Dealing in Black Diamonds: Joseph Squire and Alabama's Early Coal-Mining Operations

Dealing in Black Diamonds: Joseph Squire and Alabama’s Early Coal-Mining Operations THROUGHOUT THE COURSE OF A HALF-CENTURY, Joseph Squire established himself as the ultimate authority on Alabama’s Cahaba coalfield. In his private enterprises, he served as miner, prospector, geologist, operator , and discoverer. Ethel Armes, author of the standard history of coal and iron in Alabama, stated in 1910 that “there is no coal or iron man of Alabama to whom the name . . . of Joseph Squire [is] unknown .” Squire depicted himself as a geologist and mining engineer, specializing in coal and iron-ore lands and mines. By his own admission , he “had the longest experience in examining the coal lands and superintendence of mines of the Cahaba and Warrior coalfields of any one in the state.” He developed a list of nearly 30,000 acres of Cahaba coal lands identified by range, township, and section. He knew which sections contained coal, which did not, which were vacant , and who owned the surface and mineral rights. Although the wealth he sought from this work proved elusive, his “Report on the Cahaba Coal Field” in the 1890 Geological Survey of Alabama constitutes a timeless work.1 The concept of state geological surveys began in the 1820s and 1830s. Building on the work of world-renowned British geologist Sir Charles Lyell (1846) and that of Professor Michael Tuomey, Alabama’s first state geologist (1848–1857), Squire and other independent entrepreneurs ushered Alabama coal-mining operations into the indusJAMES SANDERS DAY Dr. Jim Day is Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of History at the University of Montevallo. He resides in Alabaster with his wife René and their daughters Abby and Mary Afton. 1 Ethel Armes, The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama (Birmingham, 1910), 152; Joseph Squire to A. J. Reach and Co., December 28, 1888, Joseph Squire Correspondence, 1872–1943 (AR 1237); Joseph Squire Papers, 1873–1898 (AR 102); both in Department of Archives and Manuscripts, Birmingham Public Library, Birmingham. T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 4 trial age. Along with four other states, Alabama initiated additional surveys in the wake of the nationwide Panic of 1873. Designed to identify mineral wealth and to promote economic development, the 1890 Survey—Squire’s study of Cahaba—helped to spawn additional reports that examined Alabama’s coal, gold, and clay deposits. The Cahaba field—extending sixty-seven miles through St. Clair, Jefferson, Shelby, and Bibb Counties—paled in comparison to the booming Birmingham District during the late nineteenth century. Despite the status of the Cahaba field as a stepchild, operations conducted by William Phineas Browne near Montevallo in 1849 represented the first noteworthy mining in the state. Browne, a lawyer from Waltham, Vermont, dabbled in canal construction with his cousin John B. Ives, and honed his business acumen through a mail steamer service, a mercantile business, and various real estate enterprises . After serving in the state legislature, Browne married Margaret Stevens of Wilton, Alabama, in 1846, and moved to Montevallo three years later. By 1850 he and other interested parties had begun to work their way into the mineral-rich regions of central Alabama.2 During the Civil War Montevallo mines supplied coal to the Confederate arsenal at Selma until Union Gen. James H. Wilson’s devastating cavalry raid in the spring of 1865. Renewed mining efforts faltered in 1876 when the Oxmoor experiments determined Cahaba coal inferior to Warrior coal for coking purposes. Nevertheless, mining operations resumed in 1886 as numerous capitalists—among them Truman H. Aldrich, Henry F. DeBardeleben, and James W. Sloss—became interested in Cahaba deposits. In addition, a plethora of small, independent enterprises introduced other entrepreneurs —some southern, some northern, some European—to central Alabama. Squire may be the least prominent of the personalities involved in the development of the Cahaba coalfield, but his role was central. Born the son of an English naval officer on November 24, 1829, at Rochdale, Lancashire, he attended school in England until his father ’s untimely death. Instead of pursuing a career as a naval officer 2 Virginia Estella Knapp...