Pelham Schools Have a Long History

 In this photograph of Pelham before 1909, building No. 1 is the Rutherford High School; No. 2 is the Cumberland Presbyterian Church; and No. 3 is the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The house in the photograph, in front of and between building No. 2 and building No. 3, is the Turpin Family house. The original of this photograph, along with many other "old" original photographs of Pelham, are in a collection owned by Bobby Joe and Diane Seales. 

 The recent creation of a city school system brings to mind the history of schools in Pelham. The  Shelby Guide newspaper for April 23, 1872, declared the “citizens of the village and vicinity have just completed a large and commodious Academy and have an interesting school under the superintendence of Rev. C.L. Kirksey, nearly fifty pupils…” In February 1879 the Shelby Sentinel noted that the school “in a flourishing condition” was then managed by Mr. Shell Cross.

 The building also served as a church and was known as Rutherford High School. Destroyed by a storm in April, 1909, it was replaced by a two-story wood frame structure with the school on the bottom floor. This second facility, the Pelham School, was replaced in 1936 with a one-story building that had classrooms, an auditorium and lunch room and served as an elementary school for about 150 students. After Valley Elementary opened in 1964, the third school served as city offices until replaced on the same site by the current City Hall in 1975.

A resident who attended the Pelham School, Ida Cumberland, once told the Shelby County Reporter about the experience. “When the wind would start blowing and the weather would get bad, they would make us get out and get down in a ditch. They were afraid the building would blow away with us in it.”  More details about these early schools can be found in a history of Pelham written by public library director Barbara Roberts and available there.

In September 1974 Pelham High School opened with students in grades 7, 8 and 9; the first class graduated in 1978. Riverchase Middle School opened in 1977, and Valley Intermediate followed in 2000. As the new city school system develops, other schools may well open and close.

Note: A version of this post was published in the Pelham City News Winter 2014 issue.

Birmingham Photo of the Day (10): Loew's Temple Theatre, 1925

This photo shows the Loew's Temple Theatre in 1925 and is from the Birmingham Public Library's Digital Collections. The theater was located at the Masonic Temple at 517 19th Street North. 

The marquee is advertising a combination of live acts and film including "Minstrelsys greatest stars" and The Dancers, a silent melodrama released that year. Interestingly enough, the film was based on a 1923 play that ran in London and starred none other than Alabama's own Tallulah Bankhead.  

Two Alabama Natives Visit the Garden of the Gods

In June 2013 we were in Colorado for a family wedding, and during the trip my daughter Becca Leon and I visited the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. We've been there before, but it's always a spectacular place. And it was a glorious day to spend some time there with the daughter. A few of the many photos we took that day are below.

Garden of the Gods is a public park established in 1909 and designated a National Natural Landmark in 1971. The rock formations resulted when the Rocky Mountains were created. The park has a visitors' center and offers many recreational opportunities. 

If you are in the area, it's well worth a visit. The place may not be as imposing as Pikes Peak, but it's a lot prettier. More information is available on the park's web site and it's Wikipedia entry. 

What does any of this have to do with Alabama history? Beats me...but it sure is random!

Approaching the park and some of its many distinctive red rocks. 

Here's a view from the visitor center parking lot.

They seem to have deer in Colorado too. 

Pikes Peak looming in the background, as it does everywhere in this part of Colorado.

Rock climbing is popular in the park, and we saw several teams on various outcroppings. 

The Perkins Central Garden Trail is over a mile in length, paved and wheelchair-accessible. 

Here's daughter Becca, disguised as a tree-hugger. The quaint village of Manitou Springs is visible in the background.

Some of the late spring flora in the park

Maplesville Railroad Depot

Last November my wife Dianne and I made a trip to Camden in Wilcox County to visit the Black Belt Treasures shop. On the way back we made a brief stop at the Old Southern Depot in Maplesville in Chilton County. The building has been nicely re-purposed as a senior center and was decorated for Christmas. 

This existing depot, which served the Norfolk Southern Railroad and earlier companies, is actually the third one in Maplesville. The first was burned by Wilson's Raiders on their way to Selma during the Civil War. The second depot, along with other town buildings, burned in 1911; and the current one opened the following year. The building was placed on the Alabama Register of historic places in 1976 and the Maplesville Railroad Historic District created in 2003. 

The next to last photo below shows part of downtown Maplesville. The town, which has around 2500 people, actually originated about three miles from its present location soon after statehood. The namesake was Stephen W. Maples, whose store had the first post office. The arrival of the railroad in the early 1850s led to the relocation of Maplesville. All that remains of the original site is a cemetery. 

I just tossed in the final photo because the trees were so pretty. 

The town's official web site and Wikipedia entry were my sources of information. 

See also Joyanna Love, "Train depot crucial to Mapleville's history." Clanton Advertiser 13 November 2016, p.9 

Lots of information about railroad depots in the state can be found at Dale's Alabama Rail Pics. 

A spectacular sight along the route near Maplesville

Birmingham Photo of the Day (9): McAdory Home & Infirmary

This photo from the Birmingham Public Library's Digital Collections

shows the home of Wellington Prude McAdory, M.D., in 1910. The structure was located at the corner of 11th Avenue and 25th Street.

Dr. McAdory's home also included his office and an infirmary, a common setup for physicians of this era. His photo and biographical information below are taken from Notable Men of Alabama Volume II, published in 1904 and available online via Google Books. 

Birmingham Photo of the Day (8): Alabama Theatre, 1927

Here's another photo of the Alabama Theatre from the Birmingham Public Library's Digital Collections. 

This view shows the theater under construction in 1927; signs in the window give a December 26 opening date. Also shown are more of those neat cars they had in the past!

Alabama Libraries in 1851

[This post is one of a series I'm doing on the history of libraries and books in Alabama.]


In 1851 Charles Coffin Jewett published one of the early inventories of public libraries in the United States. At the time Jewett was Librarian and Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; he moved to the Boston Public Library as Superintendent in 1858 and worked there until his death a decade later. 

The report, Notices of Public Libraries in the United States of America, was issued as an appendix to the 1850 report of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents. In some 200 pages Jewett gives state-by-state library listings and descriptions. Listings are organized by town within each state. In his “Preliminary Remarks”, Jewett tells the reader:

As might be expected, Jewett found through his tedious methods of circulars and private correspondence only a few libraries in Alabama at that time. His first entry for the state, under “La Grange”, says simply “College Library—3,000 vols.” He refers of course to LaGrange College, the state’s first chartered college established in 1830; the site is located eight miles southeast of Muscle Shoals. The college was burned in April 1863.

From that brief entry Jewett moves on to Howard College, founded in Marion in 1842, with a library containing 1500 volumes. “It is opened once a week for half an hour”, he notes. Organized by Alabama Baptists and chartered in 1841, Howard was moved to the East Lake area of Birmingham in 1887 and finally to its present location in Homewood in 1957 and renamed Samford University in 1965.

In Mobile Jewett located the library of the Franklin Society, founded in January 1835. “The library contains 1,454 volumes, with a few coins and maps….The library and reading-room are open daily for the use of members of the society and subscribers to the reading-room.”

           

 In Spring Hill Jewett found the state’s second largest library of the time, that of the Catholic college holding 4,000 volumes. The school was founded twenty years before Jewett’s report was published. He gives no other library details.

The original main building of Spring Hill College, built in 1831. 
Source: Wikipedia

Jewett’s longest entry is the last, as expected the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa with 7,123 volumes. This figure included the 4,500 volumes in the “Rotundo” and two student libraries containing 2,623 volumes. He notes an annual circulation of some 800 volumes, a “stated annual appropriation of $200” and two extra $500 appropriations within the past five years.  “The library is opened twice a week, and kept open about an hour each time.”

The Rotunda in 1859, one of seven UA buildings existing when the school opened in 1831.
Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama

Jewett also mentions the two library catalogs that had been prepared by Richard Furman and Wilson G. Richardson. He notes that Richardson’s effort “is on the plan of the catalogue of Brown University Library.” In 1841 Jewett became librarian at Brown, reorganized its library and published a catalog in two parts: an alphabetical description of items and an alphabetical index of subjects. 

Thus Jewett found six “public libraries” in Alabama ca. 1850; he seems to have missed the one in Huntsville and probably others. By way of comparison, he found eight in Georgia, four in Mississippi and three in Florida.

Jewett knew this effort was only the beginning:

Charles Coffin Jewett [1816-1868]
Source: Wikipedia 
 

This document is available at Google Books



ALABAMA LIBRARIES PRIOR TO WORLD WAR I: A CHRONOLOGY IN PROGRESS