Grit and Tin: Cajun Sharecroppers and the Prairie Hayes Cotton Gin
Supplying rural farmers with the means to gin their cotton from the 1930s until the 1970s.
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Sometime in the early 1880s, the first cotton gin in Church Point was built by Valentin Breaux and in 1890, his competitor Homer Barrouse opened another. The ginning business was dominated by Joseph Ernest Daigle, who opened multiple gins under the People’s Ginning Company in 1905. Two of these gins were located in Church Point, one in Branch, and the other in Prairie Hayes. Prairie Hayes referred to the rural area north and west of Church Point, which consisted of mostly prairies and farmland. The Prairie Hayes Cotton Gin was located at roughly 9324 White Oak Hwy in the community of Richard. These gins would be managed by Edouard Daigle, Joseph Ernest’s eldest son, who was a successful businessman and banker, and in today’s money, a millionaire by 1940. There were three other gins managed by Roy Horecky, son of John Horecky, the founder of Church Point Wholesale. After the initial gin built in the 1880s burned down in 1925, and the Horecky gin in Higginbotham was devastated by Hurricane Audrey in 1957, there were five gins providing locals with jobs and a place to process their cotton until the 1970s.
Upon the death of Edouard, his son, Edward Everett “Jack” Daigle managed roughly six thousand acres of farmland in Church Point and Prairie Hayes. He was a graduate of the Southwestern Louisiana Institute in 1917 with a degree in agriculture and mechanical engineering. He managed the J.E. Daigle and Son department store and became president of Farmer’s State Bank in Church Point in place of his father. In his absence, many families lived on his land and grew and processed his produce that consisted of the delta pine smooth leaf variation of white cotton, sweet potatoes, and corn. Jack provided them with houses and space to subsistence farm for themselves.
One of these sharecropping families was the Richards, the family of Hypolite “Polite” Richard, who lived on Blacksmith Road, a few miles away from Richard Elementary School and the Prairie Hayes Cotton Gin. He and his wife, Della Higginbotham, had 10 children, Remi, Ravis, Raymond, Issac, Iry, Iris, Irene, Rena, Winnie, and Carrie. Throughout the years, the family resided down this dirt road. Ravis, his wife Eurella, and their elder children, including my grandmother Faye, farmed Jack Daigle’s land, often hiring themselves out for other jobs in between harvests. Faye recounted picking a sack of cotton every day after school, fighting off hornets while breaking corn, learning from her Paw Paw Polite how to pick cotton efficiently, and working or babysitting her younger siblings as a very young girl. In the 1960s, the old jail in Church Point was moved to Blacksmith Road and converted to a barn near Polite’s house and he and others would play cards there. Faye shared some of her memories with me, including how one of her neighbors, Colum, had a dog named Jim that he would speak French to and share coffee with, Hurricane Audrey damaged their barn, she and her siblings would walk to Richard Elementary School in the summer to attend catechism, and how her some of her family members would pick about 200 pounds of cotton per day that would then be brought down the road to the Prairie Hayes Cotton Gin.
After arriving at the gin, cotton would be sucked out of parked wagons and processed. The gin was composed of several different elements enclosed in tin buildings, including machines that separated the lint fiber from the cotton seed, cleaned, dried, pressed, and packaged the fiber into bales. These bales weighed up to 600 pounds when completed. The gin operated all day and all night all throughout the cotton season. On site also was a burn pile or incinerator for the trash and debris like rocks, leaves, and hulls associated with the ginning process, as well as a grocery store owned by Jack’s brother, Lionel “Happy” Daigle, to supplement products not grown at the homes of sharecroppers. The gin was also used by individuals growing their own cotton without the help of sharecroppers, like my other grandmother Nell, whose father John Long had nearly a dozen acres of cotton that he, his family, and hired help would pick and bring to the Prairie Hayes Cotton Gin a few miles down the road.
In the mid-1970s, the last few remaining gins, including one Horecky gin in Church Point, the People’s Cotton Gin closest to the train depot in Church Point, and the Prairie Hayes gin, closed for a few reasons. Cotton had been on the decline and suffered because of Louisiana’s rainy climate, Jack and Happy Daigle both died in 1972, and soybeans and cattle would continue to rise in popularity and replace cotton. Once they could no longer harvest the crops on large scale farms, retired sharecroppers would leave the lifestyle behind and move to town, and farmers like John Long began farming livestock and other crops in lieu of cotton. The ability to adapt to an ever-changing world and be resilient despite hardship are two of the most treasured Cajun qualities. The houses and landmarks on Blacksmith Road have since been demolished, except for the one belonging to Issac, and the gin has been reduced to concrete slabs next to what is now Philadelphia Worship Center. However, the stories of the not-so-distant-past live on through the many children of sharecroppers of rural Acadiana, who remember the cotton fluttering in the air and settling on window screens and the ground like snow in the summer.
