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Thomas Lamar farms cotton on the family land granted by the King of England. Thomas’ brother, Charles, makes a bold move to reopen the African slave trade in defiance of a federal ban. Talk of...
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Dr. Peter Coclanis, the Albert Ray Newsome Distinguished Professor & Director of the Global Research Institute at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, joins Dr. Edgar for the first of a...
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With the invention of the “Cotton Gin” by Eli Whitney, combined with methods we would today call “scientific plant breeding,” the cotton industry boomed in South Carolina, in the early 19th century...
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With the success of cotton in South Carolina, entrepreneurs in other states looked to cash in on the success of cotton plantations. When the cotton economy and market-shares begin to decline in S.C...
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Ripened bolls of short-staple cotton in the fields of Calhoun County in September of 1968. Cotton still produced in South Carolina dominated agriculture in the state in the first half of the 19th...
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"The seat of Dr. William Read on the Cooper River" illustrates the continued wealth and prosperity of the large planters in the Lowcountry even as the economic center of cotton growing moved westward...
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Cotton was a very important cash crop for families like the Brattons, who not only raised grain crops like wheat, oats and corn, but also raised cotton, which gave them the economic capital to...
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Wagon used for hauling cotton
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A cotton gin was used to clean the cotton, removing the seeds and stems Did you know that the word "gin," as in cotton gin, was an abbreviation for the word "engine"?