Charles Linn
Charles Linn (born Carl Eric Engelbrekt Sjödahl June 13, 1814 in Billnäs Bruk, Sweden; died August 5, 1882 in Birmingham) was a sailor, wholesaler, banker and industrialist.
Linn was the son of Erik Johan Sjödahl, chief inspector of ironworks at Billnäs Bruk, and his wife, the former Engla Gustava Collin. The lived near Pojo, on the southwestern coast of Finland, which was then a part of the Kingdom of Sweden. Young Carl displayed an early affinity for seafaring when, at age seven, he stowed away on a merchant vessel. When the crew discovered him, he was put to work as a cabin boy until he could be returned home.
At age thirteen, he was a pupil at the Imperial Academy in Turku when the city burned in a great fire. He took the opportunity to leave school and return to the sea as part of the crew of a merchant ship. Over the next dozen years he made the Atlantic crossing more than fifty times and completed three full circuits of the globe. In 1824 he left ship and settled as an immigrant in New York City. According to one account, he may have left a family behind in Helsinki.1.
Sjödahl took a job in a match factory, but it was not long before he desired to travel again and he found himself peddling tinware from a pack, working his way South from New York to Alabama. He adopted the name "Charles Linn" and opened a mercantile store in Montgomery in 1838. The store flourished in business there enough to purchase a farmstead. Finally ready to settle down, he voyaged home to Finland, marrying the former Emelie Antoinette Forss at Koskis on September 5, 1842. They had three children: Charles Washington, Antoinette Aurelia, and Edward. Emelie died in Montgomery from complications with Edward's birth on February 16, 1852.
Linn did not remain long without a helpmate. In December he married the former Eliza Jane Summerlin of Montgomery. Over the next decade she bore him four more children: Mary Eliza, Lizzie Jane, George Thomas and George Marion.
Meanwhile, Linn and his oldest son, Charles William, volunteered their services to the Confederate Navy at the outbreak of Civil War. The were posted to the Kate Dale, a fast sloop which ferried cotton through the Union blockades to trade in Great Britain and Cuba for gold and badly-needed supplies. After many successful crossings, the ship was finally captured off the Florida keys and Linn and his son were taken prisoner and sent to Washington to stand trial as war criminals. They were both pardoned, however, and the two Linns joined a wholesale grocery firm in New Orleans, recruiting fellow Finns from the docks as workers.
Expecting to retire, Linn sold his share in the New Orleans firm and rejoined the rest of his family at the farm in Montgomery. Not long afterward James Powell and other investors in the Elyton Land Company interested him in the idea of opening a bank in the newly-founded City of Birmingham. He agreed and launched the National Bank of Birmingham in 1872 with $50,000 in gold.
In 1873 Linn was elected to the Birmingham Board of Aldermen to serve in Mayor James Powell's administration. Later that year, Linn erected the monumental 3-story National Bank of Birmingham building on the corner of 1st Avenue North and 20th Street at a time when the city's future was doubtful. The building became known as Linn's Folly, and it was there that Linn hosted the legendary New Year's Eve Calico Ball that signaled the city's emergence from a cholera epidemic and the nationwide financial panic.
In 1874 Linn created a small park in a half-block behind the Relay House. Eliza Jane died on February 10, 1875 and Linn married the former Fanny Clark on August 24 of the same year. On Saturday June 11, 1881 he hosted a celebration of his 67th birthday at Linn's Park with bands, ice cream, and speeches. The day was also marked by an eclipse of the moon.
Linn extended his investments from banking to industry, organizing two of the city's first such major manufacturing ventures, the Linn Iron Works and the Birmingham Car and Foundry Company with skilled workers brought in from Cleveland and Cincinnati. Linn purchased some of his equipment from the Confederate Iron Works in Selma.
Before his death in 1882 Linn issued a bold proclamation which was inscribed on his mortuary in Oak Hill Cemetery:
- I shall have my tomb built upon a high promontory above the town of Birmingham, in which you men profess to have so little faith, so that I may walk out on Judgment Day and view the greatest industrial city of the entire South.
Downtown's Linn Park was re-named for Linn in the 1980s. The Linn-Henley Research Library is also named in honor of Linn and his descendants. In 2005 Linn was inducted into the Birmingham Business Hall of Fame. In 2013 a statue of Linn, sculpted by Branko Medenica, was installed at Linn Park by the Alabama-Mississippi Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. The commission honored MS campaign chair Arthur Henley.
Notes
- Armor-2008
References
- Corley, Robert G. and Marvin Yeomans Whiting, editors (July 1979) Dedication. Journal of the Birmingham Historical Society. Vol. 6, No. 2
- Armor, John (August 2, 2008) "A Scandinavian Skeleton in a Southern Closet" FreeRepublic
External links
- Carl Eric Engelbrekt Sjödahl, Linn genealogy page at geni.com