1864

1864 was 7 years before the founding of the City of Birmingham, 45 years after Alabama became a state, and 3 years after Alabama joined the Confederacy.

Events

• May 22: U.S. soldiers under the command of Colonel J. S. Casement destroyed the Oxmoor Furnace.
• July 14: U.S. soldiers under the command of Captain Ed Ruger destroyed the Janney Furnace in Ohatchee and the Cane Creek Iron Works nearby.
• Talladega was invaded by Union troops.

Business

• The Helen Bess Mine began suppling red iron ore to the Irondale Furnace.

Individuals

• May 13: John Phelan was seriously wounded at the Battle of Resaca in northwest Georgia and was subsequently furloughed.
• June: Union cavalrymen under Lovell Rousseu occupied Blountsville.
• October: Charles Whelan was released after almost a year as a Confederate prisoner of war.
• December 12: Frank O'Brien was wounded and captured by Union forces at the Second Battle of Plymouth, North Carolina.
• Banker William Berney entered the Confederate Army.
• Obediah Berry became Mayor of Tuscaloosa.
• Mary Gordon Duffee intercepted a shipment of $100,000 in Confederate funds and used it to purchase necessities for suffering families and widows in Blount Springs.
• Mortimer Jordan Jr was promoted to captain in the Confederate Army.
• Mitchell Porter was discharged from the Confederate Army for medical reasons.
• Edmund Rucker was assigned to what became known as Rucker's Brigade.

Erskine Ramsay, c. 1928 courtesy BPL Archives

Births

• January 24: Thomas Walter III, architect
• March 1: Harry Vaughn,Birmingham Barons manager
• March 12: W. W. Rose, architect
• March 28: Alexander Dearborn, real estate executive
• May 1: William Gunn, owner of Gunn's Pharmacy
• May 5, William Harding, banker
• June 17: Archibald Carmichael, politician
• July 2: C. Travis Drennen, physician
• September 24: Erskine Ramsay, mining engineer, inventor and philanthropist
• October 22: Henry Badham, Sr, banker and land speculator
• November 12: Robert Baught, sporting goods dealer and Southern Asssociation commissioner
• November 18: Frank Yeilding, Yeilding's founder
• December: A. J. Dickinson, Baptist minister
• December 16: Sid Lee, Buffalo Rock founder

Marriages

• James Gilmer to Lizzie B. Dixon

Deaths

• Horace Ware, owner of the Shelby Iron Works

Works

Buildings

• Kymulga Mill

Context

In 1864, the Civil War continued. Abraham Lincoln appointed Ulysses S. Grant commander in chief of all Union armies. The phrase "In God We Trust" was first included on U.S. coins. The Russian Empire committed the Circassian Genocide. Montana was organized as a territory. Arlington National Cemetery was established. The Taiping Rebellion ended with the fall of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. General William Tecumseh Sherman invaded Georgia, completing it with his March to the Sea. Nevada was admitted as a state. Abraham Lincoln was reelected in an overwhelming victory over George B. McClellan.

Books published in 1864 included Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu, Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, and Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language (unabridged).

Notable births in 1864 included singer Arthur Collins, railway engineer Casey Jones, sociologist Max Weber, automotive pioneer Ransom E. Olds, composer Richard Strauss, botanist George Washington Carver, Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Lang, painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and actor William S. Hart. Notable deaths included composer Stephen Foster, King Maximilian II of Bavaria, composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, Confederate Cavalry General J.E.B. Stuart, author Nathaniel Hawthorne, Chinese rebel Hong Xiuquan, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, and mathematician George Boole.

1860s

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