PTFE History
- Group photo including Jacob Elsas, founder of PTFE
Jacob Elsas, who immigrated to the United States in the late 1840's as a child, found his way to Cincinnati where he was taken in by relatives. When he had grown to manhood, the Civil War erupted and Jacob was conscripted into the Union Army. He was sent immediately to General Sherman's command as the Federals advanced inexorably toward Atlanta.
Union troops were stationed at important points along the railroad to protect the advancing army's supply line. It was Jacob's good fortune to be posted in Cartersville, Georgia, an area in which there were no Confederate troops or Cavalry.
Confederate money by that time was worthless and the Yankee dollar was much in demand, for it was the only viable currency. Jacob Elsas was paid by the army in U.S. dollars, and he thriftily accumulated quite a few of them. He had befriended an elderly Cartersville citizen who advised the Yankee soldier to use his precious dollars to buy land across from the railroad station at an extremely depressed price.
He did this with the intent of returning to Cartersville after the war and opening a general store. With the help of a freed slave named Mose White who had plantation expertise in building log cabins, he built a log store on the property. The enterprise prospered and was soon replaced by a more substantial brick building, making bricks and laying them also being among Mose White's skills.
It was in operating the Cartersville store that Jacob became aware of the need for cloth bags of various sizes to package goods such as sugar, rice, beans, etc. It was a pressing need of stores such as his, and he saw an opportunity for another business. In 1867, he moved into the ruined but still vital city of Atlanta, leasing two floors of a building at the Northwest corner of Prior and Mitchell Streets which had miraculously survived the fury of the battle of Atlanta. He established a bag factory in partnership with a man named May.
Elsas, May & Company bought fabrics for bags from the New England textile mills and merchants, fabrics made of cotton grown in Georgia and other Southern states. The business prospered, but the canny Elsas saw a way to even more prosperity. He bought property at the intersection of Boulevard and the Georgia Railroad and put into operation a greatly expanded bag factory, in 1872.
Then it occurred to him that the Yankees (he by now considered himself a proper southerner) were making too much profit off the fabrics he bought from them. He decided to spin his own yarn and weave his own fabric to supply the mill.
After the surrender at Appomatox, another carpetbagger named H. I. Kimball came South to get a piece of the action. He built the Kimball House, a fine hotel which still stands.
Kimball was a good businessman, and he too saw promise in a spinning mill. He obtained a charter for The Fulton Cotton Spinning Company from the Georgia Legislature, but the hotel business kept him so busy he never followed through with the construction of a mill, and Jacob Elsas was able to purchase the charter from him.
Elsas completed the mill, and had it in operation by 1881, driven buy a 100 horsepower steam engine affectionately called "Nettie".
- Clock and Barometer
The clock and barometer were part of the controls of "Nettie" and were donated to Tech by Norman Elsas, grandson of Jacob Elsas
A second mill was erected on the property in 1892, a big one containing 40,000 spindles and 480 looms to weave fabrics for bags. In 1894, the name of the complex was changed to 'Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills'.
About this time Jacob Elsas, ever the visionary, saw the need for a good textile school to educate his managers. He knew that a wealthy cotton broker in Philadelphia, a certain A. French, had financed the founding of the Philadelphia Textile Institute. His feeling was that Mr. French might be induced to fund the start-up of a textile school at Georgia Tech.
- The original PTFE building
Elsas dispatched his eldest son, Oscar to Philadelphia to approach Mr. French with the idea. The philanthropist was receptive and agreed to put up the money, provided the school bore his name, which it does to this day. Oscar Elsas was in the first graduating class from Georgia Tech in 1891.
Fulton Bag & Cotton Mills prospered during the first half of the century, but the times they were a'changing. The vast quantities were being delivered "in bulk", rather than cotton bags, but some of it such as pet and cattle food gravitated to paper bags, at major cost savings. The old mill buildings still stand on Boulevard, a reminder of the fragility of even the best human endeavour.