The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER III FIRST FURNACE AND FIRST RAILROAD The Story of Old Cedar Creek furnace. Early settlement of Russells Valley . Description of old ways and means of iron making. Method of getting ore. Disposition of product. Pioneer furnacemen and settlers of Franklin County. Folklore of the region. Records of State geologists. Present-day appearance of furnace site. Operations of Sloss-Sheflield Steel and Iron Company, and Sheffield Coal and Iron Company. Industrial enterprises contemporary with Cedar Creek furnace. Progressive spirit of first governor of Alabama. Survey of early times and conditions . Construction of old Decatur and Tuscumbia Railroad. Sketch of David Hubbard. Early means of transportation. Pioneer railroads of State. IT was up in the Chickasaw country in the northwestern region of Alabama Territory, county of Franklin, that the first blast furnace of Alabama was put up in the year 1818, and pig iron making on·a commercial basis begun. There had been, as has been mentioned, forge and smithy at Indian village, Spanish fort, Federal trading post, and territorial colony; but the frontier smith wrought out of imported blooms and bars for the most part, and little use was made of Alabama iron ore. Concerning Old Cedar Creek, which was the name given this first blast furnace, all facts have, after much searching, become distinctlyoutlined . That precise locality opened up to settlement by Jackson's scout, Major Russell, was incorporated in part of the huge land grant of the Chickasaw Cession of 1818, out of which the county of Franklin was formed. Shortly after the organization of this county, an iron maker, one Joseph Heslip, took up ground in Russells Valley, some three miles from Russellville, and established there the first iron works of Alabama. According to the records in the land office at Montgomery, "Joseph Heslip bought the SE%, -10 -7 -12 from the Government, N0vember 11th, 1818, at two dollars per acre." It is also recorded that Anthony Winston and John Hamilton bought land at the same time in this neighborhood. As soon as his grant was recorded Heslip selected a furnace site on the horseshoe bend of 28 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA Cedar Creek where the water had a sharp, quick fiow, and, according to T. L. Fossick, he straightway bought materials and began construction work. His plant, rapidly completed, comprised not only the rough stone jacket-clad furnace, but also a Catalan forge, a foundry, and a crude sort of rolling mill, together with warehouses and tenants' shacks. Cedar Creek furnace itself, taking front rank in the series of pioneer iron works of the State, was a perfectly simple affair, very like a limekiln in appearance, and not different from the other furnaces of colonial times, several of which were in blast at that period in the near neighborhood of Tennessee. It was after the fashion of the blast furnaces of ancient Briton, and was heavy, stolid, massive, a heritage of the Roman iron makers which was carried over seas to the American colonies, intact and centuries old. The illustrations of Brighthope and Tannehill are examples. To quote L. K. Pounders: "This furnace was rudely constructed and very unlike those of to-day. It must have been lined inside with some kind of fireproof bricks, but certain it is that the greater portion of the building was limestone rock quarried from the bluffs near by. The furnace proper was somewhat conical in shape, being from twentyfive to thirty feet in diameter at the base and narrowing at a height of about twenty-five feet into a short smokestack. The furnace and smokestack together were not over fifty feet high. The blast which heated the furnace was supplied by a kind of bellows run by water power. One of the most interesting features of the plant was a large forge hammer weighing five hundred pounds. It was lifted by water power and let fall by its own weight upon the piece of iron to be forged, thus doing the work that is now done by the rolling mills." This huge hammer also served to break up any extra hard lumps or boulders of the iron ore which were too bulky for use in the furnace. Miss Liza Ann Hamilton and Mrs. Jane Sherrill, of Franklin County, to this day distinctly recall hearing, long ago, t,he incessant throb and ring of the big hammer, sounding day and night over the country for miles and miles. Joseph Heslip obtained his ore from the neighboring...