Catharine Littlefield Greene was born in 1775 to a prominent colonial family. She married General Nathanial Greene who became an aide to General George Washington. Recognized as a heroine of the Revolutionary war--she was present at Valley Forge and with various camps of the Continental Army even while pregnant--she neverless has come down in history as a significant contributor in the invention of the cotton gin. References: Patently Female: From AZT to TV Dinners, Stories of Women Inventors and Their Breakthrough Ideas by Ethlie Ann Vare and Greg Ptacek (John Wiley and Sons, 2002), pp. 9-11. Mothers and Daughters of Invention by Autumn Stanley (Rutgers University Press, 1995), pp.32-33, 291-292. Caty: A Biography of Catharine Littlefield Greene by John Stegman (Harry Crews, 1985).

CERES GODDESS OF AGRICULTURE After the war, she was soon widowed and left to run her estate. She hired one Eli Whitney as a tutor for her children and quickly became involved with the problem of trying to figure a way of efficiently milling cotton. It is widely believed that she was the one who actually gave Whitney drawings for the concept. Her detractors argue she merely suggested that the wooden rollers of existing gins be replaced with metal ones. What was clear, however, was that she financed as well as marketed the new invention. Whitney himself paid her royalties from the invention and was known to have said to a Shaker friend that Catharine had indeed helped invent the now famous cotton gin. Web Sites: Catharine Littlefield Greene