There were few school facilities in the South at that time and many of the wealthy planters had their children educated by private tutors. In the fall of 1792, the year in which he graduated, Whitney was engaged as a private tutor in a family in Georgia. On his way there he met Mrs. Greene, the widow of General Nathaniel Greene, who was returning to Savannah after spending the summer in the North. When Whitney reached Georgia he found that, despite his engagement, another had been given his place and he was stranded, practically penniless, a thousand miles from home and not knowing which way to turn. Mrs. Greene kindly invited him to make her house his home. He did so, and began to study law under her hospitable roof. Here he met Phineas Miller, a native of Connecticut and also a graduate of Yale College, who had himself come south as a tutor in the Greene family and after General Greene’s death had become manager of his estate. He was a man of cultivated mind, of eager, hopeful temperament and later he married Mrs. Greene. Shortly after Whitney’s coming, a large party of gentlemen from Augusta and the upper country, consisting principally of officers who had served under the General in the Revolutionary army, were visiting Mrs. Greene. In the course of the conversation the deplorable state of agriculture was discussed, and great regret expressed that there was no means of separating green seed cotton from its seed, since all the lands which were unsuitable for the cultivation of rice and long staple cotton, would yield large crops of green seed cotton. The black or long staple cotton had already been introduced successfully in the Sea Islands, but it could not be grown inland. It was vain to think of raising green seed or upland cotton for the market unless some machine could be devised which would facilitate the process of cleaning. Separating one pound of the staple from the seed was a day’s work for one woman. During this conversation Mrs. Greene told them that Whitney could invent their machine, saying, “He can make anything.” This incident turned Whitney’s attention to the subject. Encouraged by Miller he dropped his law studies, went to Savannah, obtained a small parcel of raw cotton, and set himself at work on the problem. With such resources as the plantation afforded he made tools suited to his purpose, drew his own wire and by the close of the winter had so far developed the machine as to leave no doubt of its success. The first model he made (made, it is said, in about two weeks) is still in existence in the possession of his grandson, the present Eli Whitney. The three essential elements of his gin, the rotary wheel with forward pointing wires or teeth, the slotted bar, and the revolving brushes for cleaning the teeth, remain practically unchanged today.