From the walls of the Green Springs school went forth young men by the hundreds with initial equipment which not only made the mastery of a college course more easy and pleasant, but which served to lift them into future prominence. Passing from under the tutelage of Dr. Tutwiler and bearing a certificate with his name on it, was a guarantee worth the having by any young man. From this rural retreat this skilled man of letters sent into the swelling ranks of usefulness in this and adjoining states, hundreds of young men who have helped to make their commonwealths resplendent. It was not a demonstrative work, in the sense of showiness, but it was demonstrative as it found expression in richness of result and in exalted citizenship. Thus labored for many years this sage teacher and mellow scholar, and far more than can be computed is Alabama indebted to Henry Tutwiler.
DANIEL PRATT
Genuine worth is frequently overlooked because it does not appear in the glare and rush of demonstration, and because it may modestly shrink from the spectacular. The solid distinction reached by many is due to conditions which lie out of sight and without which many who reach positions of prominence would not have been heard of beyond their native horizons.
Impelled by ambition, many see and seize the opportune moment presented, fall into the current created by others, and are borne to eminence. Lying back of that which the world esteems greatness are causes created of which many avail themselves to ride to popular spectacularity, and yet these may be only the superficial and surface effects.
In what are usually esteemed the humbler walks of life are oftentimes giants who set in motion the tides of influence which make great communities and even states, and yet whose worthy claims are never heralded to the world as are the deeds of those who reach the popular heights toward which the eyes of the public are accustomed to turn.
To this worthy class in the quieter walks of life belong numbers of the best men of every generation whose vocations are such as to hide them from the popular view, and yet without whom the greatness and the prosperity of a commonwealth could not be.
Belonging to this class was Daniel Pratt, a native of New Hampshire, a carpenter by trade, and a man in whose capacious brain were great enterprises. Utterly without pretention, he was at first a common laborer, working at his trade in different cities in Georgia for a period of about fifteen years, in the early part of the century.
At that time the question of cotton as a staple had assumed new proportions in view of the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney about fifty years previously, and in view of the capabilities of the soils of the South to produce the staple. The struggles of Whitney to maintain his rights as the inventor of the gin had been prolonged through a protracted period of years, leaving him barren honor alone, but his suggestion had found its way to the inventive genius and mechanical aptitude of others, among whom was Daniel Pratt. He removed to Montgomery in 1833, for the purpose of establishing a gin factory in that town. At that time the manufacture of cotton gins was quite limited, but the sagacious carpenter saw in the future the possibility of a means of vast commerce in the manufacture of machines that would reduce the indispensable staple to marketable conditions, and while conditions in Alabama were at that time still new, Pratt discerned an opportunity both for the gin and the production of cotton.