DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Wattsville Gin, out here in Caldwell County. Now, every good Texas story starts with somebody deciding a piece of land is worth stakin' a claim on. Around 1855, two brothers — Zechariah John and Thomas Watts — settled this area.
And they didn't just homestead and call it a day. No, these two got to work. They built a cotton gin.
They built a general store. They built a blacksmith shop. Brothers with a plan, you might say.
The gin itself was somethin' to think about. They needed power to run it, and out here on the Texas prairie, you work with what the sky gives you. So they built a man-made dirt dam to collect rainwater — a structure that folks would come to know simply as the gin tank.
That collected water powered a gin that didn't just bale cotton. It ground corn and cottonseed too. From about 1880 all the way through the early 1920s, residents of Wattsville, Hall, and other nearby towns brought their crops here.
This was the beating heart of the area. But here's where the story takes a turn. After John's death, his wife Ada didn't fold up the operation and walk away.
She applied — to the state government and the federal government both — and she received licenses to operate that gin herself. Now understand what that meant. She became one of few women in the state to hold those licenses.
In an era when that kind of thing simply wasn't done, Ada Watts did it. Today, the gin itself is gone. But that old dirt dam — the gin tank — it's still there.
Sitting quiet in Caldwell County, holding water and holding memory, a reminder of two brothers who built something out of nothing, and the woman who made sure it kept going.
What the marker says
From about 1880 to the early 1920s, residents of Wattsville, Hall and other nearby towns used a cotton gin located here. Brothers Zechariah John and Thomas Watts settled the area ca. 1855, building the gin and also a general store and blacksmith shop. A man-made dirt dam, later known as the gin tank, collected rain water to power the gin, which was used to bale cotton and also to grind corn and cottonseed. After John's death, his wife, Ada, applied for and received licenses from the state and federal governments to operate the gin, becoming one of few women to do so. Today, the remaining gin tank serves as a reminder of the vital role of the Wattsville gin and the Watts family in developing this area of Caldwell County. (2010)