By Hamilton Richardson
Elmore/Autauga News Staff Writer
For seven years, and truth be told, it’s been longer than that, a dedicated group of history-loving Prattville residents have been busy preserving documents, photos, files, ledgers and all manner of other items that had been pulled from the historic Continental Eagle Corporation, once known as the Daniel Pratt Gin Company.
The work of sorting, cleaning, cataloging and preserving has not been done by professionals in the field but by everyday folks looking to help preserve the history of the area.
“These are dedicated volunteers,” explained Ann Boutwell, herself a longtime historian with the Autauga County Heritage Association. “We started in 2015 with a volunteer group at the bank but work had been going on before that.”
According to documents provided by the historian, the gin company, which is located on Gin Shop Hill Road in Prattville, has changed a lot over the years and has operated under various names since 1899. Continental Gin Company was the product of six cotton gin factories coming together to merge into one industry. Daniel Pratt Gin Company, Eagle Cotton Gin Company, Winship Gin Company, Munger Gin Company, Smith Sons Gin and Machinery Company and the Northington-Pratt-Munger Gin Company were the six cotton gin companies that merged, creating the largest cotton gin factory in the world.
For about 180 years, cotton gins had been manufactured in Prattville but in 2009, the company began outsourcing the production to India. In early 2012, the company decided to cease operations and shut down.
Boutwell said that the massive undertaking of caring for so many documents and photos was taking place until very recently on the third floor of Prattville’s Hancock Bank. The bank building became unavailable in April 2021 and so the thousands of items have been divided into climate-controlled storage units and other locations including the “Little House,” which was built circa 1870 and sits directly next to the Prattaugan Museum.
Boutwell said that even though there is a landslide of historical treasures involved and so much work has gone into preserving them already, there are still more items coming to light.
“We keep finding stuff,” Boutwell said laughing at the new discoveries.
The historian pointed to the latest discovery in January of this year when a construction crew was tearing out a ceiling over a restroom in the 1912 building and a stash of ledgers, blueprints, and photos were discovered. Boutwell said that it included an 1879 ledger, 1923 blueprints, and photos from the World War II era.
Boutwell also said they had been working on 40,000 drawings but even though they thought they had completed that portion of the project, they discovered 250 more.
Even though there are fewer volunteers these days, two of the projects currently underway are the cataloging of over 1,000 pieces of advertising that spans from 1800 to 2012. Also being sorted are employee time cards from the 1900’s that a volunteer is working on putting into an Excel spreadsheet.
Boutwell said the goal behind all the work put into this long project is to preserve Prattville’s history and to support families in the area.
“This will help people in the future to search for information about their relatives,” Boutwell said. “Our goal is to have this accessible to the public. It belongs in Prattville.”
There is also a future goal of having all the preserved items on display, which may one day include a museum and a library that residents, school children and visitors from around the world can come and learn about the historical significance of the gin company and the Prattville area.
For more information on the continuing work being done by the Autauga County Heritage Association, go online to www.autaugahistory.org, go to the group’s Facebook page or visit the Prattaugan Museum in downtown Prattville.
