This digital story recording was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.

Recorded by Buffalo Island Central High School, EAST Students, in conjunction with the Buffalo Island Museum, Arkansas.

Adams Land Co. Gin Manager Buddy Jones explains what a cotton gin does and gives the background of the Adams gin in Leachville, Arkansas. Built in 1992, it's still the largest gin in the world! The importance of the gin for the agricultural economy in the region is also highlighted.

Buddy Jones (00:04): My name is Buddy Jones. I'm the manager of Adam's Land Company, Gin. 1793, Eli Whitney invented the first cotton gin. Wasn't patented until a year later in 1794. It looked like a small wooden box consistent of a hand crank roller with wires on it that just pulled the lint from the seed. Before the gin was invented, they would have to do this process by hand. And the gin actually speeded up this process tremendously.

Buddy Jones (00:35): The gin was built in 1992 by the late Charles "Boe" Adams. It was built right here in Leachville, Arkansas. At the time, it was built to the highest technology and was the largest cotton gin. It still is in the world. This will be the 25th season that the cotton gin's been running. The cotton gin removes the lint or fiber from the seed. And then, the fiber is pressed into 500 pound bales of cotton. It creates jobs, boost our local economy through resellers, the farm equipment sales, and our farmers. At one time, there were 75 to 80 people that operated the gin on two 12-hour shifts seven days a week. From the time we've been in operation, we've run somewhere between 50,000 and 187,000 a year. And it's about an average of 120,000 bales per gin in season.

Buddy Jones (01:39): We start off with roller conveyors that carries the compressed modules, which adds about 12 to 15 bale in them, down a line to a disperser head, which breaks the modules up into smaller pieces so that we can run them through the gin. And then, it goes from that's disperser head into an air dryer. And then from the air dryer, it goes into incline cleaners. There's like two stages of that and all it does is removes the large leaves and sticks out of the cotton. Then, it's dropped into a conveyor distributor, which is an auger that just carries the cotton down to each gin stand feeder, and the feeder's just another cleaning process that breaks the cotton up to and drops it into the gin stands.

Buddy Jones (02:29): The gin stands are a series of saws that just removes the seed from the lint or the fiber. And the seed goes down into an auger and goes out into a pipe and blows it out into the overhead seed houses, which is ready to be shipped out by trucks. The lint itself goes through a lint cleaner, which is a series of saws and brushes that comb the fiber and takes out the smaller particles of leaves and trash. And that's the last cleaning process before it's bale. Then, it goes up into a battery condenser, which is just a large drum that's pulled to that drum by air. And as it goes around, there's another roller that wipes it off and it goes down a lint slide into a steel box.

Buddy Jones (03:19): The steel box is then turned into the press, the press presses the bale and ties it. And it comes out of the press onto a conveyor into an automatic bagger. And the bales are injected into a bag at that point and falls wade and falls off the line tagged and ready for shipment.

A complete transcript is available on the Museum on Main Street website.

Asset ID: 2018.20.24

This digital story recording was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.

Recorded by Buffalo Island Central High School, EAST Students, in conjunction with the Buffalo Island Museum, Arkansas.

Edwin Dunigan talks about the two team farm that his father rented in order to make a living farming. Two of his brothers were serving during World War II so Edwin and one of his brothers worked the farm while going to school at the same time in Arkansas. He also describes what it was like after his dad bought a tractor.

This story is part of Buffalo Island Central EAST's online story map From Swamp to Farmland and exhibits at the Buffalo Island Museum, which both trace the the history of agriculture in the area.

Edwin Dunigan (00:04): My dad ran some ground. He ran what they call a two team farm. We had a team of big mares and then we had a team of mules. Well, my two older brothers was in service at the time. So, it fell to the next two of us to help take care of one of them for my dad there.

Edwin Dunigan (00:27): He used one and my brother, that's older than me, he was three years older than I was, we took day about when we started. He'd work one day, I'd work the next day, and we'd go to school the other day. And that's the reason we, I guess you would call, you got behind in classes on it. And finally from 1945, Dad bought a tractor. But we farmed with them two teams there, made two crops, we made two crops there.

Edwin Dunigan (01:12): Then, we moved up to another place up there and he had more ground. He bought a tractor, bought a Case tractor. And it's the loveliest thing you ever seen in your life. It had one of them where the... I know you've seen pictures of them, where the wheel stuck out in front. That was one of them like he bought on it. But you'd be surprised at the price of it.

Edwin Dunigan (01:39): It cost him $1,600 for that cultivator and a breaking plow. And he started from that, and we still kept one team, and we worked around. We didn't farm that much with it, but with the others. And that's where we started on it. I worked on that. We worked out to, it was 1952 when I graduated school here. I was drafted to the army.

Asset ID: 2018.20.22

This digital story recording was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.

Recorded by Buffalo Island Central High School, EAST Students, in conjunction with the Buffalo Island Museum, Arkansas.

Jerry McAfee shares this amazing story about competitive cotton picking! He and his brother both competed and won in the 1950s in Arkansas. 

This story is part of Buffalo Island Central EAST's online story map From Swamp to Farmland and exhibits at the Buffalo Island Museum, which both trace the the history of agriculture in the area.

Jerry McAfee (00:04): Dad raised us to be cotton pickers. I went on to be a junior worlds champion cotton picker. And my other brother went on to be the world’s champion. We won it two years in a row, 1954 and 1955. Cotton picking contest was called National Cotton Picking Contest at Blytheville.

Jerry McAfee (00:23): Each year, they would have it and you would pick two hours and they would judge you on how clean you pick it, and how many pounds you got and how clean the roll was. Not only was the cotton being clean. You didn't mean if you got the most cotton, that didn't mean you won. They would go through it and make sure, some guy would go out there and pull it, might get the most of it, but that didn't mean he should win. So dad raised us to pick cotton cleanly so we didn't have any trouble.

Jerry McAfee (00:51): When we went to enter the cotton picking contest, all we did is what our father told us to do. My brother went on to win the cotton picking contest one more time, but he came in second, all the rest of the time. My brother came down here from Michigan. What happened was he came down and he said, Jerry, let's go pick cotton today. So we got up real early, and we picked all day and picked as much as we could.

Jerry McAfee (01:16): He picked 604 pound and I picked 402 pound. He said, let's go to that cotton picking contest tomorrow. I said, there ain't no use for me going, you picked 200 pound more than I did. Didn't know it was a junior division. And that was the next day we won. But that brings back very good memories. And in Monette, in the museum is some articles about that contest.

Asset ID: 2018.20.21

This digital story recording was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.

Recorded by Buffalo Island Central High School, EAST Students, in conjunction with the Buffalo Island Museum, Arkansas.

Freida Lawrence recalls what it was like when she was a young child and her mother worked in the cotton fields in Arkansas.

This story is part of Buffalo Island Central EAST's online story map From Swamp to Farmland and exhibits at the Buffalo Island Museum, which both trace the the history of agriculture in the area.

Freida Lawrence (00:00): In 1961, I was about 2 years old, and I remember my mama picking cotton and she would put it in this long white cloth bag that had a shoulder strap. And sometimes her hands would bleed from the holes because they were dry, and she would wrap rags around them and just keep working.

Freida Lawrence (00:28): And I remember her dragging that, she called it pick sack. So she'd drag it to the field and I remember riding on it. And when she got it full, I think it held to 80 pounds, when she got it full, it was weighed, and my dad would lift it onto this big hook with a scale on it.

Freida Lawrence (00:48): But they would weigh it and it was how much a cent percent each pound weighed. That's what she would make a day. She would pick like 200 pounds a day, and if it was 3 cents a pound should work from daylight to sundown for $6.00, $6.00.

Asset ID: 2018.20.20

This digital story recording was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.

Recorded by Buffalo Island Central High School, EAST Students, in conjunction with the Buffalo Island Museum, Arkansas.

Red Palmer recalls what it was like to remove stumps from fields after trees were cleared to make way for farming the land in Buffalo Island, Arkansas.

This story is part of Buffalo Island Central EAST's online story map From Swamp to Farmland and exhibits at the Buffalo Island Museum, which both trace the the history of agriculture in the area.

Red Palmer (00:04): Now there was stumps, what they call stumps, where they'd saw the tree down, and that was still sticking up out there in the field. And I remember us digging them up and cutting them up and chopping them out and, like that, getting that old stump out of the way where we could farm the land.

Asset ID: 2018.20.19

This digital story recording was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.

Recorded by Buffalo Island Central High School, EAST Students, in conjunction with the Buffalo Island Museum, Arkansas.

Nan Snider describes what it was like in Buffalo Island in the early 1900s when it was a wild area full of timber. In order to get to the rich soil from underneath the wet swamps that would be ideal for agriculture, settlers had to work with the timber and railroad industries. 

This story is part of Buffalo Island Central EAST's online story map From Swamp to Farmland and exhibits at the Buffalo Island Museum, which both trace the the history of agriculture in the area.

Nan Snider (00:04): At one time, the Mississippi River ran on the west side of Crowley's Ridge. And so we're on the east side of Crowley's Ridge. And so it's very fertile in this area. And so they started cutting the timber more and then they had all these excesses of timber. Seeing that, the Keitch family brought a railroad line, the JLC&E railroad, Jonesboro, Lake City and Eastern railroad, out from Nettleton. And they came through Lake City, they came through Black Oak, and it came to Monette, and they had logging camps that would bring the logs in and they'd ship them out.

Nan Snider (00:40): Then they went on to Delfore, and they went on to Leachville. And then the railroad were really getting popular. They were coming from all directions. And there was a hub in Leachville. Lot of timber being shipped.

Nan Snider (00:51): But after they began to clear the land then, and get a lot of this timber out... It was just so massive. Virgin timber, just huge hardwood trees and such. After they got out, then the farming really started. They had sweet potatoes, and cabbages, and strawberries, and a lot of grain products because they ate and they lived off the land.

Nan Snider (01:10): And then the cotton, of course, being the king and coming from the Carolinas. So many people came in from the Carolinas. They wanted to start planting cotton. And so they did, and first they shipped it over to the St. Francis River, down river to Whitesburg and Memphis. Then they began to ship it by railroad and then they had cotton gins. So it really went on from there. Once they cleared that land, it was game then.

Asset ID: 2018.20.18

This digital story recording was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.

Recorded by Buffalo Island Central High School, EAST Students, in conjunction with the Buffalo Island Museum, Arkansas.

Jerry McAfee shares about the work that his dad did as a saw filer cutting down huge cypress trees when the timber was being cleared in Buffalo Island, Arkansas. This story is part of Buffalo Island Central EAST's online story map From Swamp to Farmland and exhibits at the Buffalo Island Museum, which both trace the the history of agriculture in the area.

Jerry McAfee (00:04): Yeah, my dad told me about... He actually worked over on Blackwater. He was a saw filer, and they cut them large cypress trees. I mean, they were humongous. And they'd build a scaffold around the tree, eight-foot-high because they couldn't saw it down low. And they had to cut the trees down like that because they were so large.

Asset ID: 2018.20.17

This digital story recording was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.

Recorded by Buffalo Island Central High School, EAST Students, in conjunction with the Buffalo Island Museum, Arkansas.

Nan Snider (00:04): Okay. We would start early in the morning. We'd get up and eat a big breakfast, and we'd go get our clothes on, and get ready to go to the field. We would have a shirt on made of cotton. Everything was cotton. And we'd put it up real high so we wouldn't get our neck brown when we was out in the field. And we would wear a bonnet on our head. It was important that we take care of our skin. We'd wear gloves when we picked cotton, so our hands wouldn't get sunburn, but we cut the fingers out so the tips would show.

Nan Snider (00:37): When we picked cotton, we kept our weights on this little tablet, stick it in our pocket. The little pencil was so tiny, but we'd use it until it just ran out. The children picked right alongside with the adults. The children would... They're just creepy crawlers. They'd crawl along next to mom, pick cotton, and put it on her sack. And so that was just a means of doing it.

Nan Snider (01:03): We'd take a hankie with us in case we needed to blow our nose. We took socks. We wore them, and they were mended on the toes usually. Women mended socks if they got a hole in them. They didn't throw them away. We just took some basic shoes, if they got a hole in them, they'd mend them with sometimes chicken wire, cardboard, and they'd just keep wearing them. We'd wear our jeans. Girls wore jeans, but they had to wear boys' jeans, and use a belt or a rope or something to tie them on them because they didn't go in at the waist.

Nan Snider (01:38): The children, as they got bigger would wear... They would pick cotton in a little, maybe a corn sack. Mama would carry... She would tie... Well, actually, she sewed on a little strap, and they would, well, maybe until about five or six, they'd use that. They get a little bigger, they would put a strap on a 'to sack, or a potato sack, and they would pick in that. And then finally, when they got big enough, they had their own pick sack.

Nan Snider (02:08): Women had a seven-and-a-half-foot sack, men had a nine-foot. We would put it on. I thought all women really looked good in a pick sack. It was very flattering. And we would pick cotton and put it in until it got so full. We could tell our sacks apart, which were important, because we would write our name on them. We would write our names on them with poke berries. And I had Nan Etta Harrell. I would do that in calligraphy, like I thought someone out in the field would really be looking at it. And a cotton, green cotton ball at the end with a wire so that we went up to the wagon, we could hook it onto the scales that hung on the wagon, and it would pull down, and it would tell you how you weigh.

Nan Snider (02:59): So my goal for the morning was to make 76 pounds, my first weigh-in, because it got lighter as the day went on because my sack was wet in the morning from walking through the field. And so by the end of the day, if I could make 300, I get $9. And I just thought I was so rich, and I would dream of the things that I could order from the Sears Roebuck Catalogue . . .

A complete transcript is available on the Museum on Main Street website.

Asset ID: 2018.20.16

This digital story recording was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.

Recorded by Buffalo Island Central High School, EAST Students, in conjunction with the Buffalo Island Museum, Arkansas.

Red Palmer (00:04): You would get about, I imagine the average weight of what you'd call a sack of cotton, they could get as much as maybe 70, 80-pound in that sack, but most time it had like 30, 40, and 50-pound. And I'd say 30 to 50-pound is about what people would put in most of them.

Red Palmer (00:26): I wasn't a good picker. I wasn't a good picker. I could get 100-pound in the morning, maybe, or maybe 100-pound that afternoon, but I don't think I ever got 200 pounds a day, in other words. I might get 180, 190 or something, but I don't think I ever picked 200-pound in one day, but now they had people that could pick three, four and five. A lot of people could pick 300, but they was some people that could pick 400 and 500.

Asset ID: 2018.20.15

This digital story recording was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.

Recorded by Buffalo Island Central High School, EAST Students, in conjunction with the Buffalo Island Museum, Arkansas.

Nan Snider (00:04): Buffalo Island got its name, to the best of our interpretation, is from the fact that it actually was surrounded by water from Kennett, Missouri, which was a Indian village called Chillicothe. The Kenmore Slew, sometimes called the Kenmore River, went from Kennett, which was near Mississippi River, all the way west over to the St. Francis River, came down the St. Francis River through Lake City, which was actually a lake at that time, and went on down to Rivervale, to where it came to a point in the Rivervale Marked Tree area.

Nan Snider (00:44): Well, at the same time, the Hornersville, which came down from Kennett, went on down to Big Lake, which was the lake on the eastern side of Buffalo Island, and it kept running down the Little Red, and it ran down to Rivervale, and Marked Tree, and they joined like a tip, it's kind of like an arrowhead.

Nan Snider (01:03): But at one time there was actually water around, and there were a lot of braided stream terraces that carried the water through Buffalo Island. But it started being called Buffalo, Buffalo Township, Buffalo Island, and that's the stories I've always heard and read about, is how it got its name.

Asset ID: 2018.20.14