COTTON WAS KING.

It seems strange, but the fact is that in early years cotton was quite extensively grown in Greene county. The early settlers, many of them, had come from the southern states, where cotton and tobacco were the principal staples, and where it was thought that “cotton was king” and tobacco queen, and that their kingdom was bounded on the east by the oceans and on the north and south by the British possessions and Mexico. It was not dreamed that the rich soil of the northern states was to create a revolution in farm products, placing corn and wheat on the throne so long occupied by the justly illustrious,cotton and tobacco. So it came to pass that the early settlers brqught seed cotton and tobacco with them to Indiana.. In a short time a large number of the first residents annually grew from one to five acres of cotton, and from a few rows to an acre of tobacco, both of which products were mainly consumed at home. The cotton was freed of seed by a neighboring cotton gin and then taken in hand, and in a short time, by various mysterious processes. transformed into gamients of sundry sizes and hues. Before the gin d)as brought in the seed was picked out by hand in picking bees by the girls and boys. Many a match of pioneer youth was struck and lighted into fervid flame at these pickings. Yes, your father and mother, now old and wrinkled, with palsied hands and tottdring feet, were then young and rosy and strong, with warm, loving hearts under linsey-woolsey and jeans and tow, with spirits. “feather light” in the merry morning of their lives. Soon you came on the stage in swaddling clothes, very red in the face, lifting up your voice in doleful lamentations, and then father and mother were never tired waiting upon you, tenderly watching your uncertain growth and directing your energies in healthful pursuits and curbing your abnormal passions with the specific of Solomon. Can you do too much for them now? They are standing on the brink of the river of death, and can hear the surf beat on the rocky shore of time, and can see the dark boat in the distance coming for them. They know. as the Arab expresses it, that-

“The black camel named Death kneeleth once at each door. And a mortal must mount to return nevermore.”

There is no evasion. When the camel comes one must go. There is time for but one kind word, a clasp of the hand, a kiss, a last goodby, and the boat leaves the strand and goes out into the mist of oblivion. Once the old loved ‘to pick cotton for your little form, loved to meet pioneer associates with salutations of the backwoods; but now they live only in memory, in the happy clays of the dead past where their hearts lie.

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"Biographical Memoirs of Greene County, Ind. with Reminiscences of Pioneer Days", B.F. Bowen & Co., Indianapolis, IN, 1908, Vol. 1 pg 266-8

Last updated 6.11.2009