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. One possible explanation, the changes happened accidentally in a region with long growing season and then were introduced to the sea islands. In the 1960s and 1970s, S. G. Stephens performed an experiment where he hybridized a G. barbadense with short coarse fibers and long growing season with a wild form of G. hirsutum that had the same short fiber and long growing season, but the fibers were fine. It seemed reasonable the resulting plant produced fine fibers, but was surprised to find it also had long fiber and short growing season. He then demonstrated this could be rather easily back-hybridized (see introgression) to form a cotton that retained these desirable characteristics, yet was almost entirely G. barbadense. He argued that such an event could have happened accidentally in the 18th century, resulting in the long, fine fiber G. barbadense of today. However, since this event could not have happened in the sea islands, it is not sufficient to explain the sea island's distinctive product. Unusual weather in 1785- 1786 helped develop a G. barbadense productive in the sea islands. According to historical records, planters in Georgia were trying to introduce G. barbadense, but the plants would die from frost before they could produce seed or fiber. However, the winter of 1785- 1786 was particularly mild, so a few plants did succeed in producing seed. The next generation of plants was able to produce seed and fiber before the winter. Historical records credit Kinsey Burden of developing the particularly high-quality cotton that came to be associated with the sea islands. He accomplished this in the first decade of the 1800s via seed selection on Burden's Island and Johns Island in South Carolina. The sea island r Item ordered may not be exact piece shown. All original and authentic.