| Alabama (Dallas County), Beloit — The Beloit Industrial Institute |
| | Marker Front: The Beloit Industrial Institute was founded in 1888 by Industrial Missionary Association, an area subdivision of the American Missionary Associations. The President of the Association, Dr. Charles B. Curtis, was a Presbyterian missionary and educator from Wisconsin who established the school and founded the Beloit community. Dr. Curtis named the community for his Alma Mater, Beloit College in Wisconsin. The Beloit Industrial Institute gained recognition as the first . . . — Map (db m22142) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — A Prison Chimney? |
| | This engraving of the Union Prison at Cahaba was published in 1877 by Benson J. Lossing. The stockade had already been removed, so the details of the brick structure are visible. The artist apparently was in a boat in the Alabama River, behind you to your right. He did record a chimney in this area.
Experts believe that the chimney standing before you today was built at a much later date. What do you think? — Map (db m22667) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — Cahaba Drug Store |
| | The Cahaba Drug Store once covered this cellar hole. It was operated by Herbert Hudson and J. D. Craig.
On the same lot were T. L. Craig's large family grocery, Coleman's dry goods store, and Fellows' Jewelry.
All these men were related through marriage. — Map (db m23008) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — Cahaba First State Capital — 1818-1826 |
| | This stone marks the site of Cahaba, selected November 21, 1818 as the first permanent capital of Alabama. The seat of goverment remaining here until removed to Tuscaloosa by the Legislature, January 1825.
On December 13, 1819, it was fixed as the Seat of Justice of Dallas County, and so continued until December 14, 1865.
As state capital and as county seat, Cahaba was representative of the best in the life of a Great Commonwealth.
Erected by the Alabama Centennial Commission and . . . — Map (db m22609) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — Castle Morgan & Jesse Hawes |
| | The Union soldiers held captive in Cahaba's Civil War Prison, called the place Castle Morgan in honor of a daring Confederate raider. In 1888 Jesse Hawes published a book about his imprisonment in Castle Morgan. He drew this diagram from memory.
The water closet was located in the depressed area to the right of this sign. Hawes illustrates it as a six hole outhouse that was constantly flushed into the Alabama River by artesian well water. Jesse Hawes and two other prisoners escaped through . . . — Map (db m22668) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — Civil War Prison |
| | In 1858, the railroad company graded away an Indian mound that stood here. A brick warehouse was built in its place. From 1863 - 1865 the Confederate government used this warehouse to hold captured Federal Soldiers. You are standing on a pile of brick rubble from this structure.
This official 1864 diagram helped archaeologists identify the actual prison site. Carefully excavated clues revealed that a proposed extension to the stockade was actually built.
If you follow the brick rubble . . . — Map (db m22666) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — Commissary - R.R. Depot |
| | This cellar was under Joseph Babcock's brick store. During the Civil War the building was used as a commissary.
Babcock's warehouse and cotton shed were located to your right on the bluff overlooking the river. The family home, kitchen, and garden stood between this store and the warehouse.
In 1860 the Babcock family sold the land between this sign and Capitol Street to the Cahawba, Marion and Greensboro Railroad Company for a train depot. Railroad tracks had been laid directly down Capitol Street in 1858. — Map (db m23287) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — Crocheron's Row |
| | A "row" was a 19th century shopping mall. The word was used whan building or block had several similar storefronts arranged in a straight line or row.
This celler marks the spot where David and Nicholas Crocheron built a large 2 story brick row. It was completed in 1822. At that time, most of Cahawba's stores were in log cabins. The brothers had previously built the town's other brick structure, the Statehouse.
This building contained eight different stores or offices, equally divided . . . — Map (db m23007) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — Dallas County Courthouse |
| | The grassed over mound of brick before you was once Dallas County's courthouse. This courthouse was built in 1834. It was dismantled prior to 1905 by brick salvagers.
Cahawba was the county seat from 1818 to 1866. This brought a lot of people, business and money into town. When the county seat was moved to Selma in 1866, most of Cahaba's residents moved also.
After the Civil War, the abandoned courthouse became a meeting hall for freedman seeking new political power. Cahaba was known . . . — Map (db m23010) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — Kirk-View Farm |
| | In 1866, shortly after the Civil War and a severe flood, the county seat was moved from Cahaba to Selma. Residents rapidly abandoned the town. Many homes were dismantled and reassembled elsewhere.
Despite this trend, returning Confederate veteran Samuel McCurdy Kirkpatrick and his wife Sarah purchased a large brick house and outlying structures here on the northern edge of town. They acquired many of the vacated town lots and consolidated them into a large farm. For nearly seventy years, . . . — Map (db m22362) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — Major Hiram Solon Hanchett — 16th Illinois Cavalry - U.S. Volunteers |
| | On January 20th, 1865, Major Hanchett lead a daring, but unsuccessful escape from the military prison that was located on this spot.
He was then moved to the dungeon of the county jail, located on First North Street. In March the other Union Soldiers were sent to a parole camp in Vicksburg. Hanchett was detained because the post commandant, Lt. Col. Sam Jones believed he was a spy.
In April when Federal soldiers attacked nearby Selma, the post commandant fled Cahaba, and the citizens . . . — Map (db m22669) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — New Cemetery |
| | Burials in this cemetery, which served Cahaba from 1848 to 1900, tell a story of the town in which many deaths resulted from diseases of infancy, childhood and early adult life, Yellow Fever being a large factor because of proximity to Gulf of Mexico ports, Cahaba had many plagues, brought in by a constantly changing population. The famous Bell Monument is in this cemetery. — Map (db m23322) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — Old Cemetery |
| | This site was set aside by the 1820 General Assembly, burials here date from 1818 to 1847. Interred are some of the state's earliest figures. There is no record of names, many handsome tombs have been destroyed, seven marked ones remaining, six are those of Elizabeth Comalander, Mary L. Harris, Thos. B. Rutherford, Indiana Crenshaw, Geo. William Dewolf and M. Elisha Clap, Jr. some unmarked graves remain. A brick wall once enclosed the plot. — Map (db m23355) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — Perine Well |
| | This artesian well was drilled to serve a factory which did not materialized. It was then used to water the grounds, a garden and pastures. In addition, by forcing water through pipes into his $50,000 home, E. M. Perine, a merchant prince, had the first air conditioning in Alabama. Fry's history relates that when drilled, this was the deepest known well in the world. Flow is now estimated at 1250 gallons per minute from a depth of 700-900 feet. — Map (db m23290) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — Saltmarsh Hall |
| | In the late 1850s, Cahaba experienced a building boom. Everyone expected the town to prosper because of the new railroad. One of the first large brick structures built in this prosperous period was completed in 1856 by Dr. Saltmarsh.
He wanted the town to have a large hall for public occasions. The second floor was fitted up as a concert or exhibition hall. Many fancy dress balls were held here.
A small cellar from this structure is still visible today. — Map (db m23009) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — Site of Alabama's Statehouse — 1820 - 1825 |
| | This structure collapsed in 1833 and its fallen remains were reportedly heaped into a railroad embankment. Consequently, we have no picture of the Statehouse that was drawn by someone who actually saw the building. Any modern picture you see of this structure is pure conjecture.
We can only hope that archaeologists will uncover important clues to the appearance of Cahawba's Statehouse. — Map (db m22612) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — St. Luke's Episcopal Church |
| | St. Luke's was consecrated in 1854. It was an outstanding example of the Gothic Revival style, popular at the time. The contractor closely followed designs in a widely circulated book, Rural Architecture, published in 1852 by the celebrated architect Richard Upjohn.
In 1878, after the decline of the town, the church was moved 11 miles to Martin's Station Alabama. Over a hundred years later archaeologists were able to uncover the footprint of the structure that once stood here, compare it to . . . — Map (db m22895) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — The Crocheron Columns |
| | The Crocherons were from Staten Island, New York. Richard Conner Crocheron arrived in town about 1837 to help run the family store. He traveled north for his bride in 1843 after building her this brick home. The back wall adjoined the brick store that had been built by his uncles 20 years earlier. The front porch had a magnificent view of two rivers. The columns you see today were once part of a side portico. The family owned a line of ocean-going steamers and they escaped the summer heat by . . . — Map (db m22870) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — The Duke of Cahaba |
| | In 1889, Samuel and Sarah Kirkpatrick moved to Selma, leaving their farm and house in the capable hands of their son Clifton (1863-1930). He turned the abandoned remains of Alabama's first capital into a showcase farm of diversified, scientific agriculture, departing from the South's one crop cotton system. In 1902, he began planting the pecan trees you see all around you.
Clifton Kirkpatrick believed in public service and worked to promote the welfare of all farmers. From 1927 until his . . . — Map (db m23005) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — The Old Brick Store |
| | By 1858 many brick stores had been built in Cahaba, so everyone called this the "old brick store." Merchant Sam M. Hill turned the building into one huge dry goods store where shoppers could buy just about anything!
Col. Hill, like most of the merchants in Cahaba, traveled to New York twice a year to stock up on new seasonal goods. They traveled by steam-boat down the Alabama then by packet boat from Mobile or New Orleans to New York via Cuba. In 1859, Col. Hill made this trip in less than four days! — Map (db m23242) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Cahaba — Vine Street |
| | Vine Street was Cahawba Business district. Stores, offices and hotels were tightly packed together along these three blocks. Homes were scattered over an entire square mile. Nearly every house had a yard of one or two acres. — Map (db m23289) |
| Alabama (Dallas County), Orrville — Orrville United Methodist Church |
| | Frank Orr and his brother, William, settled Orrville in the early 1800's with a very strong religious group of people. A church was soon organized and a place of worship was built on this site in 1846. The church was known as the Methodist Episcopal Church South. Before becoming The United Methodist Church, the building was used for many years by the Methodist, Episcopalians and Associate Reformed Presbyterians on alternate Sundays. Quite a history and heritage is ours. "This is a House The . . . — Map (db m23003) |
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