German settlers Friedrich Ernst and Charles Fordtran founded Industry, Texas, in 1831 as part of the Stephen F. Austin Colonial Land Grant, creating the first permanent German settlement in Texas. Although cigar making dominated the town's early industry, cotton became the area's major crop by the 1850s. Ernst Knolle, who emigrated from Germany to Industry in 1844, prospered as a cotton planter and had a gin built at this site in 1857 with help from local German craftsmen Andreas Buenger and Theodore Daum, who constructed the original wood-frame gin with a shingle roof. It was one of the area's first of twelve gins built between 1857 and 1890. In the 1860s, after financial difficulties, Knolle sold the gin to Daum, and during that period it was converted from mule power to steam power. Three generations of the Schramm family owned and operated the gin from 1876 to 1963, making major upgrades that included conversion to diesel power, installation of a ginning system from the Texas-based Murray Company, and construction of a galvanized iron structure beside the original wooden gin in 1929. Local businessman Milton Lindemann bought the gin in 1963 and was aided in its operation by Charles Fordtran, a descendant of the original settler of the same name. The gin operated for another ten years until Fordtran's health began to fail, and the last bale of cotton in Austin County was ginned here in 1973. In 1976, Milton Huebner bought the property and the original 1857 gin was razed for safety concerns, and in 1996 the Huebners donated the historic site to the city of Industry.