MY COUSIN ELI
By
Eli Whitney, fresh out of
Frank W. Lamberton has written many books. This one is an outstanding manuscript displaying his imaginative flair for spinning a yarn. Surprisingly his characters are drawn into mystery, mayhem and commercial skullduggery, as well as romance and comic relief. The author paints a wide spectrum most booklovers will find pleasantly refreshing.
e-BOOK
Maverick Publishing
FRANK W. LAMBERTON
Eli Whitney
Invented The
Cotton Gin And
Found Romance In
e-Book 2005
www.mittymax.com
Copyright 2005
MY COUSIN ELI
By
FRANK W. LAMBERTON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Copyright
2005
e-Book
Maverick Publishing
MY COUSIN ELI
By
FRANK W. LAMBERTON
DEDICATION
To Beverly Crandell in
appreciation for her assistance in compiling this book.
MY COUSIN ELI
By
FRANK W. LAMBERTON
MY COUSIN ELI
A NOVEL
Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin
And finds romance in
MY COUSIN ELI
By
FRANK W. LAMBERTON
Eli Whitney (1765-1825), American inventor,
best known for his invention of the cotton gin.
Eli Whitney was born in
MY COUSIN ELI
By
FRANK W. LAMBERTON
In times long ago, so we are told,
The harvest of cotton was like
Panning for gold.
Meticulous hours were spent picking the seeds
From the raw cotton until fingers would
bleed.
There was land, water and sunshine
To grow the white fluff
But no way to clean it quickly enough
Five pounds of cleaned cotton
Was worth a days pay.
Planters were seeking a much faster way.
At Twelve Oaks plantation a girl named
Lucille
Coaxed her smart cousin who lived in the
North
She picked up her pen and sent this message
forth.
Dear Cousin Eli, we have a problem severe
Which I’m sure you could fix
If you were to travel down
here.
It’s a crop in demand.
We have water and sunshine and lots of good
land
But the way we must clean it is dreadfully
slow,
The fiber gets tangled with tiny brown seeds,
Corn is better with no obstreperous seeds
But not worth much cash, no
indeed.
Our gallant cavaliers spend their time playing cards,
They hunt, dance and parade, are gallant to ladies
Chase after the maids.
But when it comes to mechanics
Are quite as thick headed as some of
our slaves.
You can plainly see that we need you down here
To bring
So, dear cousin Eli, come south if you will.
Stop at Twelve Oaks plantation at the base of the hill,
Your Aunt Margaret sends greetings.
You remember that she
Married General Greene back in ‘73.
She’s a widow now, her life and mine
Runs smooth and placid, quite serene,
Both want to scream.
Not just for our
problem do I want you down here. My affection for you is serious and real.
I look
forward to your coming,
4th of March, 1793 NS.
My dear distant cousin Lucille:
Your kind letter was received by me here in
Because you and your aunt are my distant
relatives, I intended to continue my journey to Twelve Oaks to pay you a visit,
but I was short of cash, and instead accepted a tutoring position. Then your
letter arrived telling me of your problem with the cotton—a problem you share
with every cotton grower in the Southland. You ask for my assistance as an
inventor. I feel confident that I could devise a contrivance that would comb
the seeds out of short staple cotton. In fact, since receiving your letter, I
have devised such an apparatus on paper. The theory works on my design and I
think it would work in such a machine. I will plan further when I see you which
will be soon for I leave this coming Saturday by public conveyance. I look
forward’ to meeting you whom I have never seen. Your aunt would remember me
perhaps, for I was three years old when my parents sold their home and moved to
I remain your obedient
servant,
Eli Whitney
In the crisp country morning, Lucille emerged
from the great house and stood on the six-pillared veranda. She gazed
thoughtfully down the long vista of green lawn, trimmed by slave children.
Beyond the lawn, five acres of cotton plants lifted their green stalks toward
the autumn fulfillment. Cotton, that tantalizing product which offered so much and then
withheld it after the bolls were laid by.
Recently betrothed to one of several
candidates for her hand, Lucille Winthrop was an active young woman approaching
her twenty-third year. This morning she wore her long brown hair loose to her
shoulders instead of fashionably coiffed for social occasions.
Her twelve-year-old brother, Sewell stood
behind a marine spyglass, which was pointed at the turnpike-leading west,
“Is it in sight yet?” she asked her brother.
“If it stops and he gets off I’ll send Pomp with the spring wagon to fetch him
and his luggage.”
“All right,” Sewell said. “You said he was
going to make us rich by figuring out how to get the seeds out of the cotton.
Jiminy! I’m ready to be rich.”
“I didn’t quite say that,” Lucille stated.
Sewell put his eye back on the
spyglass-viewing piece.
“Here it comes,” he announced after a few
moments watching. “And it’s stopping. Someone—a man—is getting off.”
“Glory be,” said
Lucille. “That must be Eli.”
“I’m going down to the junction and meet
him,” the boy said. He ran across the yard and entered the shade of oak trees
that lined the private road leading from me plantation house to the turnpike.
Contrary to the plantation’s name there were twenty-four white oaks, twelve on
each side.
Lucille entered the house. She spoke to the
gray-haired old lady busy at the spinning wheel in the ornate front room.
“He’s here, Aunt Margaret. He got off the
stage at the crossing. Sewell went there to meet him. I’ll have Pomp hitch up
the spring wagon and fetch his luggage.
Supper at Twelve Oaks was usually a quiet
affair with only Lucille, Aunt Margaret, and Sewell attending. Occasionally
Lucille’s intended Sherbourne Pope, living with his
family on a neighboring plantation, stopped by at suppertime.
On ‘the evening of Eli’s arrival, Sherbourne sat at the. dining
table with the others. He sat next to Lucille, she in her second best gown of
blue organdy, her long brown hair properly coiffed and her white teeth sparkling
behind frequent sunny smiles. She felt triumphant and happy because of Eli. He
would fix that cotton, she was sure. He held patents on several minor
inventions in
Normally she paid much attention to Sherbourne, her future husband, but this evening she
lavished most of her charm on the inventor, a young man of twenty-nine years,
gentlemanly and affable, and quite good looking she noted. Maybe I can find him
a nice girl to settle down with. I don’t want him to go back to the place in
“Eli, you said in your letter that you have
made a design of your apparatus,” Lucille said during the serving of the meal
by two slaves. “Tell us about it.”
“You’ll forgive me if I prefer not to discuss
my plans at this time,” Eli said. “It’s all rather technical and really not
good dinner conversation.”
“Meaning it’s confidential. I can understand
that,” she murmured.
Sherbourne spoke up, “I tried my hand at making a
device to strip away those pesky seeds. I put some metal claws in a wheel and
turned it, feeding in the cotton bolls, but they just piled up on me in a
mass—all tangled together, you know. Finally I gave up. I hope you have better
luck, Mr. Whitney.”
“You should have devised a means to keep the
cleaned cotton moving forward—away from your wheel. Problem is, the seeds are so tightly clinging to the cotton. I will
use a - but that’s getting technical again.” He drank from his wine glass
instead of saying further.
But all eyes around the table were upon him.
He knew his hosts expected some details from him. He continued speaking:
“For the next few days, I will be making
machine parts to fit the sketched-out operational machine which I will call a
gin, short for engine. I ask your permission, Margaret, to use your blacksmith
shop and forge for heating metal rods hot and malleable. I left an order for
wheels, chains, and lengths of iron rods. These will arrive from
“Pomp,” she answered promptly. “The boy who
picked you up with your luggage when you got off the stage this morning. He is
the smartest darkey on the place. He even reads and
writes some. He’ll do fine for you.”
“Boy? He’s not a boy. He’s a grown man!”
“We call them all boys. It’s a southern
term,” she explained.
“Oh.
To be sure. I must admit it takes a bit of adjusting to southern ways and
customs, especially this slave business. I find it both interesting and
somewhat repellant, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Repellant? How so?”
“Perhaps we had best not get into that,” Eli
said.
“I’ll call Pomp in from his quarters,”
Lucille said. “You can talk to him about his new position. He acts as our handy
man, repairman around the place. I’m sure you’ll find him quite satisfactory
for your work.”
For the next five days, Lucille saw very
little of Eli. He took over the stone walled blacksmith shop and installed a
bed in one corner as well as a solid workbench. The forge used for making
horseshoes was nearly suitable for his needs. Then he and his assistants waited
for the shipment of metal from Savannah. There was plenty to do while waiting.
Lucille saw him at noon when he came in for dinner and took a plate of food out
to his chief assistant, Pomp; who looked upon his promotion with dignified
capability.
Then the wagonload of metal parts—some
prefabricated, others mere slabs of iron—arrived, and the achievers were busier
than before.
Sparked with curiosity about the work
progressing within the blacksmith shop, Lucille twice ventured to ask him
questions, received non-committal evasions.
“He won’t tell me anything,” she said to Sherbourne on one of his visits. “He’s a master at polite
evasions.”
“Ask Pomp,” Sherbourne
suggested. “Maybe he will tell you something.”
On the following afternoon, Lucille took her
fiancé’s advice. She questioned Pomp when he came to the house to pick up some
tools for “the job” as it was being termed. Evidently Eli had not cautioned him
not to divulge information regarding the mechanical functions of the cottonseed
extractor, for he answered his mistress’s questions readily, and clarified his
explanations by drawing a rough sketch of the apparatus and its workings.
“Course there’s a lot left to do on it, Miz Lucille, but we got the two wheels in place, and they
is what feeds the cotton bolls through these hooks and combs that take out the
seeds,”
There were two sets of wheels with short
little spikes two inches apart on the rim of each wheel. “The cotton is first
fed off this back wheel through this slot in the wall that separates ‘em, and cotton is held tight to the wheel by these little
spikes, and that gives it some resistance when it is pushed onto the second
wheel. “The combs take out the seeds which drop into the bottom where they be
raked away.”
“There’re combs on both wheels,” she asked,
“so the cotton is raked—or combed twice?”
“That’s right. Big problem now is to figure
out how to keep the cotton from falling off the rim of the wheels. Marse Eli says he gonna put in
longer spikes and more of them to hold the bolls in place while they are being
combed. It all very deep, Miz Lucille. Marse Eli says I’m the smartest nigger on de place, and
even I don’t rightly understand how it works, but that’s the general idea like
you see there.”
She let him go after a few more questions.
Then she thoughtfully studied the sketch he had made. The basic principal was
sound as a dollar, the wheels and the combs and the spikes all working
together, driven by power.
“This will work,” she murmured. “Glory be,
this will work.”
At suppertime, Eli approached her after
scrubbing his hands at the sink. His expression was not cordial.
“Pomp tells me you asked him some questions
regarding the mechanical function of the extractor.”
“Yes, I did ask him some questions.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because I’m interested in what you are
doing— the invention itself. I’ve asked you, and you won’t tell me anything. So
I asked Pomp.”
“I should have told
him not to answer questions about the work. Let me explain it to you so you
will understand, my dear Lucille. My work on this project is secretive and
confidential. I don’t want anyone to know bow it works until I get it patented.”
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