New Birmingham | |
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  New Birmingham Location within the state of Texas | |
| Coordinates: 31°46′25″N95°7′15″W / 31.77361°N 95.12083°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Texas |
| County | Cherokee |
New Birmingham is an abandoned town site in central Cherokee County, Texas, United States, now a ghost town. New Birmingham once seemed destined to be a major industrial mecca in the heart of east Texas. Lying just off U.S. Highway 69, the site was approximately two miles southeast of the county seat of Rusk.
Conceived in 1887, New Birmingham was the brainchild of Anderson Blevins, a sewing machine salesman originally from Alabama. Traveling through east Texas, he became aware of copious deposits of iron ore in the area of Rusk, Texas, and having familiarity with Birmingham in his home state, was struck with the possibility of a similar industrial mecca in east Texas. [1] Discovering that some small-scale iron processing was already occurring at Rusk Penitentiary, [2] he approached his brother-in-law, W. H. Hamman, who enthusiastically supported the venture. Hamman was an attorney, an ex-Confederate General and a wealthy, well-established oil-man. [3] Together, they brought in a number of local investors, formed a company to develop the idea and began taking options on ore-laden acreage. Venture capital was also raised from H. H. Wibirt of New York and Richard Coleman of St. Louis, and by 1888 the company, under the name of Cherokee Land & Iron Company, [4] was purchasing land suitable for mining. Eventually, some 20,000 acres had been acquired and construction of a smelting plant to develop the ore was begun. [5]
Two 50-ton furnaces—one called the "Tassie Belle" after Blevins' wife, the other called "Star and Crescent"—were constructed and quickly went into production. [6] Additional capital from St. Louis and New York allowed the firm to reorganize as the New Birmingham Iron and Land Company. Anderson Blevins was on the Board of Directors; H.H. Wibirt of New York and Richard Coleman served as president and vice-president, respectively. (The company would undergo another reorganization and name-change in 1890, becoming the New Birmingham Iron and Development Co.)
Meanwhile, a pipe works and brick kiln were constructed and a coal-fired electric generating plant promised the utmost in modern convenience for new residents. [7]
In September 1889, the town of New Birmingham was incorporated. Banks, a railway depot, a schoolhouse, a weekly newspaper, an ice plant and electricity from a coal-fired plant—all these created an impression not only of great potential, but of an established community. And then, there was the Southern Hotel, a palatial structure described as follows by Hattie Joplin Roach in her History of Cherokee County:
The Southern Hotel, which the promoting company erected at a cost of more than $60,000 was the center of New Birmingham's gay life. Its first register, beginning March 28, 1889, and closing Feb. 9, 1890, recorded guests from twenty-eight states, including Jay Gould of railroad fame and Grover Cleveland, recently come from the presidential chair, Robert A. Van Wyck, financiers, who had risked their millions in the attempted development of Cherokee County's iron ore were frequently registered. Along with the millionaires were citizens from nearby towns come for thrill as well as business, and newspaper representatives sent for copy. On one day there were guests from eight states. [8]
In its prospectus issued in October 1891, the company stated:
On Nov. 12, 1888, New Birmingham had not a single house completed. It was entirely in the woods. Today, with nearly 400 buildings completed and occupied, she claims and justly so, a population of 1,500. The streets are graded, and houses and streets lighted with electricity; the business houses are the best class of brick buildings; it boasts a street railway and a magnificent hotel, the Southern, with all modern improvements. The industries represented today are two blast furnaces, a pipe foundry, planing mill, sash and door factory, steam laundry, and steam bakery and other industries being negotiated for. [9]
To all appearances, the "Iron Queen", as she had been dubbed by her promoters, seemed poised to rule.[ citation needed ]
As if to suggest that successful cities are those which emerge naturally as need dictates, rather than from the visions of speculators and promoters, New Birmingham was destined[ citation needed ] to fold back into the pine forest from which it emerged and become the distant memory it is today. In the 1890s, two circumstances converged to doom the aspirations of the New Birmingham planners.
A shortage of capital led the management of the company to seek investment from the British sources; the promotion there was met with considerable interest and, indeed, members of a British investment syndicate, the Baring Brothers, traveled to Texas to evaluate the potential at New Birmingham. Favorably impressed with the development at New Birmingham, they were all the more encouraged by the abundance of resources available so near the operations. In short order, they had committed to infuse the venture with upwards of $1,000,000. [10]
Legalities and politics intruded to bar this solution. The "Alien Land Law of Texas" flatly barred these potential investors from having any interest in a company whose assets were in the soil of Texas. Recently put into effect, ostensibly, to protect ranchers in West Texas from land speculation by wealthy foreign investors, the statute had been promoted by Governor James Hogg. Hogg was, himself, a native of Rusk and Cherokee County. The management of NBI&D lobbied the governor to support an amendment to the law, but if he ever considered a move to assist the people of his home county, there was little evidence of it.[ citation needed ] In spite of being wined, dined and otherwise feted throughout New Birmingham and the Southern Hotel, Hogg stood firmly against any moderation of the Alien Land Law.
Then the Panic of 1893 overtook the country, collapsing markets across the board. Lack of demand for pig iron led to a shutdown of the plants and without the jobs that had brought them there, people began to drift out of New Birmingham. An explosion seriously damaged the Tassie Belle furnace and further complicated matters, but had economic conditions been better, that might have been merely a temporary setback.
The fall of New Birmingham was not without apocryphal blame. For years, some citizens of the fading mecca attached their troubles to a curse placed on the town by a bereaved widow. On July 14, 1890, [11] General W. H. Hamman had been gunned down in the streets of the town by an enraged husband seeking to avenge imagined insults directed at his wife, either by Hamman or his wife. S. T. Cooney, the shooter, was arrested, tried, found guilty and sent to prison for manslaughter. If in her view that was not sufficient penalty for the loss of her husband, Mrs. Hamman's exasperation came to full boil when in 1892, Mr. Cooney was pardoned. In a fit of outrage and grief, Mrs. Hamman (with some irony the sister of Tassie Belle Blevins) [12] took to the streets beseeching the Almighty to destroy the city and have it swallowed by the forest from whence it had come. [13]
Apocryphal, almost certainly.[ citation needed ] The greater damage to the future of New Birmingham was the death of W. H. Hamman, whose money, influence and business acumen had been instrumental from the beginning. But in any case, by the end of the year the town was virtually abandoned.
New Birmingham languished. The nearly 400 homes there, boarded up and empty, begin to fall into disrepair or were dismantled, as were storefronts in the business district. But before it entirely disappeared, some attempts were made to resurrect the town and its industry. In 1899, the Record Brothers contemplated construction of a new smelter, but nothing came of it. Loath to relinquish his dream, Anderson Blevins attempted to reopen the foundry in 1907, but nothing came of that. As luck would have it, there was the Panic of 1907. By 1910, the last actual resident had moved out of the town and during World War I the ironworks and many remaining buildings were scrapped. The Southern Hotel remained, occupied only by a maintenance man, but in 1926, otherwise vacant for 33 years, it was consumed by flame. In 1932, the New Birmingham school was razed to make way for U.S. Highway 69 running south of Rusk.
An historical marker was erected at the site of New Birmingham in 1966. Tassie Belle Historical Park contains vestigial ruins of that furnace.
Impressed with the outcroppings of ore he saw throughout the countryside, he had a vision that a second Birmingham might sprout on the spot;
Although his means were reduced by the war, in 1866 Hamman became the first oil prospector in Texas; he drilled his first oil well at Saratoga in Hardin County. [...] In August 1870 Hamman helped to incorporate three business enterprises - the Calvert Bridge Company, to build "a safe and substantial bridge" over the Brazos River at Calvert; the Pacific and Great Eastern Railway Company of Texas, to build a rail link between the Red River and the Rio Grande; and the Texas Timber and Prairie Railroad Company, to build a railroad between Beaumont and Bremond. In May of that year he also helped charter the Calvert and Belton Railroad. In 1871 Hamman moved to Calvert when the Houston and Texas Central Railroad reached town. There he established a successful legal practice.
Blevins then traveled east, secured the backing of capitalists there and, with them, formed the Cherokee Land and Iron Company.
As soon as the company had purchased twenty thousand acres of land in Cherokee County, it went to work to make arrangements for mining and smelting operations.
By 1891, New Birmingham had an estimated 1,500 inhabitants, two iron furnaces ... an iron pipe foundry, a large brick kiln and other industrial enterprises.
By 1891, New Birmingham had an estimated 1,500 inhabitants, two iron furnaces ... an iron pipe foundry, a large brick kiln and other industrial enterprises.
.
p. 57: Children of George Lawdermilk and Elizabeth Loughridge: iii. Tassie Bell Lawdermilk, iv. Ella Virginia Lawdermilk, b. 1851; p. 124: Tassie Bell Lawdermilk, born about 1850 in Mississippi. She married Anderson Bean Blevins; p. 127: Ella Virginia Lawdermilk, born 14 Jun 1851... She married William Harrison Hamman.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help){{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help){{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)Municipalities and communities of Cherokee County, Texas, United States | ||
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| Footnotes | ‡This populated place also has portions in an adjacent county or counties | |
Rusk County is a county located in Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 52,214. Its county seat is Henderson. The county is named for Thomas Jefferson Rusk, a secretary of war of the Republic of Texas.
Cherokee County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 50,412. The county seat is Rusk, which lies 130 miles southeast of Dallas and 160 miles north of Houston. The county was named for the Cherokee, who lived in the area before being expelled in 1839. Cherokee County comprises the Jacksonville micropolitan statistical area, which is also included in the Tyler–Jacksonville combined statistical area.
Rockwood is a city in Roane County, Tennessee, United States. Its population was 5,562 at the time of the 2010 census. It is included in the Harriman, Tennessee Micropolitan Statistical Area.
Wells is a town in Cherokee County, Texas, United States. The population was 790 at the 2010 census, and 853 at the 2020 U.S. census.
Sloss Furnaces is a National Historic Landmark in Birmingham, Alabama in the United States. It operated as a pig iron-producing blast furnace from 1882 to 1971. After closing, it became one of the first industrial sites in the U.S. to be preserved and restored for public use. In 1981, the furnaces were designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of the Interior.
The Birmingham District is a geological area in the vicinity of Birmingham, Alabama, where the raw materials for making steel, limestone, iron ore, and coal are found together in abundance. The district includes Red Mountain, Jones Valley, and the Warrior and Cahaba coal fields in Central Alabama.
Greenwood Furnace State Park is a 423-acre (171 ha) Pennsylvania state park in Jackson Township, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania in the United States. The park is near the historic iron making center of Greenwood Furnace. The park includes the ghost town of Greenwood that grew up around the ironworks, old roads and charcoal hearths. Greenwood Furnace State Park is adjacent to Rothrock State Forest and on the western edge of an area of Central Pennsylvania known as the Seven Mountains. The park is on Pennsylvania Route 305, 20 miles (32 km) south of State College.
The Lehigh Crane Iron Company, later renamed Crane Iron Company, was a major ironmaking firm in the Lehigh Valley from its founding in 1839 until its sale in 1899. It was based in Catasauqua, Pennsylvania, and was founded by Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, who financed its development through their Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, which promoted the then-novel technique of smelting iron ore with anthracite coal. This was an important cost and energy savings technique, credited with eliminating the need for either expensive charcoal or coke producing processes and transport costs that proved central to the acceleration of the American industrial revolution.
The Tannehill Ironworks is the central feature of Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park near the unincorporated town of McCalla in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Tannehill Furnace, it was a major supplier of iron for Confederate ordnance. Remains of the old furnaces are located 12 miles (19 km) south of Bessemer off Interstate 59/Interstate 20 near the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains. The 2,063-acre (835 ha) park includes: the John Wesley Hall Grist Mill; the May Plantation Cotton Gin House; and the Iron & Steel Museum of Alabama.
The Georges Creek Coal and Iron Company is a defunct coal mining, iron producer and railroad company that operated in Maryland from 1835 to 1863.
Maydelle is a small unincorporated community in Cherokee County, Texas, United States. According to the Handbook of Texas, the community had a population of 250 in 2000. It is located within the Tyler-Jacksonville combined statistical area.
The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (1852–1952), also known as TCI and the Tennessee Company, was a major American steel manufacturer with interests in coal and iron ore mining and railroad operations. Originally based entirely within Tennessee, it relocated most of its business to Alabama in the late nineteenth century, following protests over its use of free convict labor. With a sizable real estate portfolio, the company owned several Birmingham satellite towns, including Ensley, Fairfield, Docena, Edgewater and Bayview. It also established a coal mining camp it sold to U.S. Steel which developed it into the Westfield, Alabama planned community.
Woodstock is a town in Bibb and Tuscaloosa counties in the U.S. state of Alabama. Formerly known as North Bibb, by referendum in August 2000, the town adopted the name of a long-established local unincorporated community and, as of October 1, 2000, is now known officially as "Woodstock". As of the 2010 census, the population of the town was 1,428.
The Ghost Town Trail is a rail trail in Western Pennsylvania that runs 36 miles (58 km) between Black Lick, Indiana County, and Ebensburg, Cambria County. Established in 1991 on the right-of-way of the former Ebensburg and Black Lick Railroad, the trail follows the Blacklick Creek and passes through many ghost towns that were abandoned in the early 1900s with the decline of the local coal mining industry. Open year-round to cycling, hiking, and cross-country skiing, the trail is designated a National Recreation Trail by the United States Department of the Interior.
The Oregon Iron Company was an iron smelting company located in what is now Lake Oswego, Oregon. The company was established in 1865, and in 1867, became the first company west of the Rocky Mountains in the United States to smelt iron. The company failed after a few years, but was reorganized as the Oswego Iron Company in 1878, and again as the Oregon Iron and Steel Company in 1883. With the addition of a larger furnace, the last incarnation of the company prospered, reaching peak production in 1890. By 1894, however, pressure from cheaper imported iron combined with the effects of the Panic of 1893 forced the company to close its smelter. The company continued to operate a pipe foundry until 1928, and until the early 1960s, existed as a land management company, selling its real estate holdings which expanded the city of Lake Oswego.
Larissa is a rural community and abandoned townsite in northwestern Cherokee County, Texas, United States. Larissa lies west of U.S. Highway 69, off Farm to Market Road 855 and approximately halfway between Jacksonville and Bullard. Larissa is about 20 miles (32 km) northwest of the county seat of Rusk.
Bluffton is an unincorporated community in Cherokee County, Alabama, United States.
Tecumseh Furnace is an unincorporated community in Cherokee County, Alabama, United States.
The Furnace Grove Historic District encompasses the remains of a historic 19th-century iron processing facility near Bennington, Vermont. Located on the north side of Vermont Route 9 east of the town center, its production peaked in the 1830s, and was afterward converted into a gentleman's farm. Surviving elements of its past include the remains of iron smelting furnaces, housing, and agricultural outbuildings. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.
I.D. Fairchild State Forest is a 2,760-acre (1,120 ha) nature preserve in Cherokee County, Texas. It is the largest state forest in Texas and includes 10 miles of hiking trails. The main unit is located just west of the community of Maydelle on Texas State Highway 84. It is open to the public for hiking, horseback riding, picnicking, wildlife viewing, and biking. The Texas A&M Forest Service uses the area for demonstration and research as well as to conserve southern yellow pine ecosystems. The Texas State Railroad also runs through the forest.