History of Alabama and dictionary of Alabama biography, Volume I, Part 34

Author: Owen, Thomas McAdory, 1866-1920; Owen, Marie (Bankhead) Mrs. 1869-
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company
Number of Pages: 756

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then in log houses. The old Mahan home is still standing on the site of the Indian town, which formerly occupied the present village site. The Mahans, father and sons, evident- ly were the first to discover the presence of coal at Brierfield. In 1851, Edward Mahan and Jonathan Ware sent an exhibit of iron, from their Bibb County forges to an exposi- tion at Sydenham, England. ` This iron took first prize over all charcoal iron "blooms," from many quarters of the world.

In 1863, Jesse Mahan, son of Edward, donated his mines, furnace and rolling mill at Brierfield to the Confederate cause. The product of the Brierfield Furnace "astonished the world," and was used in making the great guns, both for land and naval use. It was pronounced "the best for strength, malle- ability, fluxibility and fine texture of fibre." The Brierfield plant was destroyed in 1865, by Federal cavalry under Wilson. In Armes' "Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama" is a beautiful picture of the ruins of Brier- field, as left by the enemy.

In 1866, Brierfield was seized as contra- band of war and sold at auction. Frances Strother Lyon purchased the property and formed a company to reconstruct it, with Gen. Josiah Gorgas, Messrs. Crawford, Brow- der, Glover, Prout and Collins as associates. The company placed Giles Edwards in charge of the work. By 1868 the plant was in full blast, and known as The Strother Furnace, named in honor of the mother of Mr. Lyon. In 1873, the financial panic caused the furnace to close down until 1880.

This property passed into the possession of T. J. Peter, who remodeled the furnace and rolling mill, built a large nail factory, coke ovens and a washer.

REFERENCES .- Armes, Story of coal and iron in Alabama (1910), pp. 24, 25, 71, 144, 171, 194, 204, 207, 326, 328, 499, 500.

BRIGHTON. An incorporated mining town in the southern part of Jefferson County, just north of Bessemer, which is its post office, and about 10 miles southwest of Birmingham, with which it is connected by an interurban electric car line. Population: 1910-1,502.

REFERENCES .- Alabama Official and Statis- tical Register, 1915; U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, Soil survey of Jefferson County (1910).

BROCK MOUNTAIN, OR LIME HILL. A high point or hill near the southwestern end of the low ridge between Choccolocco Val- ley (q. v.) and Buck Horn Valley. Its top is a mass of loose chert overlying a cherty, blue limestone that outcrops as a high, over- hanging bluff on the steep northwest side of the hill. There is a high bluff of quite pure gray limestone at the southwest end of the hill at a locality called Lime Hill Church. This stone has heen used considerably, for example, in constructing culverts, waterways, etc., along the East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia Railway, now the Southern Railway. The timber of the locality is mainly red cedar and walnut.

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REFERENCE .- McCalley, Valley regions of Ala- bama, Pt. 2, Coosa Valley (Geol. Survey of Ala., Special report 9, 1897), p. 639.

BROOKLYN. Interior village and post- office, situated in S. E. corner of Conecuh county, on Sepulga river; about 100 miles E. N. E. of Mobile; 67 miles N. E. of Pen- sacola; 16 miles S. E. of Evergreen. Popu- lation: 1888, 300; 1912, 360. The first set- tler of Brooklyn was a man named Cameron, who established a ferry across Sepulga river. In 1820, Cameron sold out to Edwin Robin- son, of Brooklyn, Conn., who opened a store and named his settlement Brooklyn for his former home. He was quickly joined by Dr. Milton Amos, for whom Milton, Fla., was named. Then came the families of George and Reuben Dean and Benjamine Hart. Alex- ander Travis erected a church in 1831, which later became famous as Old Beulah Baptist Church. A school was established by Mr. Scruggs. A grist mill was soon huilt; cotton was raised and shipped by keel-boat to Pensa- cola, via the Sepulga and Conecuh rivers. These boats were first introduced by George Stoneham, followed by Edwin Robinson, John and James Jones, Starke and Henry Hunter and Frank Boykin, and in 1823, three thou- sand bales of cotton were shipped by this method. Among the early settlers are also noted the Hart, Meek, Hodges, Mannin, Folk, Turk, Burson, A. T. Robinson, Horton, Lee, Halstead, Slaughter Feagin, and Stoneham families. In the first ten years of the settle- ment Thomas Medenhall established a hand- factory for producing chisels, augurs, cotton- cards, gins and spinning-wheelers. Turk's cave, a refuge for boats, is a natural cu- riosity of this region.

BROOKSIDE. An incorporated mining town in the northwestern part of Jeffersou County, on the Southern Railway, about 10 miles northwest of Birmingham, and in the heart of the mineral district. Population: 1890-380; 1900-658. It was chartered by the legislature, February 18, 1897, with ir- regular corporate limits.

REFERENCES .- Acts, 1896-97, pp. 1347-1360; Alabama Official and Statistical Register, 1915.

BROOMTOWN VALLEY. A small valley, about 15 miles long and 5 miles wide, and about 75 square miles in area. It is geo- logically described as the northwestern and the tallest anticlinal fold of a broad unsym- metrical complex anticlinal between Lookout and Dirt Seller Mountains. Its strata, how- ever, extend several miles to the southwest to Round Mountain. As a whole it is a broken country, made up for the most part of an irregular central belt of cherty ridges. Its best and most extensive farm lands are along its southeast edge. It is drained into the Coosa River. The valley proper lies wholly within Cherokee County.

REFERENCES .- McCalley, Valley regions of Ala- bama, Pt. 2, Coosa Valley (Geol. Survey of Ala., Special report 9, 1897), pp. 13-14.

BROTHERHOOD OF ALL RAILWAY EM- PLOYEES. See Insurance, Fraternal.

BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE FIRE- MEN AND ENGINEMEN. See Insurance, Fraternal.

BROWN'S VALLEY. A valley extending from the northern part of Blount County, northeastward through Marshall and Jack- son Countles, into the State of Tennessee, where it becomes the Sequatchee Valley. The total length in Alabama of the Brown and the Blountsville Valleys is more than 100 miles, the greatest width less than 5 miles. Geolog- ically Brown Valley is a narrow trough scooped out of the top of an unsymmetrical anticlinal fold. The fold, as a round un- broken anticlinal ridge, is continuous for many miles to the southwest of where the valley stops. The Tennessee River follows the trough as far as Guntersville, where it breaks through the northwest barrier and flows to the northwest. For 25 miles south- west of Guntersville the valley is drained by Brown and Big Springs Creeks, which flow northeastward to the Tennessee River. The remainder of the southwest end of the valley is drained into the Mulberry Fork of the Black Warrior River. The topography of the entire valley exhibits even more plainly than that of the other valleys of the State, its dependence upon the character of the strata out of which the trough was eroded. The deep coves and gorges in the high mountain rims lend much to the variety of the scenery of this valley. The views from the tops of the bluffs around them are often wild and pic- turesque. Numberless springs of very cold water, usually chalybeate, but sometimes alum water, flow from the capping bluffs of the mountain rims. The steep mountain sides contain some caves and many lime sinks and big springs. The best known of the caves is Bangor Cave, and of the springs, perhaps the Big Spring southwest of Guntersville. Blount Springs is situated in this valley.

Its soils are light gray, siliceous; stiff mu- latto; black, waxy, clay loams; and red sandy loams, lying in long, narrow strips to con- form to the ridges and depressions or to the underlying strata. The timber is for the most part hardwood, with some short-leaf pine; and, to the northeast of Guntersville, some extensive cedar glades. The geological formations represented in the valley are the upper and lower Silurian, the Devonian, the upper and lower Subcarboniferous, and the Tertiary (Lafayette) strata. The average al- titude is over 600 feet.

The valley was named for Col. Richard Brown, a celebrated Cherokee chief, whose home was at one time in its limits. Settlers came into it as early as 1816, but the Indians and the United States Government forbade their settling, so they continued farther south. By 1818, however, the valley had a mixed population of Cherokees, Creeks and whites.

Among the valley's chief products are wheat and other grains, and various fruits, especially apples. Its lands are largely in

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possession of descendants of the first settlers, being in that respect somewhat unique among those of the mineral district.

Among the earliest settlers were Alex Gil- brath, Jeremiah Vestal and J. H. Henderson; "Father Briggs," one of James Fenimore Cooper's heroes, also lived here. Thomas Davis, a notorious counterfeiter, who was caught and executed at Tuscaloosa in 1822, found refuge for a time in the valley.

REFERENCES .- Powell, "Blount County," in Ala. Hist. Society, Transactions, 1855; Northern Alabama (1888), p. 108; Brewer, Alabama (1872), p. 139; McCalley, Valley regions of Ala- bama, Pt. 1, Tennessee Valley region (Geol. Sur- vey of Ala., Special report 8, 1896), passim.

BROWN'S VILLAGE. A Cherokee village founded about 1790, and situated on the west side of Brown's, or Thompson's Creek, in Marshall County near the site of the present village of Red Hill. It bore the name of its chief, Richard Brown, who was a man of note, in the old Cherokee Nation, and com- manded a company of friendly Cherokees under Gen. Andrew Jackson in the Creek War of 1813-14. This village was situated in a beautiful and fertile valley, now known as Brown's Valley, a name also derived from the same family. It was reached by two important Indian trails, one leading from Ditto's Landing (now Whitesburg) across Brindley Mountain, the other being the "Creek Path," a noted Indian trail leading from the Coosa, near Ten Islands, across Raccoon, or Sand Mountain and down Brown's Valley to the Shoals, in Tennessee River, on the farm of Judge Street and two miles below Guntersville, thence it extended into Middle Tennessee. About fifteen miles south of this village a branch trail turned off and led to the Creek Settlement of Middle Alabama.

REFERENCES .- O. D. Street, in Alabama History Commission, Report (1901), vol. 1, p. 416; Fos- ter, Life of Sequoyah (1885), p. 173; Ellis, Life of David Crockett (n. d.), pp. 30-36; Abbott, Life of Crockett (1874), pp. 98-107; Anderson, Memoirs of Catherine Brown (1825); and Ala- bama Historical Society, Transactions 1899-1903, vol. 4, p. 193.

BRUNDIDGE. Post office and incorporated town in the southeastern part of Pike County, sec. 26, T. 9, R. 22, on the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, 12 miles southeast of Troy. Altitude: 515 feet. Population: 1870-300; 1880-300; 1900-537; 1910-815. The municipal government consists of mayor and board of aldermen. The Bank of Brundidge (State) is located there, and the Brundidge News, a Democratic weekly newspaper, estab- lished in 1898, is published in the town. It has a cottonseed oil mill, sawmill, gristmill, cotton ginneries, cotton warehouses, stores, etc. It has the Pike County High School, and public grammar schools. The Methodist Episcopal, South, Baptist, and Primitive Bap- tist denominations have churches in the town. Brundidge is located on the old stagecoach road from Troy to Dale County, and was long

known as Collier's Store, but changed to Brundidge, in honor of an early settler.

Among the early settlers were G. C. Col- lier, first merchant; Dr. John Kendall Knox and Dr. John Russell first physicians; Rev. Anthony S. Dickinson, Methodist, and Rev. J. M. Macon, Baptist, first preachers; Prof. Johnson, Prof. Carr and Prof. Priest, early teachers; John Crumpton, T. J. Pierson, W. J. Seay, and the Nicholson, Carr, Dinkins, Mc- Swain, Williams, Carlisle, Faulk, Reid, Wood, Hendricks and Fleming families. Many of them were well-to-do and of a high order of intelligence and culture. Several of them owned and cultivated large plantations, rais- ing cotton, sugar-cane, corn, peanuts, melons, fruits, etc., and cattle and hogs were produced in abundance. It is still a cane-growing sec- tion and markets much syrup, besides large quantities of peanuts sold to manufacturers of oil.

REFERENCES .- Brewer, Alabama (1872), p. 505; Polk's Alabama gazetteer, 1888-9, p. 239.

BRYCE HOSPITAL. See Insane Hos- pitals.

BUCK CREEK COTTON MILLS, Siluria. See Cotton Manufacturing.

BUDGET COMMISSION. An executive commission composed of the governor, the attorney general and the State auditor, all ex-officio, created by act of February 11, 1919. The governor is chairman of the com- mission. It is the duty of the commission to prepare and submit to the legislature, a complete plan of proposed expenditures and estimated revenues of the State for each quadrennial period. The expenditures sub- mitted cover the appropriations, itemized and in detail, of the amounts required by every State office, department, commission, bureau, board and institution, and for all other expenditures necessary for the ongo- ing of the State government under the con- stitution and laws.

In determining the amounts to be included in the budget, meetings are to be held, and if necessary officers and heads of institutions may be heard in support of the amounts esti- mated by them. To finally enable the com- mission to properly ascertain the facts neces- sary for its work and recommendations, its members of other duly accredited represen- tatives, acting under their instructions, may inspect without notice the affairs of any of- fice, department, commission, institution or public work, and in connection therewith may compel the attendance and testimony of witnesses, and may compel the production of books and papers.

On or before the first day of April, 1919, and thereafter on or before the 15th of Oc- tober, quadrennially, beginning in 1922, every State officer or head of department, or board or commission in charge of a State institution is required to file with the budget commission, "an estimate in itemized form in detail, of the amounts required by such State office, department, board, commission

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or institution, for the proper support and maintenance, extension or improvement, of the work of said office, department, board, commission or institution, for the next suc- ceeding quadrennial period beginning with the first day of October, together with an estimate of the probable revenues of said office from all sources, including assess and license or other fees for said quad- rennium; also a statement showing the rev- ennes and expenditures for the last preced- ing quadrennial period; all of which shall be arranged in proper manner and made in such form as the budget commission shall prescribe. The auditor is required after the same period to furnish to the commission statements, showing (1) the balances to the credit of the several appropriations each de- partment and institution for the last fiscal year, (2) the revenues and expenditures from all the appropriation accounts in the twelve months of the last fiscal year, (3) the an- nual revenues and expenditures of each ap- propriation account for each of the last four fiscal years.

The results of its investigations are to be submitted to the commission as a budget for the next ensuing four years. It is to be accompanied by bills for all proposed appro- priations by the budget, clearly itemized and classified, and it is made the duty of the gov- ernor to secure the introduction of these bills in each house as soon as practicable. Author- ity is given the commission through its chair- man to present amendments and supple- ments to the bills or recommendations sub- mitted, and when presented as hy law, such amendments or supplements become part of the budget bill as it is originally introduced in connection therewith.

In addition to considering the needs of offices, departments and institutions, it is made its further duty to consider and make recommendations as to claims of persons against the State, and for the adjustment of which legislative action is demanded. The first session of the commission was special- ly required to consider and report recom- mendations for further relief to needy Con- federate veterans.

In a joint resolution of the legislature, a special joint committee of two from the sen- ate and three from the house was authorized to sit with the 1919 session of the budget commission "to investigate the financial con- dition and needs of the State, and its several departments, and to act with and assist said State Budget Commission in any manner that may be found necessary in order to carry out the purpose of said State Budget Commission, so as to be able to report to the adjourned session of the legislature a well defined financial plan for the State, the ob- jects and amounts of expenditures, the source and yield of revenues, and the way the expenditures and revenues are made to balance."

Legislative Procedure .- After the budget commission has communicated its recommen- dations, accompanied by bills as required, they are to be referred to appropriate com-

mittees. These committees sit jointly in considering the budget. These meetings are public and all persons interested in the esti- mates under consideration may be admitted and heard. Any members of the budget com- mission may also be present and may be heard. Neither house is authorized to con- sider any other appropriations other than those recommended except "an emergency appropriation for the immediate expense of the legislature, until the budget has been finally acted upon by both houses. Every appropriation in addition to those provided for in the budget will be emhodied in a separate bill, and will be limited to some single work, object or purpose," and "no supplementary appropriation will be valid or treated as valid if it, added to the appro- priations made and authorized in the budget bills, exceeds the revenues from taxes, fees and other sources, for the next ensuing quad- rennium as estimated in the budget." The foregoing legislative regulations are deemed under the law as rules of procedure to be observed by the two houses in dealing with the budget bills. A further restriction is provided as follows: "The legislature will not alter said bills except to strike out or reduce items therein, unless by a vote of two- thirds of the members elected in both houses," but appropriations for the principal or interest on the public debt are not to be reduced or eliminated.

Regulation of Expenditures and Account- ing .- The appropriations having once been made are to be specifically expended as speci- fied. No transfer of funds from one account to another are to be made, "except upon the written request of the chief officer or officers of such 'State office, department, commission, board or institution, to the budget commis- sion, which request will be granted in writing by the budget commission, if in its judgment such a transfer of funds is deemed necessary or expedient.

At the end of each quadrennium all unex- pended balances are re-appropriated to the several State offices and institutions "for the full period of one calendar month after the last day of September, to be used only to liquidate liabilities incurred and unpaid prior to the last day of September of the quadrennium; according to the schedule, which must be prepared by each State of- ficer, department, commission, board or in- stitution, which shall show the actual lia- bility existing," and after the expiration of the said calendar month, "any and all un- expended balances shall revert to the State treasury. All offices and institutions are re- quired to keep "a book or books showing in detail every credit, disbursement and re- ceipt, if any, and shall keep on file a dupli- cate of every voucher certified to the auditor for payment, and shall monthly compare his accounts with the account kept in the office of the auditor."

The auditor is required to keep a set of books in which shall be exhibited in con- densed form "in the manner most easily in- telligible to the average citizen, the expenses

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of the State government by fiscal years for each of the activities undertaken by the State, the expenses of each department and division of the government under each of the principal items of expenditure and a sum- mary thereof, the said books to be open for inspection by the public at all convenient times." Typewritten abstracts of these books are to be prepared and furnished the public press at the close of each fiscal year.

History .- Until the session of the legisla- ture of 1915, agitation for the establishment of the budget system had not taken definite shape in Alabama, although it had been dis- cussed in the press, and on the part of pub- lic men from time to time. In the report of the legislative investigating committee to the legislature of 1915, a bill accompanied the report but it failed of passage, notwith- standing in a special message, Governor Charles Henderson urged the importance of such a measure.

The further history of the subject in this State is to be found in the following extract from the report. "There exists in Alabama no well defined plan for presenting to the legislature the needs of the several State offices, departments, commissions, bureaus, boards and the several State institutions. It is the practice for State officers and heads of departments and State institutions, through some friend in the legislature, to present bills for such appropriations as may by them be deemed necessary. The presenta- tion of such bills is usually followed by more or less activity akin to lobbying for the purpose of bringing about favorable legisla- tion and appropriations. In the hurly-burly of a short legislative session, the result is that appropriations do not receive the néces- sary consideration. The consideration that is given is not supported by any intelligent advice or investigation, the result being that the department, interest or institution which has the most influential friends present ob- tains the largest appropriation without ref- erence to the relation the several depart- ments bear to each other or the State.

"Alabama can never enter on a high plane in the conduct of its business affairs until some more rational and business-like system is devised. Throughout the country what is known as the budgetory laws are coming to be considered by way of meeting the objec- tions described above. A budget has been defined as, 'the financial statement of the government for a definite period which re- veals in details the objects and amount of expenditure, the source and yield of rev- enues, and the way the expenditures and revenues are made to balance.' It properly includes estimates both of revenues as well as of expenditures. In a recent official pub- lication of the State of Ohio it is declared that 'the wisdom of preparing a State bud- get of expenses and submitting the same to the general assembly is unquestioned. It is the only scientific method of obtaining econ- omy in State expenditures.'

"In foreign countries this system has long been in force. We find state budget laws in

force at the present time in California, 1909; Illinois, 1913; Indiana, 1901; Kansas, 1909; Montana, 1907; North Carolina, 1908; Ohio, 1913; Rhode Island, 1909; and Wisconsin, 1911. It is also noted in their messages to the legislatures of 1915, the governors of the States of Alabama, Colorado, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia urge state budget laws.

"These laws vary in detail but all of them uniformly require the preparation in advance of the session of the legislature of a carefully worked out statement, setting forth with par- ticularity the support currently allowed the several subjects receiving state appropria- tions, together with detailed estimates of all needed appropriations for the future, with full explanations as to increases or decreases.

"Section 70 of our state constitution con- tains the following provision: 'All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives. The governor, anditor and attorney general shall before each reg- ular session of the legislature prepare a gen- eral revenue bill to be submitted to the leg- islature for its information, and the secretary of state shall have printed for the use of the legislature a sufficient number of the copies of the bill so prepared, which the governor shall transmit to the House of Representa- tives as soon as organized, to be used or dealt with as that house shall elect.' This consti- tutional provision has served very little prac- tical purpose. Section 123 contains the fol- lowing, among other things, which the gov- ernor is instructed to communicate to the legislature: 'At the commencement of each regular session, he shall present to the legis- lature estimates of the amount of money re- quired to be raised by taxation for all pur- poses.' In another part of the same section, the governor is required to 'give to the leg- islature information with respect to the state of the government.' It will be noted that these constitutional provisions read together include recommendations not only with ref- erence to the revenues but also with refer- ence to the expenditures, both actual and pro- posed. They should be aided by statutory enactment."

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History of Alabama and dictionary of Alabama biography, Volume I, Part 34

Author: Owen, Thomas McAdory, 1866-1920; Owen, Marie (Bankhead) Mrs. 1869- Publication date: 1921 Publisher: Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company Number of Pages: 756

Author: Owen, Thomas McAdory, 1866-1920; Owen, Marie (Bankhead) Mrs. 1869-
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company
Number of Pages: 756