The Coolidge examiner., 1932-12-30
Prepared by National Geographic Society
Washington. ID. C.-WNU Service.

Washington. ID. C.-wNU Service.
q LIGHTLY more than half
century ago, Alabama was al
most wholly an agricultural
region and Birmingham a small rail-
road junction town. Today the
state, still numbered among the
southern cottOn-grOwing regions,
has more than $500 Industrial es-
adjustments and Birmingham, now
a city of more than n quarter of a
million inhabitants, is called the
pittsburgh of the South"
While Washington, first Presi-
dent, struggled with a new nations
many problems, and Paris still
rocked from revolutionary disor
ders. white pioneers from Virginia,
the Carolinas and Georgia began to
penetrate Albania. Some were set
Ting along the TOmbig6ee on land
claimed by both Spain and the
United States Some, as traders.
founded crude posts that grew TO
towns; others, married TO Indian
women, took part In the life of new
white colonies. Occasionally there
was the renegade. or fugitive from
Atlantic coast justice. as "Sayan-
nah Jack" boasting he had slain so
many men that he could swim in
their blood, were it collected In one
pool"
But the historic rush of home
seekers which was to put tens of
thousands of whites on Alabama
lands within a generation, did not
begin till after 1900. When treat
ies with the ChOctaws in 1902 and
1906 threw open rich lands for set
tlement, new routes of travel were
opened; and the human tide moved
into Alabama. along with other
great migratory tides to the west.
BY 1S0S thousands had staked out
homes in the picturesque Tennessee
valley. which crosses northern Ala
bama.
The old immigrant or Federal
Road" from Georgia west was to
Alabama what the ancient Via APP
pia was to the country south Of
Rome. The trek and trudge over it
was so continuous. says one early
writer. that for days, journeying
against the immigration tide. he was
always In sight of wagon trails,
pack horses, and long files of tramp
ing slaves Whitney's new cotton
gin helped start these men west
and extended slavery. England,
after her industrial revolution, was
bidding for cotton. and rich, cheap
cotton land was the lure. From
Virginia. the Carolinas and Georgia
came planters. merchants and arti-
sans, the well-to-dO often in ele-
CANT carriages. barouches or sulkies.
Other thousands walked all the
way.
How They Went to Alabama.
II was like the later gold rush to
California. In one of the 1919 is
sues of the Augusta Chronicle is
recorded the fact that there passed
through a "man. his wife, a son
and his wife. with a cart but no
horse. The man had a belt over
his shoulders and drew the cart.
The old woman was walking, carry
ing a rifle and driving a cow"
Others had their goods packed in
n hogs-head, with trunnions put in
the ends and shafts attached" 1t
is recorded that same families
rolled their goods in this manner
all the way from Carolina to Ala
bama. You can talk still to older
Alabama residents who remember
what their grandfathers told of this
historic migration. when they came
with it as young men.
MY grandfather brought his bees
in hives" says n Birmingham law
yer. IF they swarmed. the whole
wagon train turned out. drumming
on pots and pans to make the bees
settle again. He brought garden
seeds and young fruit trees. Even
a strand of pussy willow, worn as a
hatband, he planted on the new
land he chOse-and it's still grow
ing there.
"When my folks first settled they
had to ride a mule. by compass. 100
miles to the nearest blacksmith to
get plow points sharpened. If their
fire died out. they used to borrow
fire. There being no matches. a
boy on n horse was sent to the
nearest neighbOr. to come galloping
home with a burning piece of pine
fat"
Fortunes Made in Cotton.
Thus. through ante-bellum dec
AIDES. you saw Alabama grow up.
Politics bubbled up. Towns. plan
tations. slaves all multiplied.
Paths and mere tracks on the
ground turned to roads. Palatial
steamers. with romantic names, and
string bands, deck-hand quartettes