A stamp featuring Whitney's face.
Stafford Plantation, the plantation Catherine Green owned.
Eli Whitney
- Lived December 8, 1765 – January 8, 1825
- Born in Massachusetts
- Graduated from Yale in 1792, and wanted to become a lawyer but lacked money
- Moved to Georgia to become a tutor on Catherine Green's plantation.
- Wanted to create a better way to separate cotton fibers from the seeds
- Was given a secret workshop, finances and moral support by Green.
- Invented a new type of cotton gin in 1793, the first automated one.
- Invented it with the help of his business partner, Phineas Miller.
- Instead of mass producing it and selling it, Miller and Whitney built as many they could themselves, and charged farmers 2/5 of the cotton profit to use it for them.
- This angered farmers who created their own gins, and poor patent laws of the day saw nothing illegal about the farmers doings.
- Whitney died in 1825 without ever having seen a profit, or the huge chain of events his gin helped cause.
Phineas Miller
- Born near the same time as Whitney, died in 1803
- Also worked on the same plantation as Whitney as a tutor, began in 1788.
- Plantation belonged to Catherine Green's husband, major general in the American Revolution, Nathanael Green.
- Stafford Plantation was given to Catherine upon Nathanael's death.
- Green and Miller were married in 1796, and President Washington was a witness.