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Cotton Oil Company -- a $40,000 Industry established in Starkville. This Company was composed mainly of business and professional men of Starkville. It was organized in 1900 with a capital stock of $40,000. Its executive officers were F.L. Hogan, president and Evans W. Lampkin, secretary and treasurer. It was located on a spur of the M&O railroad, also connected with the I.C. railroad, on grounds that were quite ample for its purposes with large and well-constructed buildings. The plant of the Starkville Cotton Oil Company impressed anyone who was familiar with this important industry as an enterprise of stability and permanence. Profiting by the mistakes of other mills that too often unwisely economized in space and structure, this company's plans were carefully prepared and all its machinery selected by a skilled engineer. Everything was arranged on a scale and with a method to insure convenience and economy from the time the seed cotton was taken up into the gin building by suction inlet from the farmer's wagon until the bare oil cotton was delivered to the owner and the oil was deposited in the tanks and the meal, hulls and linters were ready for sale or shipments. In the whole mill equipment, no modern conveniece or facility was lacking. In the two-story gin building were size gin stands connected with a large conveyer, which delivered the lint cotton to either a square or round bale press. The mill had a capacity of forty tons of seed daily from which were produced 1400 to 1500 gallons cottonseed oil, about sixteen tons of meal, a like amount of hulls and linters. The production of cottonseed oil was strictly a southern industry and one, which figured largely in the financial upbuilding of the South. According to a thesis dealing with the historical development of land use in Starkville written by L. L. Mitlin in 1975, this company empolyed about 35 men who crushed the cottonseed daily and shipped several hundred bales of linters annually, and ginned 2,000 bales of cotton each season. This plant remained in operation until the 1930s. Guyton Properties Keeps This History Alive: Mark Guyton wrote that in the late sixties during the Urban Renewal program, most of the original Cotton Oil Company property was sold to John W. Guyton Jr. and R. T. Sawyer for redevelopment. They tore down the old ice plant building and salvaged all the bricks. These same bricks were then used to build University Apartments on the south part of the property in 1972 and 1973. In 1976, Mr. Guyton and Mr. Sawyer built Chateau Maroon Apartments, a complex for active, independent seniors on the north end of the lot. In 2002 University Apartments underwent a total renovation and the drive through the property was named Cotton Oil Company Drive in recognition of the history of the area. The drive is located on Spring Street about halfway between Gillespie and Russel Streets.
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A brick from the ice plant located at the Cotton Oil Company. This brick is now part of one of the University Apartments buildings. 