Smyrna resident in the news.

In 1880 a local Smyrna resident created a new cotton gin machine that was so good it made the front of The Louisiana Democrat, January 21st, 1880.

A GREAT INVENTION.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CLEMENT ATTACHMENT.
We invite the attention of our readers to the subjoined description of the "Clement Attachment," taken from a letter to. the Louisville Evening Post and News. It cannot be doubted that it is destined to work a revolution which will Insure greatly to the advantage of all cotton producing countries. The machine Is the invention of Lewis T. Clement, of Smyrna, Tenn., who died several years ago. During the last two or three years it has been much improved, and is now for all practical purposes, complete. When we come to consider that it dispenses with the gin, press and compress, as well as one-half of the building, machinery, motive power and operatives necessary to convert seed cotton, by the processes now in use, Into yarns, its merits may be, in a measure, appreciated. The machine has been in use for sometime in mills in Tennessee, North and South Carolina, where its merits have been tested,and pronounced satisfactory in all respects. In the letter referred to we find the following description of it:
Corinth, Miss.,
Dec. 16,1879.
Some five years since Bishop Paine, of Aberdeen, Miss., called at my office in this place, and casually remarked that he had recently seen in Cincinnatti, some yarns of superior strength and sheen, which had been made directly from seed cotton, by some Middle Tennessean, whose name he could not recollect. I became Immediately interested, for I had attempted such a thing during the war, and failed for lack of skillful machinists, who were nearly all in the army or in Government machine shops. On the Bishop's return home he sent me the address of Lewis Tresband Clements, of Smyrna, Tenn.,as the man who had invented a new process of converting seed cotton directly into yarn.

I immediately wrote to him, and received a prompt answer from .r. Jas. A. Ridley, stating that Clements' had accidentally lost his life some two years previous; that his machine was at Pulaski, Tenn., where it was made, and had remained since Clements' decease. I found the machine as he had left it. I became a third owner and general agent for the other seventeen owners of the patent which Clements had taken out. I removed it to this place, and on receipt of yarns from various factories,both North and South, where I had sent slivers made by the attachment to be spun into yarns (all of said Northern factories believed from the strength and sheen of the silver rove and thread that it was some new kind of silk cotton of long, fine staple lately introduced in the South, when in reality:it was made of dirty, short staple cotton grown in the mountains around Pulaski.) The yarns and machine created great interest. I became alarmed lest the machine should be improved on and, patented by some one to the detriment of its owners, and had the card and attachments removed to a small factory and machine shop In the mountains of north Alabama, where I kept it twelve months, experimenting and securing other patents, so as to cover the Whole thing, at the expiration of which time the first mill was started at this place, which was soon followed by mills in Tennessee, South and North Carolina.

I love looking through old archives, so articles and posts like this will be semi-common for the near future.