Motorists tooling along N.C. 150 may barely have noticed the deteriorating wood building. But behind its walls lay two centuries of history.
That's why Rhonda Putnam had to walk away when Sherrills Ford-Terrell firefighters began to burn it down at the property owner's request Sept. 27.
Putnam ran the Ye Ole Cotton Gin antiques store there for 25 years through a long-term lease, before closing it two years ago due to her health and word the building might be sold.
She estimates she gave tours of the building and its 3 1/2 cotton gins to several hundred school, community and tour-bus groups.
"I don't know if I can take this," Putnam said as flames appeared in the building about 8 p.m. "I can't watch this."
Earlier, at the behest of Putnam and other concerned residents, firefighters used axes, chainsaws and other tools to remove and save the cotton gins. The work took six hours.
"They put their shoulder to the wheel," said Sidney Halma, director of the Catawba County Historical Association. "And many of them feel like we do, that (the cotton gins) needed to be preserved."
Firefighter/EMT Dale Wetherspoon got permission to borrow a forklift from his employer, Shaw Construction Co. at Duke Power's Marshall Steam Station. He used it to lift the gins out of the building and move them to a field across N.C. 150.
The gins separated cotton fibers from seeds in cotton raised by generations of local farmers. Gins had been a fixture at the site from the mid-19th century to the 1960s, when the boll weevil destroyed the local crop, Putnam said.
Cotton gins were important to the Southern economy and the rest of the country. Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in 1793 rapidly increased the production of cotton and stimulated the Industrial Revolution in America.
Like Putnam, the firefighters couldn't see burning the old gins, either.
"It's my history," said Sherrills Ford-Terrell Fire Chief Keith Bost, 29. "I've lived here all my life."
Bost credited Putnam and others, including Catawba County commissioners Barbara Beatty and Chairwoman Kitty Barnes, with helping make sure the cotton gins were saved. Paul Beatty of the Historical Association helped a great deal by speaking with property owner Charles Connor, Bost said.
Sixty firefighters -- 40 from Sherrills Ford-Terrell and the rest from Denver and Bandys -- helped with the controlled burn. A smaller vacant wood building beside the cotton gin building went up in flames first. A third building, with valuable old timber, was spared.
Connor could not be reached last week. Chief Bost said he has received no plans for what Connor intends to do with the property.
Halma said Connor made the cotton gins available to the association, and one will go in its planned agricultural-equipment building at Historic Murray's Mill. The others will be made available to other interested parties, he said. Bost said he understands efforts are being made to keep all the gins in the county.
At Murray's Mill, the cotton gin will be with the old thresher machine, the horse-pulled binder that cut wheat, the ox- and horse-pulled stump remover and other equipment now in storage.
The gin will be preserved right there with the rest of local history.
Distributed by the Associated Press
