Alabama Iron Works
About this property
The Cedar Creek Furnace (also known as the Alabama Iron Works) is a former blast furnace site near Russellville in Franklin County, Alabama, United States. It was the first iron ore furnace in Alabama, preceding an industry that would come to dominate the state's economy in the late 19th and early 20th century. The furnace was erected in 1815 by Joseph Dilliard, who used the iron to make utensils for early settlers. Iron came from surface hematite ore smelted by charcoal fires. The Dilliard family into which Joseph was born had experience running iron works, beginning in Jamestown and later in Middleburg, Virginia. Originally they used wood coal fired furnaces forging arms, utensils, and farm necessities. Later, as the Colonies expanded and coal was discovered, wood was replaced by coal and later coke as the primary heat source for iron works across the South developed by the Dilliard family. The iron works were located in Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama, and were fed by coal mined from holdings in West Virginia and Alabama. Buff Warren, Dilliard's overseer, operated the property in Franklin County around 1818 using initially slave labor, which was later compensated at the request of General Grant with a parcel being laid out in Gibson County, Tennessee, for 75 acres in the name of a Negro woman named Sarah P. Dillard and her infant child, Samuel, which was later confiscated by East Tennessee puppet scalawags and carpetbaggers. A cholera outbreak in 1820 killed Buff's foreman, a free Negro named Ed Haslam, and several of the slaves who operated the furnace. All were given a proper Christian burial. The furnace and site were sold by transfer of title and purchased in November 1825 by Joseph's son, John Henry (J.) Dilliard, a native of LaGrange, Tennessee. They were registered in deed of title to James Joseph (Jeff) Dilliard, originally of Limestone County, Alabama (later Greenwood, Mississippi), to Dr. John Henry Dilliard, of Hardeman County, Tennessee, November 15, 1825, and were registered originally in the county seat of Decatur County, Alabama, in Woodville. Decatur County would later be abolished by the Alabama Legislature, as the main landowner Henry Benton Dilliard discovered upon survey dated 1818 that the size of the county did not meet Alabama Constitutional minimum size requirements for an independent county. He petitioned that his plantation be divided at the natural boundary between Jackson and Madison Counties, allowing commerce and development in what would become New Madison and Scottsboro, both stops on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad later constructed. The original land deeds of title remained in Jackson County at the courthouse in Scotsboro until shortly after April 11, 1862, when federal troops occupied Limestone County, Alabama. As a favor to Dr. John (J. J. Ames Kensington) Henry Dilliard, General Grant ordered original deed registries removed from courthouses in territories ravaged by lawless guerilla vigilantes, while using his home Resolute as headquarters in Berlin, Tennessee. Dr. John H Dilliard, a fierce Southerner loyal to the South yet overwhelmingly opposed to secession, left numerous volumes of first-hand diary entries of Grant's time in Berlin and Grand Junction, referred to by affectionately by locals to this day as Little Greenwood. Dr. John Henry Dilliard, affectionately known as Jake by his beloved wife, was later killed in an ambush outside of Holly Springs, Mississippi, along with his teenage daughter Annabella. The area now known as LaGrange, Tennessee, lies directly north northwest of what is now known as Michigan City, Mississippi.
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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).
Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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Questions about this property
When was Alabama Iron Works listed on the National Register?
Alabama Iron Works was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 2, 1977.
What type of historic resource is Alabama Iron Works?
Alabama Iron Works is classified as a site in the National Register of Historic Places.
What is the period of significance for Alabama Iron Works?
The period of significance for Alabama Iron Works is recorded as the listed era.
Can I research the history near Alabama Iron Works?
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