1895

Flag of Alabama, adopted 1895

1895 was the 24th year after the founding of the City of Birmingham.

Events

• February 16: The Flag of Alabama was adopted.
• July 6: Fred Grambs led his Grambs Military Band in a concert for 2,000 listeners at Capitol Park
• October 23: Buffalo Bill's Wild West paraded through downtown Birmingham and put on shows at Smith's Park.
• The Apollo Club opera troupe was founded by E. E. Williams.
• Birmingham's wards were expanded to nine and drawn with an eye toward dispersing African-American voters between wards.
• The Birmingham Board of Aldermen was expanded to 18 members and direct election of Aldermen by each ward was implemented.
• The Birmingham Conservatory of Music was founded by Benjamin Guckenberger.
• The first three locks on the Black Warrior River were completed.
• Women were first admitted to Howard College.
• Mount Pinson was renamed simply as Pinson.
• The Nineteenth Century Club literary society was founded by Hannah Elliot.
• Stillman College was chartered as a legal corporation by the State of Alabama.

Business

• The Daily News changed its name to the The Birmingham News.
• The Dixie Home magazine was founded by John Rountree.
• Industrial manufacturer Hardie-Tynes was founded.
• Susan Lunsford lost ownership of the Lunsford Hotel.
• James and Diva Mayfield produced bottled sodas for Atlanta's Cotton States Exposition.
• The O'Brien Opera House was purchased by Charles Whelan.
• The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company moved its headquarters to Birmingham.
• Windham Construction was founded by Thomas C. Windham.
• J. T. Massey founded a mercantile store on 2nd Avenue North.
• The Mary Lee Railroad was created.
• Jacob Burger founded Burger Dry Goods.
• Louis Saks Clothiers moved to the new 1895 Louis Saks building.

Religion

Morris Newfield

• December 27: McElwain Baptist Church was founded in McElwain.
• James Carey succeeded Matthew Blease as pastor of Trinity Methodist Church (Southside).
• SS. Cyril & Methodius Catholic Church was founded as a Roman Catholic mission in Brookside.
• Alfred Moeller succeeded C. E. Scheibe as pastor of Zion Lutheran Church.
• Morris Newfield succeeded David Marx as rabbi of Temple Emanu-El.
• Warrior Baptist Church became Warrior Missionary Baptist Church.
• J. Q. A. Wilhite succeeded J. W. White as pastor of Sixth Avenue Baptist Church.

Sports

• John Heisman began coaching the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama's football team.
• Alabama joined the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association.
• September 14: Carlton Molesworth made his Major League debut on the mound for the Washington Nationals.
• November 23: The A&M College of Alabama defeated the University of Alabama 48-0 in what would later be known as the Iron Bowl, the first one played at Tuscaloosa.

Individuals

Underwood c. 1910-15

• Henry Gray was elected president of the People's Bank & Trust Company.
• Victor Hanson took a post with the Baltimore World.
• William Mailly began serving as Associate Editor of the Birmingham Labor Advocate.
• Robert A. Morris was appointed chief clerk in the department of estates in the Jefferson County Probate Court.
• Thomas Duke Parke became the Birmingham City Physician.
• John Phillips became president of the Southern Educational Association.
• N. F. Thompson became an industrial agent for the City of Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
• Oscar Underwood was elected as Representative of the 9th Congressional District of Alabama.

Births

• February 7: Lula Mehaffey, Howard College's first female graduate
• April: John Rice, Presbyterian minister
• July 12: Glenn Messer, aviation pioneer
• September 3: John Bryan, educator and Birmingham City Council member
• September 27: William Badham, World War I Flying Ace
• October 25: William Van de Graaff, football coach and army officer
• Frank Cross Sr, pastor of Ensley Highlands Presbyterian Church

Graduations

• William Bankhead from Georgetown University, law degree
• Isaac Beatty, Jr from Birmingham High School
• Ulysses Mason from the Meharry Medical School in Nashville, Tennessee
• Morris Newfield, Bachelor of Arts from the the University of Cincinnati
• Morris Newfield, Master of Arts from the Theological College of the University of Budapest

H. M. Caldwell

Marriages

• June 5: Widowed educator A. H. Parker to the former Bessie D. Pettiford.
• October 22: Banker William Harding to the former Amanda Moore.
• December 18: Newspaper reporter Edward Barrett to the former Janie Southerlin Smith.
• Publisher John Rountree to the former Maude McIver.
• Surgeon Arthur Brown to Mamie Lou Coleman.

Deaths

• February 22: Ernest Loosley, bicycle repairman and merchant
• May 3: Campbell Wallace, railroad executive and shareholder in the Elyton Land Company
• May 27: Goldsmith Hewitt II, former US Representative
• August 7: Henry Caldwell, president of the Elyton Land Company
• August 17: Robert Mustin, entrepreneur
• December 3: John Cullmann, founder of Cullman

Works

Powell Avenue Steam Plant in 1908

Buildings

• Tower and portico of Cathedral Church of the Advent
• C. T. Davidson residence
• Powell Avenue Steam Plant
• G. H. Stevenson residence
• The original Woodlawn City Hall on 1st Avenue North
• The Fox Building for Fox and Sons Grocery at 19th Street and 4th Avenue North
• Thomson House hotel at 22nd Street and 3rd Avenue North
• 1895 Louis Saks building
• First Cumberland Presbyterian Church of Birmingham

Demolitions

• Marre building/Ruby Saloon

Context

In 1895, Mintonette, later known as volleyball, was created. Oscar Wilde's last play The Importance of Being Earnest was first shown. The Treaty of Shimonoseki ends the first Sino-Japanese War. A magnitude 6.6 earthquake occurred in the New Madrid Seismic Zone. Wilhelm Röntgen discovered a type of radiation later known as X-rays. Auguste and Louis Lumière displayed their first moving picture film in Paris.

Notable books published in 1895 included The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, and The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. Notable music composed in 1895 included "America the Beautiful" by Katherine Lee Bates and Samuel A. Ward, "The Band Played On" by John F. Palmer and Charles B. Ward, and Cello Concerto in B minor by Antonín Dvořák.

Notable births in 1895 included FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, baseball player Babe Ruth, comedian Shemp Howard, actor Rudolph Valentino, boxer Jack Dempsey, actor Buster Keaton, and King George VI of the United Kingdom. Notable deaths included ex-slave and author Frederick Douglass, painter Berthe Morisot, biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, philosopher Friedrich Engels, microbiologist and chemist Louis Pasteur, and inventor Ányos Jedlik.

1890s

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