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TRUSSVILLE FURNACE Trussville, Jefferson County April 1889 AGROUP of men from Uniontown, Pa" incorporated the Birmingham Furnace & Manufacturing Co. on Dec. 21, 1886 with an authorized capital of $1,500,000. In 1887 they purchased from the Trussville and Cahaba River Land Co. a tract of land near the town of Trussville and about 15 miles northeast ~f Birmingham. Building of a furnace was begun on this tract in 1887, a large portion of the material being supplied from the dismantled Lemont Furnace in Fayette County, Pa. The completed stack,. 65' high and 171 /2' in the bosh, was blown in during April 1889. From that date until the middle of 1893, the furnace was in blast, but due to the diminishing demand for pig iron during this period it was then blown out. In 1894 a trustee was named for the bondholders and the company was reorganized as the Trussville Furnace Co. The stack was remodeled (65' x 161 /2') and put into blast late in 1896 but operated for only a few months before being again blown out. Chief difficulty at the Trussville Furnace was the high cost of raw material transportation. Red hematite was mined within a few miles of the furnace but not in sufficient quantity to supply the entire demand so that additional ore had to be purchased from the Birmingham and Bessemer Districts to supplement the local supply. Brown hematite was brought from as far away as Georgia, and coke from Birmingham. On September 1, 1899 the Trussville Furnace, Mining and Manufacturing Co. was organized by a group of local men to take over the Trussville Furnace property. The furnace was blown in sometime in 1901 but again operated for only a few months. On July 10, 1902 the property was sold to the Lacey-Buek Iron Co., a Tennessee corporation. This company began rebuilding of the furnace and construction of beehive coke ovens. The stack was enlarged from 65' to 80' and the bosh was widened by 6". More important, however, as an independent source of raw materials, was the Crudup ore mine in Etowah County and the Graves Coal Mine in Jefferson County which belonged to the Lacey-Buek Company. The rebuilt furnace was rated at 70,000 tons annually. When blown in during 1903 it was christened the "Ella." Under the Lacey-Buek Company the plant continued in operation until it was acquired on July 1, 1906 by the Southern Steel Company when it was rebuilt but not enlarged. The Southern Steel Company bank_ .o~~t 145 ~~o._ ALABAMA BLAST FURNACES rupted in 1907 and in 1909 the Southern Iron & Steel Co. took over control . In 1911 this company defaulted on its bonds and the Trussville Furnace property passed to the Michigan Trust Co. The furnace had been blown out the year previous in 1910. The Trussville furnace remained idle from 1910 until 1918. In 1917 Chicago interests acquired the property from the Michigan Trust Co. and in that same year the Birmingham-Trussville Iron Co. was organized . The furnace plant and the beehive ovens were repaired as rapidly as possible to take advantage of the World War prices. The furnace was blown in during the Spring of 1918 and operated until the Spring of 1919. In 1933 the Trussville Furnace was dismantled and the land on which it stood was sold in 1935 to the Birmingham Homestead, Inc., a Federal Housing Administration project. ...

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