After graduation Whitney went South to act as tutor in a private family. Upon arrival at his destination, he found that the position was already filled. At that time the widow of General Nathanael Greene, who fought in the Revolutionary War, lived near Savannah, Georgia. She had become interested in young Whitney and invited him to make her plantation his home. She noted his inventive skill, and one day when a group of Georgia planters was discussing at her home the desirability of a machine for removing cotton-seeds from the fiber, Mrs. Greene said: "Gentlemen, apply to my friend, Mr. Whitney; he can make anything." Whitney was called in and the planters laid the matter of the machine before him. At this time he had never even seen cotton fiber. But he made up his mind to try what he could do toward solving the problem. He went to Savannah and searched among the warehouses and flat-boats for samples of cotton. Mrs. Greene encouraged him in his undertaking and gave him a room in the basement of her house for his workshop. Here he shut himself up with his task, and was heard early and late hammering, sawing, and filing. No one was admitted to the room but Mrs. Greene and Phineas Miller, the tutor of Mrs. Greene's children. At the outset Whitney had neither money nor tools. The money was supplied by an old college friend; the tools Whitney made himself. He could procure no wire in Savannah for constructing his machine, and was compelled to make his own, which he did with much perseverance and skill. In 1793 the gin was sufficiently completed to convince the inventor that it would be a complete success. Mrs. Greene invited a number of distinguished planters and merchants to witness the working of the machine. The spectators were not slow in realizing the success and the significance of the invention. They saw that with this little machine one man could separate as much cotton from the seed in one day as he could separate by hand in a whole winter. With the gin the cotton grown on a large plantation could be separated in a few days; by hand, the separation would require a hundred workmen for several months. One dark night some unscrupulous persons broke open the shed in which the unfinished machine had been placed and carried it away. Filled with rage and despair at the wrong which had been done him, Whitney left Georgia and went to Connecticut to complete his invention. But he had scarcely left Savannah when two other claimants for the honor of the invention appeared in Georgia. A few weeks later a gin very closely resembling Whitney's came out. His stolen gin was doubtless used as a model by these false claimants.