It’s almost here!

The Autauga County Heritage Association (ACHA) is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit membership organization. Founded in 1976 in response to the destruction of the historic Daniel Pratt house years earlier, the ACHA seeks to preserve and interpret our local history through a broad range of resources. Over the last ten years efforts have continued to discover and collect any material which may help establish or illustrate Autauga County’s history and ancestry. The organization seeks to save, preserve, protect, and share the local history by holding quarterly meetings, publishing a quarterly newsletter, giving lectures, holding special events and in preserving historic sites. The Association continues the operation of the Prattaugan Museum, opened in 1995, in the historic 1848 Greek Revival-style McWilliams-Smith-Rice House in the Daniel Pratt Historic District. The museum contains permanent and rotating exhibits and maintains regular operating hours. It is currently staffed by volunteers. Each April Walking Tours of Historic Downtown Prattville are conducted by volunteers. A website (autaugahistory.org) and a genealogy library is also maintained by the association.

ACHA continues the maintenance and restoration of the 1840s Greek Revival-style Buena Vista mansion, given to the organization in 2006 by International Paper. Buena Vista was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. The beautiful home is open for tours and leased for special events. In 2019, on receiving a grant from the Alabama Historical Commission (AHC), the association was able to complete the repair and painting of the exterior and interior of the historic home. In 2019 ACHA received another grant from ACH which will go toward the construction of ground-level restrooms. ACHA holds an annual Low Country Boil at Buena Vista each year as its big fundraiser each year.

ACHA also owns the c1850 Robinson-Smith House, a former Stage Coach stop on twelve acres on Highway 14 in Prattville. After extensive renovations, the home is now leased to a commercial entity, providing income for later ventures.

When Continental Eagle Corporation, the successor company of the original Daniel Pratt Gin Company, ceased operations in 2012, ACHA led the way to save the historic content from the 180 year old company. In 2015, the organization mounted a volunteer effort to preserve the Daniel Pratt/Continental Gin Company (DP/CGC) Archival Collection, dating from 1833 – 2012. A local bank has provided a 5,000 sq. ft. work space for this effort. Over twenty-five volunteers have been working two days a week for over four years, to clean, preserve, and catalog the extensive collection. To date, over 39,000 engineering drawings, 300  leather bound ledgers, 400 patents, 500 machinery manuals, thousands of documents, have been preserved, as well as 2350 photos have been digitized. The volunteers, all local retired citizens, have laughed and said they will have to take the collection and finish it at the nursing home! 

With the closure of this historic company, ACHA led the efforts to save and preserve these historic structures. After long and arduous years, the original Daniel Pratt Gin Company complex is under contract and the repurposing into loft apartments is slated to begin in spring 2020.

ACHA received grants from the Alabama Department of Archives and History and the Bicentennial Commission awarded the only Legacy Grant to the DP/CGC Preservation Project. These grants have allowed the purchase of needed archival materials and provided the means to temporarily display the collection. The funds enabled ACHA to create display panels, brochures and do a reprint of a booklet on Daniel Pratt’s history. The organization is currently applying for a National Endowment for the Humanities planning grant which will allow a feasibility study and operations plan as ACHA seeks to develop an interpretive center and interpretive trails for The Pratt Museum of Southern Industry.

In 2016, the DP/CGC volunteer group held a “Photo Identification Day” where former Gin Shop employees and old-time local citizens were invited to come and help identify individuals in the photos. The event was a resounding success, with many photos identified, but more importantly, a tremendous feeling of community and reunion resulting in the day. Video interviews were also made of willing participants sharing their history with the company.

In 2017 a c1895 Pratt Cotton Gin was sent to South Carolina for restoration. In 2018, this restorer brought his 1876 Pratt 40 saw gin to Prattville for the “Come See How We Do Gin!”, a Bicentennial event. Attendees were treated to a day of seeing a Pratt Gin ginning cotton 142 years after its production at the Prattville gin factory, along with displays of items from the DP/CGC Collection. On Founder’s Day in July 2018, ACHA demonstrated our own c1895 Pratt Gin following the annual wreath-laying at the Pratt Cemetery. ACHA demonstrated the gin again at the Autauga County History Fair in November 2018. Over 800 students witnessed the ginning of cotton for the first time as well as many adult attendees. The Pratt Gin was on display and in operation at the 2019 Bicentennial Finale in front of the State Capitol.

In 2018, Fred Hunter with “Absolutely Alabama” filmed a segment entitled “The Old Cotton Gin” which featured the 1876 cotton gin and Daniel Pratt history. Dr. Doug Phillips with “Discovering Alabama” created a film on Prattville/Autauga County as a Bicentennial film in 2019. A Premier was held in Prattville in May 2019 and aired on Alabama Public TV in June 2019. Also in May 2019, a film crew from London came to film the original Daniel Pratt Gin Company. In October 2019 the Gin Shop complex and Pratt’s history were featured on the television series “Mysteries of the Abandoned” to a world-wide audience.

Through the past ten years the significant history of Daniel Pratt, the Gin Shop and Alabama’s New England Village of the South has been shared many times to local civic groups as well as to groups visiting Prattville. ACHA, one of the state’s most active historical organizations, is always ready to create awareness and put our history on display!