Sea Island Co. - Cotton History - Gorgeous 1860's circa South Carolina, Georgia, & Florida Stock Certificate - Great History!

Unissued Stock printed by Major & Knapp Eng., N.Y. Impressive eagle vignette in top center and cotton picker vignettes of blacks. Rare!!! Tremendous history!!! Sea island is a historical market class. It was actively marketed from 1790 to 1920. It was grown on the islands off the coast of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. It once was an important market class. In the markets of Europe, it suffered little competition from cottons with similar characteristics from its inception until the interruption of trade resulting from the U.S. Civil War.

The origins of sea island cotton has been the subject of considerable controversy. Nevertheless, developing the market class required developing cultivars that would be productive in the sea islands, and developing a product that was distinct from other kinds of cotton. It also required at least some producers and consumers to agree "sea island" was a useful category. One of the challenges explaining the development of long fiber cotton that would thrive in the sea islands is the cotton in the sea islands came from the West Indies, an area where all the cultivated cotton was short fiber (by today's standards) and required a long growing season. A distinctive cotton could not be developed in the sea islands, at least not by the methods of hybridization or selection, because frost killed the plants before they had a chance to produce seed. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Islands