Prattville Factory Timeline

By E. T. Waldron Revised by Willie Redden & Tommy Brown

Mr. Daniel Pratt was born at Temple, New Hampshire in 1799. At nineteen years of age, he left Boston and went to Savannah, Georgia. In 1831, he realized the potential of a cotton gin and joined Mr. Samuel Griswold to build cotton gins in Clinton, Georgia. In 1832, Mr. Pratt moved to Autauga County, Alabama, where he founded a small blacksmith and gin shop. He built cotton gins in this shop for five years and, in 1838, moved further up Autauga Creek and purchased a large tract of land with easily accessible water power and thus founded the town of Prattville, Alabama. He built a large manufacturing plant at the new location, and increased the production of cotton gins to meet an ever increasing demand.

In 1841, Mr. Pratt adopted his nephew, Merrill E. Pratt. Daniel Pratt died May 13, 1873 and left his estate equally divided between Merrill and daughter, Ellen. Merrill was placed in charge of the business.

During Daniel Pratt's lifetime, he pioneered many industrial operations that are still flourishing today. He built a cotton mill in Prattville, and then acquired land holdings in north Alabama which became famous coal and ore mining industries. He built furnaces near Birmingham, Alabama during the Civil War era for making iron from the red ore deposits in the mountains around the area. He also developed a new railroad enterprise, The South and North Alabama Railroad. The furnaces were destroyed by Wilson's Raiders during the Civil War, but Daniel Pratt and his son-in-law, Henry F. DeBardeleben, rebuilt them and, although Mr. Pratt died in 1873, he lived to see iron made at the Oxmoor furnaces from the red ore and coal from Alabama mines. Henry Fairchild DeBardeleben, born in Autauga County in 1841, was destined to become the most picturesque and dramatic character in the coal and iron history of the South.

In 1899, six of the larger manufacturers merged and formed the Continental Gin Company. This enabled the company to manufacture machinery in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, Atlanta, Georgia, Dallas, Texas, Birmingham, Alabama and Prattville, Alabama. This new corporation started furnishing complete cotton ginning systems incorporating many patented features.

In the fall of 1925, Continental moved into a new manufacturing location in Birmingham, Alabama, combining the plants from north and east Birmingham and Avondale. A new office complex was built, and this became general headquarters. A large engineering and design department was set up and ginning improvements were soon being offered to the trade.

1926 Woodruff family, of coca-cola fame, purchases controlling stock in Continental Gin Company.

After the depression, the cotton acreage was reduced and the Company saw the need for diversification to utilize its facilities. Two new departments were created, the Industrial Division to engineer and sell conveying, elevating and transmission equipment, and the Special Products Department to handle oil rill and special products made to order. These two departments generated several sizeable orders that kept the plants busy.

In 1940, the Company was awarded two large contracts by the U.S. Navy. New machine tools were added to fulfill these orders and by the end of the year were in full mass production, working three shifts. An office was opened in Washington, D.C., to handle negotiations for additional contracts. The war contracts and new products produced the largest sales in the history of the company.

In October, 1941, Secretary of the Navy, Honorable Frank Knox, notified Mr. Merrill Pratt that Continental had been chosen to receive the flag of the Bureau of Ordnance, Navy Department, and the Navy "E" pennant for outstanding production of ordnance materials vital to the national defense. This award was repeated each six months until the end of the war. Some of the items manufactured were 50 caliber gun mounts, 20mm gun mounts, 5-inch armor plate gun shields, 100 lb., chemical bombs, sighting systems, fragmentation bombs, 5" shells, rockets, etc.

Limited gin machinery was produced during the war period, but because cotton was closely related to the war effort in many ways, Continental continued manufacturing cotton ginning machinery. About this time, labor was scarce and new labor laws raised the cost of manually harvesting cotton to the point that it became necessary to start using mechanical means. This increased the amount of trash in the cotton. In 1944, Continental engineers developed a machine to process the machine-harvested cotton known as the IMPACT CLEANER. This machine was patented and is still today the only machine of its type and is still doing an excellent job of pre-cleaning seed cotton. This was the greatest improvement made in gin machinery in the prior 26 years.

The next revolutionary machine for the cotton gin was the lint Cleaner located behind the gin stand. This first saw type Lint Cleaner was developed by Eugene H. Brooks, Continental Gin Company, Vice President, and was first assembled in 1945. Mr. Brooks received the patent in April, 1947. The Lint Cleaner was tested during 1946 and 1947 and offered to the gin trade in 1948. The grade improvement in the lint from this saw type lint cleaner increased the price $30 to $35 a bale. Sales for the new Lint Cleaners mushroomed for the next several years.

In 1959, Continental Gin Company was acquired by Fulton Industries. Very few changes in personnel were made, and the Company continued to operate as Continental Gin Company.

In 1961, Continental continued as a leader in cotton ginning machinery design and was the first manufacturer to offer a Fixed Box Baling Press. This press revolutionized this phase of cotton ginning. Its exclusive Hydraulic Tramper enabled the press to bale the cotton from high capacity ginning.

The next outstanding change in ginning was the 16" Saw Gin. This occurred in 1961, and while some manufacturers used larger saws, the 16" saw was more acceptable to the trade. Continental first produced 119 Saw 16" saw gin rated at six bales per hour capacity, and later added 22 saws to a 141 Saw Gin reaching a capacity of eight to ten bales per hour. Additional precleaning of the machine harvested cotton became a necessity, Continental's 94" 16D hint Cleaner, was introduced to accommodate the higher capacity ginning.

In 1962, Continental moved its headquarters back to Prattville. Facilities were expanded and a new office building was constructed. The demolition of the Pratt home place, constructed in the 1840's was a great loss.

The world's highest capacity ginning system was built by Continental in California in 1968. Its capacity was forty bales per hour.

In 1968, Allied Products Corporation, Chicago, Illinois, purchased Fulton Industries and assumed control of all their holdings. In this transaction, Allied Products Corporation also acquired the Bush Hog Company of Selma, Alabama, who were manufacturers of Rotary Cutters and farm machinery.

The combined facilities of Continental Gin, Bush Hog and its affiliates enabled Allied Products Corporation's Agricultural Equipment Group to cover the industry from land preparation to finished material.

Through all of the years since 1832, a descendant of Daniel Pratt has been active in the Company until Mr. Merrill Pratt, great grandson, retired.

In 1972, bale packaging changed to a new density of 28 pounds per cubic foot, and Continental designed a new 20" x 54" Universal Density Press to give a true density and size bale as required for export shippers, without penalty. These presses are designed and built for using Automatic Strapping, Automatic Bale Handling, and are fully automated if desired. They are capable of baling forty bales per hour. Since 1972, Continental has installed more Universal Density Presses than. all of its combined competitors.

In March of 1975, the Agricultural Group of Allied Products Corporation was providing a large percentage of Allied's gross sales and operating profits, and they elected to prefix each affiliates name with Bush Hog, thereby Continental/Moss Gordin became Bush Hog/Continental Gin.

Through all these years, Continental has been quite active in export sales. From Mr. Daniel Pratt's era until today, Continental ships machinery to over 25 foreign countries.

In 1978, the Double Eagle Gin was introduced. With its new technology, capacities were increased to more than 12 bales per hour The Presses capabilities were increased to match and today Continental Ginning Systems are the highest capacity systems available.

In 1986, through consolidation of Continental Gin Company, Murray division of Murray-Carver, Inc. and the Abbott Industrial Supply, Joseph and Roger Fermon purchase 50 percent of Continental Gin Company stock. Continental Eagle Corporation was formed.

1988 Joseph and Roger Fermon purchase remaining Continental Eagle Corporation stock to become sole shareholders. Continental Eagle was incorporated in the State of Alabama.

In 1989 the Golden Eagle gin was introduced at capacities of more than 18 bales per hour. Some Cotton Gin plants were running in the 60 bales per hour range.

Several new bale presses were introduced, over 350 of the popular Bespress were sold. The 930 press and the 950 press were introduced and in 2000 the 9300 press and in 2001 the 9500 model presses were introduced. 

Today, Continental Eagle is celebrating 175 years of continued service to the cotton industry on the Banks of Autauga Creek in Prattville, Alabama.

'Brought Up In Cotton'  Story adapted from Cotton International by William Spencer 1996

Business Alabama Article PDF Click Here

Click On Photos To Enlarge  Joe and Georgette Fermon at a cotton conference in Maui.    Roger Fermon  on the cover of Business Alabama

He's spent 62 (69) years in the cotton business, speaks seven languages and has been decorated by kings and presidents. And Joseph Fermon's greatest accomplishment - he owns the company that made the equipment for the gin once owned by his father.

So it was in 1978 while vice president of Continental Gin Co. that Fermon sold to the government of Egypt ginning equipment to refurbish 17 ginning plants - including one at Mehalla that had been owned by his father. It's an event he remembers with pride.

Even now Fermon travels some 250,000 to 300,000 miles a year, mainly to West Africa, as he calls on customers. Most know him personally. And he remembers well some of the early days in the cotton business, like in Brazil in 1955. There was a sale of 125,000 bales of cotton to China. "I graded each bale and accepted 125,000, but I think I graded 180,000 or 190,000 bales before accepting the required 125,000 bales," he says. This was over a 3 month period when he "sometimes slept on samples in the grading room." And while Fermon is a language expert, learning four languages in school and picking up the rest while working, he was not very fluent in Greek when he went to Greece in 1956. He made himself speak only Greek in Greece, making himself write and read 12 hours a day. He learned Portuguese the two years he was in Brazil. Fermon calls his language skills "kind of a hobby and a necessity, because I found that it is necessary to know a customer's language - people will deal with you better. They are happier to listen to you in their language than make the effort to do it in another."

Greece has been a hot market lately, with Continental Eagle selling SIX new gin plants there in a year's time. One Greek ginner wanted a new Continental gin for the 1995 season so badly that he had it delivered by airplane. In fact, a few orders had to be refused by Continental Eagle in 1995 because of booming business - they couldn't have been delivered on time. "We don't want to fool our customers," says Roger. "We know once we accept they are counting on receiving their equipment and if they don't get their equipment in time for their season it is a disaster for them. That is why we make sure not to take more than what we can handle." Adds Joseph Fermon: "We only take the business that we are sure we can accomplish professionally." It's that type of attitude which led Fermon to be decorated by the King of Morocco in 1964 for services rendered in establishing two gin plants in Morocco, and by the president of the Republic of Central Africa in 1969 for the establishment of two new gin plants there.

With the Model 950 Press, the 9500 and the 60 bales per hour Models 930 and 9300 UD Press, Continental Eagle offers the Jenglo, a semi-automatic feed cotton bale tying system. Continental Eagle, through its IMPCO Division in Phoenix, Arizona, also manufactures a full line of oil mill preparation machinery for the cleaning, delinting and dehulling of not only cottonseed, but also for the decortication and separation of sunflower seed and numerous other oil bearing seeds. Continental Eagle is also involved in high capacity acid delinting systems for planting seeds. Continental's new market includes aerator equipment for the aquaculture industry.

History 1950

Photo Illustration Circa 1951

DANIEL PRATT GIN COMPANY

Prattville, Alabama

DANIEL PRATT was born at Temple, New Hampshire, July 20, 1799. After serving three years of apprenticeship as a carpenter, he came to Savannah, Georgia, from Boston, at the age of nineteen. Soon thereafter, he located at Milledgeville, Georgia, where he was engaged in carpentering and contracting work.

About 1827 he returned to New Hampshire for a visit and, while there, married and returned to Georgia with his bride. In 1831, realizing the great possibilities of a cotton gin and the great need for it, he, with Samuel Griswold, established a small plant in Clinton, Georgia. In 1832, not satisfied with this location, Mr. Pratt moved westward into Alabama, but Mr. Griswold would not agree to accompany him. Mr. Pratt built a blacksmith and gin shop in Elmore, Alabama, but later moved to McNeill's Mill on Autauga Creek. There he leased water power for a nominal sum and finally began the manufacture of gins. For five years he made a small quantity of gins. In 1838 he moved further up Autauga Creek. Here he purchased a large tract of land with fine water power and there founded the town of Prattville.

In the earlier days of the Company, gin shipments were made by steamboats. Prattville was located four miles from Washington Landing on the Alabama River. There being no improved roads to Washington Landing, Daniel Pratt constructed a plank road over which gins were hauled by wagons to the landing. As business increased, these facilities at Washington Landing became inadequate and other shipping arrangements had to be made. Montgomery was twelve miles away and had railroad facilities, from which point the gins were later shipped. Deliveries of gins to Montgomery necessitated a long haul by wagons. In the winter months, wagons traveled through heavy mud, and this made it necessary to have four to six mules to a wagon. To handle deliveries to Montgomery required four to six special wagons built for the purpose. Even with these disadvantages, shipping facilities by railroad provided quicker deliveries.

Soon after Daniel Pratt established the Prattville plant, he invited his nephew, Merrill E. Pratt, to come to Prattville from New Hampshire and become associated with him. This he did in 1841. Mr. Pratt adopted Merrill as his son, though he had one living child, a daughter, Ellen.

At Daniel Pratt's death, May 13, 1873, he left his estate in equal parts to Merrill E. Pratt and his daughter, Ellen Pratt who had since married Henry T. DeBardeleben. Merrill E. Pratt was placed in charge of the business.

In 1881 Merrill E. Pratt bought the interest of Mrs. DeBardeleben. He became the sole owner of the business with the exception of a working interest in the profits which was held by W. T. Northington.  Mr. Pratt died in 1889. However, the business continued in operation by his estate, with Daniel Pratt, his son, in charge. The company was never organized as a corporation.

In 1899 the entire property was sold to Continental Gin Company, and at that time the Daniel Pratt Gin Company was the largest producer of cotton gins in the world.

Information from The Story Of The Continental Gin Company 1900-1952 by Algernon L. Smith Vice Chairman of the Board Edited by James F. Sulzby, Jr. Printed by The Birmingham Publishing Company Copyright 1952 Continental Gin Company

05/09/2007