Petit Gulf cotton

Last updated
"Cotton Seed" Baton-Rouge Gazette, May 16, 1829 "Cotton Seed" Baton-Rouge Gazette, May 16, 1829.jpg
"Cotton Seed" Baton-Rouge Gazette, May 16, 1829

Petit Gulf cotton was a cotton hybrid patented by planter Rush Nutt at his Laurel Hill Plantation in Rodney, Mississippi, in 1833. [1] It was named "Petit Gulf" for the bend of the Mississippi River where it was grown. [2] It proved more resistant than the green seed cotton from Georgia as long as planters followed the breeding process used in Rodney. [3] Petit Gulf was said to be less likely to harbor diseases and rot than other breeds of cotton. [4] Moreover, it was easier to pick with a human hand, thus leading to greater productivity. [2]

There is a fair amount of lore associated with the Petit Gulf cotton strain. In 1853 T.A. of Washington, Mississippi wrote to the editor of the Natchez Courier, "a Mr. Lewellyn Price, then a planter in the Gulf hills, in Claiborne county, near where Oakland College stands, has the credit of first growing it to any extent. As Mr. Price never was fully certain of who first gave him the few seeds from which he, ultimately, grew his crop, it is only necessary to say that he began with three or four seeds which were given to him as Mexican. These he grew carefully, until he had enough to plant five acres. From this small beginning it spread, until now it has become the principal dependence for a crop through the entire cotton growing region." [5] The version that appeared in a Natchez newspaper in 1871 said the seeds came from a visiting trader: [6]

Now there happened about the year 1816 to be a trade carried on between the highlands of Mississippi and the prairies bordering on Mexico and Western Texas. The traders would carry over their money, buy up mustang ponies and drive them across to our border. One of these was in the habit of stopping at a plantation just back of Rodney, then called Petit Gulf. He formed a sort of attachment for his host. On one of these visits he brought him a small package of cotton seed...the yield was satisfactory; the bolls did not rot, and they opened as invitingly as a hospitable landlord; the picking was easy. Inmediately their fame spread and they long went by the name of the Petit Gulf seed, though in reality they were Mexican. Many fortunes were made by Petit Gulf panters. The old black seed disappred gradually and the Mexican improved still holds sway.

According to one local historian, there are two legends about how McNutt acquired the seed: "The first is that he got the seed in Egypt while on a world cruise. The other is that he found it in Mexico and offered to buy some. Told that the country did not allow the export of cotton seed, he was offered an alternative by the resourceful Mexican. He told him that dolls could be exported—so Nutt bought a whole batch of dolls, all stuffed with cotton seed." [7] A third account credits Walter Burling for the doll-seed smuggling. [8]

In 1891 the Petit Gulf cultivar was described as, "Stalk large and straggling. Wood limbs long and abundant near the bottom. Fruit limbs long, long jointed and drooping. Bolls medium and pointed. Staple long. Not prolific. Late." [9]

By 1907, an agronomist reported that "...for many years pure seed has been impossible to obtain and the variety has practically disappeared from cultivation, the cotton still grown and reported under this name being a mixture of various types. Petit Gulf was developed about 1840 by Col. H. W. Vick, of Mississippi, and by 1846 it had become very popular." [10]

The Hunt strain may have been derivative of Petit Gulf. [11]

Rush Nutt's son Haller Nutt —also a wealthy slave owner, planter and agronomist—developed and marketed a cotton cultivar known as Egypto-Mexican beginning in 1841. [12]

An eponymous song appears on Justin Townes Earle's 2010 album Harlem River Blues.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Natchez, Mississippi</span> City in Mississippi, United States

Natchez, officially the City of Natchez, is the only city in and the county seat of Adams County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 14,520 at the 2020 census. Located on the Mississippi River across from Vidalia in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, Natchez was a prominent city in the antebellum years, a center of cotton planters and Mississippi River trade.

The Natchez District was one of two areas established in the Kingdom of Great Britain's West Florida colony during the 1770s – the other being the Tombigbee District. The first Anglo settlers in the district came primarily from other parts of British America. The district was recognized to be the area east of the Mississippi River from Bayou Sara in the south and Bayou Pierre in the north.

The Avoyel or Avoyelles were a small Native American tribe who at the time of European contact inhabited land near the mouth of the Red River at its confluence with the Atchafalaya River near present-day Marksville, Louisiana. The Avoyel are a member of the federally recognized Native American tribe and sovereign nation of the Tunica Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Overton Moore</span> American politician

Thomas Overton Moore was an attorney and politician who was the 16th Governor of Louisiana from 1860 until 1864 during the American Civil War. Anticipating that Louisiana's Ordinance of Secession would be passed in January 1861, he ordered the state militia to seize all U.S. military posts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louisiana in the American Civil War</span>

Louisiana was a dominant population center in the southwest of the Confederate States of America, controlling the wealthy trade center of New Orleans, and contributing the French Creole and Cajun populations to the demographic composition of a predominantly Anglo-American country. In the antebellum period, Louisiana was a slave state, where enslaved African Americans had comprised the majority of the population during the eighteenth-century French and Spanish dominations. By the time the United States acquired the territory (1803) and Louisiana became a state (1812), the institution of slavery was entrenched. By 1860, 47% of the state's population were enslaved, though the state also had one of the largest free black populations in the United States. Much of the white population, particularly in the cities, supported slavery, while pockets of support for the U.S. and its government existed in the more rural areas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fort Rosalie</span> United States historic place in Mississippi

Fort Rosalie was built by the French in 1716 within the territory of the Natchez Native Americans as part of the French colonial empire in the present-day city of Natchez, Mississippi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rodney, Mississippi</span> Ghost town in Mississippi, United States

Rodney is a ghost town in Jefferson County, Mississippi, United States. Most of the buildings are gone, and the remaining structures are in various states of disrepair. The town floods regularly, and buildings have extensive flood damage. The Rodney History And Preservation Society is restoring Rodney Presbyterian Church. Damage to the church's facade from the American Civil War has been maintained as part of the historical preservation, including a replica cannonball embedded above the balcony windows. The Rodney Center Historic District is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Haller Nutt (1816–1864) was an American slave owner, cotton plantation owner, and agronomist in Mississippi. He developed a strain of cotton that became important commercially for the Deep South.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Green Leaves</span> Historic house in Mississippi, United States

"Green Leaves", also known as the Koontz House or the Beltzhoover House, is a Greek Revival mansion in Natchez, Mississippi, completed in 1838 by Edward P. Fourniquet, a French lawyer who built other structures in the area. It was purchased by George Washington Koontz, a local banker in 1849 and has been owned by his descendants ever since. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1979.

Charles C. Cordill, was a cotton planter and politician from Tensas Parish in the northeastern portion of the U.S. state of Louisiana. He was a member of the Louisiana State Senate from 1884 until 1912 in which he represented both Tensas and neighboring Concordia Parish to the south.

Henry Watson Jr. (1810–1891) was an American lawyer, plantation owner and businessman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward McGehee</span> Mississippi judge and planter (1786–1880)

Edward McGehee was an American judge and major planter in Wilkinson County, Mississippi. He owned nearly 1,000 slaves to work his thousands of acres of cotton land at his Bowling Green Plantation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Hunt (planter)</span>

David Hunt was an American planter based in the Natchez District of Mississippi. From New Jersey in approximately 1800, he took a job in his uncle Abijah Hunt's Mississippi business. After his uncle's untimely 1811 death, as a beneficiary and as the executor of the estate, he began to convert the estate into his plantation empire. By the time of the 1860 slave census, Hunt owned close to 800 slaves. This was after ensuring that each of his five adult children had at least one plantation and had an approximate minimum of 100 slaves apiece. In fact, Hunt and his five adult children and their spouses owned some 1,700 slaves by 1860. He became a major philanthropist in the South, contributing to educational institutions in Mississippi, as well as the American Colonization Society and Mississippi Colonization Society, the latter of which he was a founding member.

Levin R. Marshall was an American banker and planter in the Antebellum South. He was a founder and President of the Commercial Bank of Natchez, Mississippi. He owned 14,000 acres in Mississippi and Louisiana, and 10,000 acres in Arkansas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oakland College (Mississippi)</span> Defunct private college near Rodney, Mississippi

Oakland College was a private college near Rodney, Mississippi. Founded by Jeremiah Chamberlain in 1830, the school was affiliated with the Presbyterian Church. It closed during Reconstruction, and some of its former campus is now part of the Alcorn State University Historic District.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cypress Grove Plantation</span> Zachary Taylors plantation, Jefferson Co. Mississippi

The Cypress Grove Plantation was a Southern plantation owned by President Zachary Taylor near Rodney, Mississippi. Later, it was also known as Buena Vista Plantation.

The Willing Expedition, also called Willing's Depredation, was a 1778 military expedition launched on behalf of the American Continental Congress by Captain James Willing during the American War of Independence.

Rush Nutt (1781–1837) was a Mississippian planter, physician, and scientist. He was the founder of Laurel Hill Plantation and discovered Petit Gulf cotton. He is a former justice of the Jefferson County court in Mississippi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Petit Gulf</span> Location on lower Mississippi River

Petit Gulf was a location on the Mississippi River in North America. The gulf was an eddy or whirlpool that was smaller than the nearby Grand Gulf. The eddy lent its name to the nearby Petit Gulf Hills and Petit Gulf Creek. There was a settlement there prior to the 1828 organization of Rodney, Mississippi, and the Petit Gulf cotton cultivar, which was widely planted in the U.S. South before the American Civil War, was named for the landing and town.

James Campbell Wilkins (1787–1849) was an American businessman and political figure who served as a Mississippi territorial legislator, prospered as merchant of Natchez district, and owned thousands of acres and hundreds of slaves in the lower Mississippi River valley in the first half of the 19th century.

References

  1. ↑ James, D. Clayton (1968). Antebellum Natchez. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press. p. 156. ISBN   0-8071-1860-5.
  2. 1 2 Johnson, Walter (2013). River of Dark Dreams. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN   978-0-674-04555-2.
  3. ↑ Moore, John Hebron (1988). The Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom in the Old Southwest: Mississippi, 1770-1860. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press. p. 13. ISBN   9780807114049.
  4. ↑ "The Rot in Cotton". The Farmer's Register . 5 (1). Petersburg, VA: Edmund Ruffin: 25. 1837.
  5. ↑ "The Rot in Cotton". Natchez Daily Courier. 1853-01-04. p. 3. Retrieved 2024-07-15.
  6. ↑ "Petit Gulf Cotton". The Weekly Natchez Courier. 1871-04-08. p. 2. Retrieved 2024-07-14.
  7. ↑ McIntire, Carl (1981-05-03). "Technically, Rodney is not a ghost town". Clarion-Ledger. p. 3F. Retrieved 2024-07-14.
  8. ↑ "Facts About Cotton". The Decatur Daily. 1955-05-15. p. 16. Retrieved 2024-07-14.
  9. ↑ "Cotton / J.S. Newman and Jas. Clayton no.33(1891)". HathiTrust. p. 11. Retrieved 2024-07-13.
  10. ↑ "Varieties of American upland cotton. By Frederick J. Tyler ..." HathiTrust. Retrieved 2024-07-14.
  11. ↑ "The origin and history of the Hunt cotton". Alabama Beacon. 1850-11-02. p. 1. Retrieved 2024-07-15.
  12. ↑ James, D. Clayton (1993) [1968]. Antebellum Natchez. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press. p. 156. ISBN   978-0-8071-1860-3. LCCN   68028496. OCLC   28281641.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.