I would like to thank Tommy Brown of Continental Eagle Corporation of Prattville for sharing much of the informaton on these pages. Visit his Pratt History website for a detailed history on the life of Daniel Pratt. http://www.pratthistory.com/index.htm Continental Eagle Corporation http://www.coneagle.com/main_frame.htm _______________________ Daniel Pratt's Cotton Gin Manufactory 
_______________________ In 1833, Daniel Pratt loaded a team of wagons with material enough for fifty gins and took his wife and two negro slaves to Alabama. His first stop in Alabama was at General Albert Elmore’s plantation in what was then Autauga County, now Elmore County. There he built a blacksmith and gin shop and built the first cotton gin in Alabama. The new gins sold easily. Daniel Pratt wanted to use water power for his next gin shop. The location he chose was at McNeil’s Mill. (later known as Montgomery Mill) on Autauga Creek. Pratt established a factory and was soon producing 200 gins a year. On December 18, 1835, Daniel Pratt purchased 1000 acres of land two miles northwest of McNeils Mill. After clearing the land, he established a sawmill, then a gristmill, and later a flour mill. In 1838, he also established Pratt Gin Factory in its permanent location. Other industries established in Prattville before 1850, which Pratt owned in whole or in part were the sash, door and blind factory, a horse mills factory, machine and blacksmith shops, a wagon manufactory, a tin manufactory, and a flouring mill. The sash, door and blind factory supplied those articles for some of the finest homes in South Alabama and along the Gulf Coast. The wagon manufactory became a well known establishment, manufacturing carts, drays, carriages, rock-a-ways, buggies, and wagons, which several contemporary accounts describe as better than any of northern make. The horse mills factory made mills for grinding corn. The tin manufactory made tin roofing, gutters, cooking utensils, and any kind of tin ware made to order. The flouring mill, built in 1840, had the finest machinery to be secured at the time. Daniel Pratt Cotton Gin - 1844 
_______________________ Pratt’s operations were very successful. From the success, Pratt used money to develop the small growing town sometimes referred to as Pratt’s Mill. Amos Smith was to construct mile posts reading "Pratt’s Mill," but Shadrack Mims suggested "Prattville". Daniel Pratt agreed, and the town was named. Daniel Pratt also helped in the establishment of the churches in Prattville. He helped to organize the Methodist-Episcopal Church in 1845. He also built the Methodist Church building in which apartments, stores and offices were located on the lower floor of the two-story structure. The first store in Prattville was located in this building. Daniel Pratt built a beautiful home in Prattville in 1843. The mansion was very large but his family was very small. He had three children; Mary, born on December 5, 1842; Ellen, born on March 27, 1844; and Maria, born on August 22, 1847. Mary and Maria died as infants. Daniel Pratt Home 
_______________________ Adapting to his new region, Pratt entered the Alabama political arena in the 1840s as a forceful advocate of southern industrialization and economic diversification. He employed slaves as well as southern and northern whites in his factories. His most important factory, with the exception of the Gin Manufactory, was Prattville Manufacturing Company No. 1, organized by Pratt and incorporated by the Alabama Legislature in 1846. Under Pratt’s leadership the Prattville Manufacturing Company became one of the most successful and well known of the cotton and woolen mills. It also included a flour mill & gristmill. Daniel Pratt Cotton Gin & Prattville Manufacturing Company No.1 
_______________________ In his antebellum politics, Pratt was an ardent Whig and then Know Nothing supporting state aid to railroads, industry and all kinds of internal improvements. When Prattville’s first newspaper, the Autauga Citizen which Pratt had financed in the beginning, turned Democratic in 1854, Pratt founded his own Whig paper, the Southern Statesman. He dedicated it to "Southern industry, manufacturers, mechanics and internal improvements." Pratt presided over railroad conventions and invested his money freely in early southern railroads. In 1855, he was a candidate for the Senate, to serve Montgomery and Autauga counties, but was defeated. Daniel Pratt 
_______________________ By 1860 Daniel Pratt’s leadership had helped establish gin factories, including those in Indian Hill and Autaugaville, making Alabama the leading state in the country in the production of cotton gins. The Prattville Manufacturing Company was producing the following articles; A cloth made from cotton, designed for sheeting. - A heavy osnaburg, 30 inches wide, weighing 10 ounces to the yard, made of cotton for wearing apparel. - A lighter osnaburg, 30 inches wide, weighing 8 ounces to the yard, made of cotton for wearing apparel. - Goods of mixed cotton and wool, including a 9 ounce linsey (5 ounces of wool and four of cotton) which they advertised as designed for Negro women and Negro children. - A heavier 12 ounce linsey (8 ounces of wool and 4 ounces of cotton) sometimes called Alabama plains, for Negro men. - A cloth described as "4 treadle, colored, and of select wool" designed for white men and boys. The Prattville Manufacturing Company also carried on a large business of manufacturing wool on shares. The planter furnished the wool, the factory, the machinery, labor, and cotton, and it was made into linseys of a heavy durable nature for slave wear, or a finer grade, twilled and colored, for white wear, at about two thirds the market price. Pratt was now manufacturing no less than 1500 cotton gins per year and making over $500,000 a year from his various enterprises. Through his unbounding energies, Pratt became Alabama’s first millionaire. Although he published articles in defense of the South and slavery, he was a "Bell and Everett man" in the national election of 1860 and on the cooperation list of secession. However, after the secession of Alabama from the Union, Pratt supported the Confederacy. In 1861, he was elected by 98% of the voters (176 of 177) to serve as Intendant of Prattville, a position which has more responsibility than that of Mayor. He served in the Alabama House of Representatives from 1861 to 1863. Continue to Page 2
|
