical Park’s Magnolia Plantation are welcome to step inside the gin barn and take a look at the ginning equipment. The barn is typically open on Wednesdays through Sundays from 9 AM to 3:30 PM. Tours of the grounds and buildings are given at 2:30 PM, which is really the best time to visit.

Prior to the 1800s, most cash crops grown on Louisiana plantations were tobacco, indigo, and corn. Cotton was a minor endeavor, for at the time short-staple (fiber) cotton, the only cotton that would grow in the inland regions of the southern United States, was not a viable crop due to the amount of labor it took to process it. Machines—cotton gins—developed in India for processing long-staple cotton had been around for centuries, but long-staple cotton only grew in the eastern coastal areas, with the most sought after being the high-quality Sea Island Cotton of South Carolina.

In 1793, when Eli Whitney modified existing gins (gin is derived from “engine”) so that they could rapidly clean the seeds and other debris from short-staple cotton, the cotton industry in America boomed. Other inventors made improvements, and by 1799 short-staple cotton gins were readily available to farmers. By the early 1800s, the now very profitable cotton became the main crop grown on Louisiana plantations, nearly replacing tobacco and indigo. Today, 95 percent of cotton grown in the United States is short-staple cotton, which is considered lower quality and used for general, everyday cotton products such as blue jeans and flannel shirts. Long-staple cotton is used in more luxurious products such as bed sheets and towels, and most of this cotton comes from India and Egypt, though long-staple cotton is also grown in the United States.

Large plantations had cotton gins and presses (machine to compress cotton into bales for shipping) installed on the property. Small farmers who could not afford their own gins took their cotton to businesses that operated public gins for a fee. Ambrose LeComte II, founder of Magnolia Plantation in the 1830s, had a gin on the property as early as 1835. He made a series of land purchases, and one deed lists a gin as part of the deal, so the original gin at Magnolia may have been an existing one. There are no documents specifically describing an antebellum-era gin, so exactly what technology it used is open to speculation. However, this gin is certainly not the gin that exists today.

The current gin at Magnolia Plantation was installed sometime between 1890 and 1900 by Matthew Hertzog (he married Ambrose II’s daughter Asala, and when Ambrose died in 1883 the couple inherited the plantation). The gin is housed in a barn that predates the ginning equipment, and perhaps two previous gins were installed in it. The date of the barn’s construction is difficult to determine, but based on construction techniques, it was probably built in the late 1850s or the 1860s, either just before or just after the Civil War. Federal troops burned the plantation’s Big House (main house), and while there is no evidence that they burned the gin barn and ginning equipment, it is possible that this happened and that the exiting barn is a replacement built after the war.

Gin Barn at Magnolia Plantation, Cane River Creole National Historical Park

Up until the 1880s, the ginning process was all manual. A wagon full of cotton had to be unloaded and brought to the gin, and when the seeds had been removed, the fibers, called lint, had to be placed into the press where it was compressed into bales for shipping. In the mid-1880s, Robert Munger invented system ginning, which automated the entire process. Fans sucked the cotton from the farmer’s wagon and continued to move it via pipes from the gin to the press. This is the type of gin that Hertzog installed in the 1890s. The basics of this technology are still in use today. In fact, the company that made the cotton gin at Magnolia Plantation is still in business (now the Continental Eagle Corporation). Today, the ginning equipment is so expensive and complicated that nearly every cotton farmer takes his cotton to a public gin.

Gin stands for removing cotton seeds at Magnolia Plantation, Cane River Creole National Historical Park

Also inside the Magnolia Plantation gin barn are two cotton presses: a manual wooden screw press that was powered by mules and a hydraulic press that was powered by a steam engine. The hydraulic press was installed along with the new system ginning equipment in the 1890s. However, it is not know for certain whether this was Magnolia’s first hydraulic press, for the technology had been around since the 1870s.

460-pound bale of cotton

The installation date of the screw press is also uncertain. With most 19th century screw presses, wings extended from the top of the screw and were attached to mules by a rope. The mules walked round and round to turn the screw, which lowered the wooden platen into the press box (where the lint is placed) so that it compressed the lint into a bale. The wings, called buzzard wings or sweeps, made the press too large to fit under the same roof with the gins, and thus they were usually free-standing machines outside the gin barn. Moving cotton from the gin to the press was not very efficient, and pressing could not be done at all when it was raining, for the cotton would get wet during the transfer.

The screw press that exists today at Magnolia worked differently. The screw itself did not turn. The press box turned and the screw was stationary (imagine a nut turning around a bolt instead of the bolt turning and the nut staying in place as normal). This required less room for the mules, so the press and gin could be located in the same building. This technology was around by the 1850s, which means the Magnolia screw press was not installed prior to mid-century—historians believe it was done in the early 1870s.

Diagram of a screw press for baling cotton

Notice that Hertzog did not remove the screw press when he installed his new system ginning equipment with its hydraulic press. This is because it was being used as a hay bale press, and it continued to be used as such into the 1940s. As a result, it is now one of only six wooden screw presses from the early 1800s still in existence, and one of only two where the press box turns and the screw is stationary. It is also the only wooden screw press still in its original location.

In 1939, the gin barn was damaged by a tornado. The adjacent engine house, where the steam engine, and later a diesel engine, was housed, was completely destroyed and thus removed. The engine was not replaced because Matthew Hertzog II (grandson of Matthew and Asala, and owner of Magnolia Plantation since 1921 when his father Ambrose died) decided to cease his ginning operation due to the antiquated equipment, and because he was also in the process of switching from growing cotton to soybeans and other crops. He now took his cotton to a modern public press and paid to have it ginned. Hertzog did, however, repair the roof and sides of the gin barn and added a wood floor, but from that point on it was used for storing hay until mechanized machinery largely replaced horse and mule power in the 1950s (no need for horse and mule, no need for hay). The barn was altered again from its original appearance when repairs were made in 1977, and a final alteration was done by the National Park Service when a new roof was put on in 1996.

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