The Daniel Pratt Cotton Gin Manufactory ( Continental Eagle Corporation 1986-2012) was a cotton gin factory created by Daniel Pratt in 1854 (Present Buildings on west side of Autauga Creek), in what is now Prattville, Alabama, a town named for him. The factory became the largest cotton gin machinery factory in the world and supplied cotton gins to all cotton producing countries. In 1899, the Daniel Pratt Gin Company merged with other manufacturing companies to become the Continental Gin Company. Over the years the company had several owners and names, all producing cotton gin machinery and other metal products for 158 years. In 1986 Continental Eagle Corporation became the last owner and operator of this historic cotton gin machinery supplier. These buildings represented the oldest continuously-operated industrial complex in the State of Alabama until 2012 when the business technology was sold to an Indian Company Bajaj Steel Industries Limited. In 1997, these historic buildings were a documentation project of the United States National Parks System's Historic American Engineering Record (Continental Gin Company). The "Continental Gin Company" documentation project produced measured drawings of the historic buildings and a history of the Prattville Gin Factory History In 1835, Daniel Pratt purchased about two thousand acres of land in Autauga County, Alabama at around twenty-one dollars an acre from Joseph May. The land was to be paid in four installments, of cotton gins and money, from 1836 to 1838. The purchase of this land was to establish a permanent Cotton Gin factory location an other manufacturing companies. The present Prattville area began with a small water operated sawmill, called May's Mill, on the banks of Autauga Creek. The waterflow of the Autauga Creek supplied waterpower to machinery used in several different factory sites. Daniel Pratt laid out his town of Prattville by 1839 and built a wood framed cotton gin machinery factory and a small textile factory on the east side of the Autauga Creek. In 1854, Daniel Pratt built a new three-story brick cotton gin factory building, on the west side of the Autauga Creek, to increase his manufacturing capabilities of cotton gins for the growing cotton market. The Daniel Pratt Gin Manufactory produced many cotton gins to supply cotton growers of Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. By 1851 the Pratt Gin Company was producing 600 cotton gins per year and had built 8000, since 1833, at three different Autauga County locations (Elmore's