Historedia
Episode 1 of 2

Developing the gin at Mulberry Grove

When
1793
Where
Catherine Greene's Georgia plantation
Part of
Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin Patent

While staying at Catherine Greene's Mulberry Grove plantation, Whitney developed his short-staple cotton gin during 1793.

Greene invited Whitney to visit her Georgia plantation, Mulberry Grove, where her plantation manager and husband-to-be, Phineas Miller, would become Whitney's business partner. While staying there, Whitney constructed ingenious household devices that led Greene to introduce him to businessmen discussing the desirability of a machine to process cotton. He developed a short-staple cotton gin in 1793 and described his invention in a letter to his father dated September 11, 1793.

Sources

  1. Eli Whitney Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-01
  2. Cotton gin Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-18

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.