J. A. Minter & Son Plantation, 3 County Road 462, Selma

Source document Quoted word for word from HAER AL-192. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

3 County Road Selma, Dallas County, Alabama Gin complex, store, and outbuildings are located at the intersections of county roads and The plantation house is located on Date: plantation house and a gin complex, expanded and modified through the twentieth century; frame plantation store with a metal roof, various small frame storage buildings; metal shed were added. Structural Type: The site includes an frame plantation store with a metal roof, various small frame storage buildings dating from the an plantation house, and a gin complex that has been expanded and modified through the twentieth century. Other metal sheds were added in the

Source document Quoted word for word from HAER AL-192. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

With various frame outbuildings (including a seed house, a com crib and two other storage buildings) and the plantation store extent, J.A. Minter & Son's farm is representative of the plantation community common to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century South. Dating to the the plantation's Tyler Gin Company is one of the few gin facilities continuously operating since the tum of the century.

Source document Quoted word for word from HAER AL-192. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

LeeAnn Bishop Lands J.A. MINTER & SON PLANTATION HAER No. AL-192 (Page 2) History With over 400 acres, J.A. Minter & Son is one of the largest agri-businesses in Dallas county and central Alabama. Dating to the James Anthony Minter, Sr. 's farm store and gin became the nexus of Tyler, Alabama when Dallaston residents moved their town nearer to the new railway and renamed it for railroad president George Tyler. Tyler never grew much beyond a crossroads. Through much of the twentieth century the intersections of county roads 7, 74, and 462 held the Tyler gin, a small railroad station, the Minter plantation store, and the Tyler post office.

But the junction connected this cotton farming community to markets and merchandise by virtue of its railroad, and the community similarly benefitted from its close proximity to Selma. At its peak, about 200 families lived and farmed cotton on the Minter plantation in the and and fields are still named for the tenants that tilled their soil through the twentieth century. Cotton served as a backbone of the Deep South's economy through the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. In the post-Civil War years, tenant cotton plantations spread throughout the South, replacing the former slave economy. Money was scarce, and-planters rented their land for portions - usually half- of the end-of-harvest crop.

Merchants or plantation store owners also held liens against crops for seeds, tools, food, and other furnishings extended to sharecroppers and tenants. Indeed, the tenants operated 58 percent of all Alabama farms, and by 65 percent of all Alabama farms. While some tenant plantation owners merely collected rent and allowed tenants to operate their farms independently, other planters remained intimately involved in the entire growth and harvest process, including making decisions on pest control, fertilizer, and marketing as though operating a single, large farm. 1 The latter was the case at J.A. Minter & Son.

The Minter & Son Plantation store offered supplies on credit to the tenants and accounts were carried through ginning season, at which point tenants settled their accounts for the year. The U.S. Post Office rented part of the store space for the Tyler post office until early After picking, cotton was ginned to separate fibers from seeds. Farmers might have their cotton ginned by an independent ginner, or by another farmer whose operation was large enough to support operating its own gin. Like many large farms, the Minter plantation operated its own cotton gin, the Tyler Gin Company, ginning its tenants' cotton as well as that from some nearby farms, charging by the pound for the service. Steam engines originally powered by the gin system.

Diesel engines replaced steam power in the and electricity was adopted when it became available in the Until the when the system was wholly redesigned, additions to the gin were made when greater capacity was needed. In or for example, Jay Minter II purchased some of the first lint cleaners that Continental Gin Company built. Before renovation, the gin building included 8 x 8 feet or 8 x 10 feet compartments (holding areas), each with a cotton sucker, as well as an area for cotton wagons to be pulled into where 1 Woofter, Landlord and Tenant on the Cotton Plantation. Washington, DC, 26. J.A. MINTER & SON PLANTATION HAER No. AL-192 (Page 3) workers operated cotton suckers to clear the wagons.

After ginning the cotton, farmers sold the harvest to buyers operating out of Selma, which had developed into a moderately-sized interior cotton market as railroads spread through the region. Two Selma warehouses stored cotton until shipment. 2 In a moderately-sized market town such as Selma, growers could sell their cotton to proprietors of supply stores, local people who bought or sold cotton as their principal business or as a sideline to other businesses, agents of growers' cooperative associations, buyers for large merchants in central markets, or traveling buyers for mills. While cotton remained "king" until about World War II, cotton farmers suffered various setbacks throughout the early twentieth century.

Boil weevil infestations, competition from synthetic fibers, and the like dampened sales or inhibited crop production in the early part of the century. In the New Deal programs encouraged planters to mechanize production, adopt scientific farming methods, and reduce crops, which helped force tenants off the land as plantations evolved into large agri-businesses. These tendencies accelerated after World War II, and the former tenant plantation increasingly employed seasonal labor and machines. In about 45 in 100 southerners farmed, but by only 5 in 100 did. In the high production costs and low quality further hampered profit making.

The Minters and many of their neighbors responded to the adverse conditions by forming the Autauga Quality Cotton Association, an organization created in to increase the quality of the local members agreed to plant only the registered seed of the variety approved by the association, gin all cotton at association-approved gins, assign the total crop to the association (members later sold the crop to the association), warehouse all cotton in approved warehouses, and send the warehouse receipts for that cotton to the association. In part, the grower agreements were designed to ensure that cotton would be provided to mill standards, a change members hoped would boost sales. Hohenberg Bros. Company (later purchased by Cargill) marketed the association's cotton, relieving farmers of that burden.

3 To remain competitive in the ginning business, the Minters hired Therol Pierce to redesign their in system in the early Almost all equipment was purchased second-hand. The new system gins about twenty bales an hour - doubling the previous capacity. A cotton sucker shed was added about See Figure 1 for current ginning system schematic. J.A. Minter & Son and the Tyler Gin Company are currently owned by James A. "Jay" Minter, IV. The gin company currently employs seven workers during off-season and about 17 or 18 people (including Mexican migrant workers) during cotton picking and ginning season. The gin company operates a Continental The plantation home houses the migrant workers while they are working for the gin company.

Two or three other retired farmers still reside on the plantation, though none of the early tenant housing still exists. Mr Minter has plans 2 Currently, the Dallas Compress Company is the only compress warehouse operating in Selma. 3 Hohenberg Bros began as M. Hohenberg Mercantile in Wetumpka, Alabama in The company advanced supplies to farmers in exchange for portions of the farmer's fall cotton crop. Eventuall, Hohenberg dealt only in cotton. J.A. MINTER & SON PLANTATION HAER No. AL-192 (Page 4) to restore and relocate his residence to the plantation home. J.A. MINTER& SON PLANTATION HAER No. AL-192 (Page 5) Sources Consulted Daniel, Pete. Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tabacco, and Rice Cultures since Chicago: University of Illinois Press, Garside, Alston Hill.

Cotton Goes to Market: A Graphic Description of a Great Industry. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, Gibbons, Faye. Breaking New Ground: The History of the Autauga Quality Cotton Association. Montgomery: Black Belt Press, Harrison, Jesse. (employee of Tyler Gin Company), personal interview. Hubbard, W. Hustace. Cotton and the Cotton Market. New York: D. Appleton and Company, Minter, James A., IV, personal interview. Virts, Nancy. "The Efficiency of Southern Tenant Plantations, Journal of Economic History 51(June1991), Woodman, Harold D. King Cotton and his Retainers: Financing and Marketing the Cotton Crop of the South, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, J.A. MINTER & SON PLANTATION HAER No. AL-192 -- (Page 6) SUCKER , ~ f LINT CLEANING ' SEPARATOR ,. TOWER DRYER CONDENSOR ,.

INCLINE PRESS STICK MACHINE ., TOWER DRYER ' r INCLINE ' r CONVEYOR/ DISTRIBUTOR , r FIGURE 1 GIN GIN SYSTEM SCHEMATIC, a TYLER GIN COMPANY DALLAS COUNTY, ALABAMA Historic American Engineering Record August