Jesse Mahan residence

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The Jesse Mahan residence was built about 1850 on the Brierfield farm that, a decade later, would become the site of the Brierfield Ironworks, a supplier of pig iron to the Confederate Naval Ordnance Works in Selma during the Civil War.

The home was built for Jesse W. Mahan, a farmer. He sold the property to the investors in the Bibb County Iron Company, which erected a 36-foot high stone iron furnace nearby. The furnace contracted with the Confederate government in 1862 to supply iron to Selma, and then was sold to the CSA a year later, becoming the only publicly-owned ironworks in the South. The works were destroyed by the 10th Missouri Cavalry, a detachment of Wilson's Raiders commanded by Fredrick Benteen, on March 31, 1865.

In 1866, Josiah Gorgas, the former chief of ordnance for the Confederacy, visited the site and decided to organize the Canebrake Company to purchase the site from the Freedman's Bureau and establish the Brierfield Coal & Iron Company. Gorgas and his wife, Amelia, and their six children moved into the Mahan residence. Gorgas manager of the works and hired University of Alabama professor James Mallet as chief engineer. The furnace blew out in July 1867, but Gorgas and his family remained in Brierfield until he accepted a position at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee in 1869. He went on to become president of the University of Alabama.

In 1908 the house was moved to Montevallo, but soon later was dismantled; its timbers re-used in two other houses then being built there.

In 2010 anthropology students from Alabama and UAB, under the direction of Jack Bergstresser, uncovered the foundation of the former Mahan residence. They located the remains of a double fireplace, a water cistern and several support piers, as well as fragments of mortar and plaster and household ceramics.

References

  • Kennedy, Veronica (August 23, 2010) "Team digs up 1850s historic Gorgas family home site." Birmingham News

External links