Tennessee Register Of Deeds

Brierfield Furnace
History
The site was developed in 1861 by Brierfield Furnace Huckabee Caswell Campbell, a plantation owner in Greensboro, Newton and Jonathan Smith, a planter of Bibb County, on land purchased from Jesse Mahan near the Little Cahaba River, a tributary of the Cahaba . The effort was initially known as Bibb County Society of iron, with Huckabee provides most of the capital and slave labor for construction. Richard Fell has been used to construct a 36-foot (11 m) blast furnace stoves and stone, in 1862, a rolling mill. The company produces cast first, but soon changed during the production of wrought iron Lucat. Iron was used to produce agricultural implements.
Recognizing the high quality of iron produced at Brierfield, officials of the federal government forced people to sell to the government for forging $ 600,000 in 1863, renaming the Bibb Naval oven. A new 40-foot (12 m) high brick oven was built and a railway line was built to connect the oven to the mainline of Alabama and Tennessee Railroad. The output of the steel plant was then shipped to the Confederate arsenal at Selma. In 1864, the furnace produced 25 tons of iron per day, much of which went into production of more than 100 guns Brooke, one of the most important weapons in the South, in Selma. All this ended March 31, 1865, when the Bibb Naval furnace was destroyed by the 10th Cavalry Missouri Volunteers during a raid of Wilson.
After the war, the operation has been rebuilt under the private ownership of the Company Canebrake. The new company, formed by former Confederates Josiah Gorgas and Francis Strother Lyon, purchased the steel plant of the federal government $ 45,000 in January 1866. They had the backup site for production by November 2, 1866. In January 1867 Lyons was act during Gorgas, who became president of the new steel plant Brierfield. Gorgas forges leased to Thomas S. Alvis August 2, 1869. He ran the works before being forced to close because of economic conditions after the Panic of 1873.
The equipment has been purchased and reactivated by William D. Kearsley and Carter, Louisville, Kentucky in 1877. In 1882, the operation was led by Peter Thomas Jefferson, Kansas. Peter had the furnace rebuilt and renovated the mill. He also had a nail factory, coke ovens, and a mount washer. However, at least partly because of competition from the boundary wire nails Pittsburgh forges finally closed its doors in December 1894.
In the years following the closure of the site was abandoned. During World War II era thousands of bricks were recovered from the site. In 1976, the Bibb County Commission has created a park containing 45 acres (18 hectares) at the request of the Historical Society of Bibb County. This initial effort has evolved over the years in what is now the Brierfield Ironworks Historical State Park.
Park Modern
The structures and sites which help the National Register of Historic Places listing include ruinous brick oven (ie 1860, 1880), the bed of the tramway track (c. 1860), the brick foundations of the rolling mill (c. 1862, 1880), the nail bases (c. 1880), coke ovens (c. 1880), cemetery (c. 1850), and the caretaker's house (c. 1870).
Several other structures have been moved to the park from other locations nearby. They include Ashby Post Office (c. 1900), Brierfield Ironworks Office Park (1894), Wilson Hayes House (c. 1900), J. Henry Jones General Store (c. 1900), Lightsey Cabin (1840), Sims-Hubbard Log Cabin (c. 1850), The Case of Billy Mitchell (1880), and Mulberry Baptist Church (1897). The park also features additional attractions of an outdoor amphitheater, hiking and nature, camping, and swimming pool.
See also
National Register of historic places ads in Bibb County, Alabama
Tannehill Ironworks
References
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