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The Alger-Sullivan Historical Society holds a meeting on the third Tuesday of each month at 6pm. You are invited to attend any meeting and maybe become part of our group. The meetings usually have a few minutes of business, followed by a guest who speaks on some aspect of local history. We then adjourn for a pot-luck dinner. Our society’s meeting this month will be a bit special as Judson Cardin, one of our members who is a Civil War buff, will speak on relics that he has found in connection with the last days of the war in our area. To many, t...
Are you curious about our history? Did you know that curiosity of our past has made historical tourism a rapidly growing part of Florida’s economy? Let’s take a trip to a town that really knows this. Pensacola in the last few years has had amazing changes in the downtown area’s growth, and the surrounding new homes and apartments. Along with this growth is a new generation of monuments and dedication parks, which added to the existing ones, is giving much insight into the long and diverse history here and is beginning to make this a city of mon...
Occasionally, our writers receive a note of appreciation about our articles in this paper; these articles for the Tri-City have been contributed by our members since 1990. Recently, Mr. Dudley wrote a note to say how much he liked a history of logging railroads. Mr. Dudley who is in his 90s, is a veteran of WWII. He later had a career in the space program, retiring as a project engineer at Huntsville. He turned his attention to the history of Alabama’s railroads and joined the local railroad club in 1968. Today, this club operates the A...
There were five men in the party; they were cow hunting. They had left the comfort of their homes in the area along the coast known as the Walton Valley and traveled northwest in the yearly search for their free-range cattle. After several days of search, reports were received of Indian raids nearby, around the upper Shoal River. Two Hart family farms had been attacked by a large band of braves coming down from the Alabama region. One brother’s large extended family had been surprised during the evening livestock feeding and massacred, while th...
The holidays are a time to enjoy the company of family and friends, give to those in need and celebrate the gifts of God. One of those gifts is the freedom to learn about our own history and grow from that knowledge. Today, we Americans are far better off than at any time, but today’s prosperity is far different than those who lived in some eras of our past. In the post-Civil War south, very hard times of those years left some thinking of the prewar days in a much different light than the period is generally seen today. He was known by those w...
The history of early organized education in Florida is one of none, followed by failed and sporadic efforts by state and local officials until just before the twentieth century. The first real effort came with the post-Civil War Constitution commonly remembered as the “carpet bagger Constitution”. In 1885 a new Constitution used much of its predecessor’s language, adding separate but equal schools for black students and establishing new institutes of higher learning for the training of teachers. Through such foundations the beginning of educati...
In a few years Florida will celebrate two hundred years as a part of the United States. It was in 1821 that Andrew Jackson traveled to Pensacola to accept transfer of West Florida from Spain and establish himself as interim governor. At the same time, his cohort was working at St. Augustine to receive East Florida. The transfer of Florida as two territories presented an unacceptable situation for Jackson. To resolve this, the entire region was declared a territory divided into two sections called counties, as was standard in other states. To...
At the beginning of the twentieth century, The Alger-Sullivan Lumber Company was formed to harvest the thousands of acres of virgin pine in South Alabama and soon settled on a piece of property for a new sawmill in Florida, only a mile from the state line. As construction of the mill and logging railway began, so did the beginnings of a town. These beginnings are documented today through collections of papers and letters preserved by our historical society, who consider this history important. Through such papers we get a glimpse of one of the...
In the basement of the Pace Library at the University of West Florida is West Florida’s largest collection of historical documents. The archives hold volumes of information relating to the people who shaped local history. In the years before the archives such documents were discarded as only old papers. One of the largest and first collections held by the archives are early business records of the Alger-Sullivan Lumber Company of Century, donated by our society in its early years. Since that time, the society has acquired a few other sawmill c...
There is an old saying that was often used by a favorite teacher in my elementary school days. It is recalled roughly as follows, "Mighty oaks from small acorns grow". The history of the United States is filled with stories that are examples of this phrase, here is one. He was born in Vermont in 1804. As a boy he received the standard minimum education of a few years and then served four years as a blacksmith apprentice, his name was John Deere. In 1827 John married a lady from the nearby town...
Near the middle of the twentieth century, before the evolution of the presidential monarchy, there was a president who took daily morning walks in his business suit along the streets of Washington, D.C. Following reporters would often jog along just to stay up with his brisk pace. His terms in office, much like his walks, were marked by a fast, self-assured series of efforts to serve the American people. On his desk a plaque declared his status, “The Buck Stops Here”. He was Harry S. Truman. Truman was born in 1884 and was raised on a far...
Our society has contributed articles to this paper for almost thirty years now and I find that the collection is a surprisingly generous source of historical information about this region. I stumbled across the following a while back, a first-hand recollection of a local “bad man” who was the brother-in-law of the famous Texas desperado, John Wesley Hardin. Hardin and Brown Bowen met while living in Texas as teens. In 1874 Bowen’s sister, Hardin’s wife, returned to the old family home in the Pollard area with her children and mother. Hardin...
The events in our history that directed major changes in the evolution of our world are often thought of as far away and detached from local history. But, several people who changed our history lay at rest today in this county. One of the most notable was a man who by his vision and actions helped change the concept of military sea power; his story is well worth revisiting. Now buried in St. Michael’s at Pensacola, his name was Stephen Mallory. The months of 1860 were the beginning of our nation’s largest failure, the Civil War. During thi...
The United States has always had a large immigrant population. This population has often been made up of large groups of people fleeing the hardships of their own lands to find a better life. Others seek purpose. This is the beginning story of a genius inventor who, although he had a much better status than other migrants, overcame his own challenges to become one of our national heroes. His name was John Ericsson. John was born in a small mining town of Sweden in 1803. His father, who was a mine inspector encouraged his boy in science and...
I was raised in the country many, many years ago. As the oldest of four brothers, I spent summer days out the back door after breakfast with instructions to come back for lunch and stay out of trouble. Four boys roaming the countryside however were often not likely to stay out of mischief, the result usually was the discipline of a switching. And so it was also with school. If our teachers saw a need for a paddle, a phone call to mother afterwards meant there better be a good explanation when we got home to avoid a second dressing. Today howeve...
The Alger-Sullivan Historical Society invites you to our 7th Annual Sawmill Day and Car Show at Century – Saturday, May 5th! This will be the society's 28th annual heritage festival fund raiser held every year in the historic district of Century. As always, the event and parking are free. Parking will be available in the old ball field at the end of Front Street, directed by members of Northview High School's J.R.O.T.C. Visitors can then tour the car show as they make their way to the f...
First, a special notice: The Town of Century and The Alger-Sullivan Historical Society announce a dedication ceremony for the unveiling of a state historic marker recognizing the Alger-Sullivan Lumber Company Residential Historic District in old Century. The event will be held at 2pm on Saturday, April 21st at Front Street and Jefferson Avenue. The dedication will be followed by a small reception at Jones Park on Forth St. This is the first marker placed in north Escambia County since the 1960s. Expected in attendance are residents of the distr...
In 1828 Lieutenant William H. Chase of the U.S. Army was sent to the U.S. Navy Shipyard west of Pensacola where plans had been laid out to build a group or forts for its protection. From his Pensacola base, he would spend almost thirty years overseeing the construction of coastal forts from Key West to Louisiana. This seems an exceptional explanation of a lifetimes work, but it is only a part of his. Chase’s position as Chief Engineer of the Gulf would assure much political power in West Florida, his ability to cut corners on fort construction...
There are few men in the early American history of Escambia County, Florida and of this region, who had more influence than a man named William H. Chase. Although his business efforts touched on many ventures, he is best remembered as a fort builder. Chase was born in the far north in 1798. In 1815, after graduating West Point, he joined the U. S. Army’s Corp of Engineers and began to acquire the knowledge of fortifications. By 1819 he was involved with fort construction in Louisiana and in 1828 he was sent to begin defenses for the navy’s most...
The period after the Civil war in the South is known as Reconstruction. The name is a bit misleading. For former states of rebellion, these years were largely state government controlled with U.S. military oversite. Florida had been one of the slave state instigators before the war and one of the most controlled afterwards. Among other things, the federal government seized vast sections of land whose owners could not pay taxes. With strong northern influence over government, many Yankees came into the state seeking their own fortunes and...
