Lee County, AL; Civil War; The Lathe; Selma, AL; Sherman, General William Tecumseh; Union Army; Columbus, GA; Irondale, AL; Ironclads; Atlanta, GA; Alabama Polytechnic Institute; Auburn University; Samford Hall; Auburn, AL
In the early years of the Civil War, the Lathe was constructed in Selma, Alabama to bore out 7-inch Brooke rifles that were the mainstay of Confederate ironclads and coastal fortifications stretched across the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. As Major General William T. Sherman's Union army marched towards Atlanta in the summer of 1864, Confederate officials decided to move the Lathe to the other major Confederate industrial center of Columbus, Georgia to avert its capture. On the way, it was buried in Irondale, Alabama as Sherman's forces bore down on Atlanta and eventually unearthed as Union forces moved further east. It spent the rest of its usable life in Columbus where it continued to bore cannon until the Confederacy's collapse in the spring of 1865. After the war, it was purchased and used by the Birmingham Rolling Mills - later part of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company - before it was presented to the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (later Auburn University) in 1936 where it has stood next to Samford Hall ever since.
Auburn Plainsman: The Legend of the Lathe Historic Markers Across America: the Lathe
Auburn, AL; Lee County, AL; Civil War; Slavery; Antebellum South; Education; National Register of Historic Places; Auburn University; Alabama Polytechnic Institute; Luther Noble Duncan; Greek Revival Style
Wealthy planter Addison Frazer built the home in 1854 in a two-story Greek Revival style. Frazer owned over 100 slaves and grew cotton on 2,000 acres of land. He served on the board of the Auburn Masonic Female College and the East Alabama Male College. Located approximately 2.5 miles from the town center of Auburn, the property was a massive plantation that according to legend, became a makeshift hospital when Ms. Frazer took in sick and wounded soldiers. One later tale recounted that as Union soldiers reached the Addison Frazer home, Ms. Frazer gave them the Masonic sign which saved her home and her provisions from being looted. After the collapse of cotton prices in the 1920s the home changed hands numerous times until it was bought and restored in 1932 by J.V. Brown, superintendent of buildings and grounds at Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University). He sold the property in 1941, to Dr. Luther Noble Duncan, president of the school, director of the Alabama Extension Service, and pioneer in the founding of the National 4-H Youth Program. The home was named in his honor by his daughter, Elizabeth Pearson. Additional structures that have been preserved are the original separate kitchen, carriage house, and smoke house. Some remains of slave quarters are found in four locations on the property.Located at 1433 Shelton Road in Auburn, Noble Hall was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, the first site from Lee County to be added to the register. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Hall
Keith S. Hebert, Evan Isaac, Joshua Shiver
Images: Home: Rivers A. Langley, Photographer Auburn University Library, http://www.lib.auburn.edu/archive/aghy/aces/aceshead/duncan.jpg Text: Lee County Heritage Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants: 2000), 23. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Hall
Janice P. Hand: National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination Form Auburn Heritage Association: Noble Hall Marker
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Camp Beauregard; Camp Johnson; Confederate Army; Auburn Guards; Beauregard, AL; Auburn, AL
These two camps trained six groups of Confederate soldiers that included the local Auburn Guards as well as the 14th, 18th, 37th, and 45th Alabama infantry regiments.
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Auburn, AL; Religion; Langdon Hall; Auburn Presbyterian Church; Slavery; Reese, Edwin; Old Main Hall
Founded as the Auburn Presbyterian Church in 1851, “the Chapel” was built by local slaves belonging to one of Auburn’s first residents, Edwin Reese. Like Langdon Hall and Old Main Hall, it served as a makeshift hospital from July 1864 through the end of the Civil War. It is currently the oldest building in Auburn still standing on its original site and the second oldest building overall. It is still in use today as a multi-faith chapel.
Floyd D. Warner, Auburn Players Theater: National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination Form
Pine Hill Cemetery has over 1,100 graves and contains a mass grave of at least ninety-eight unidentifiable Confederate soldiers who died in the makeshift hospitals in Auburn. In 1893, the Ladies Memorial Association erected a monument over the spot believed to be the site of the mass Confederate grave. An additional seventy-one Union and Confederate soldiers are buried in marked graves through the cemetery. The cemetery is located in Auburn at Armstrong Street and Hare Street. Coordinates: 32.6006903, -85.4777268
Auburn Heritage Association: Historic Markers
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Pebble Hill; Historic Home; Scott, Nathaniel J.; Rousseau, General Lovell Harrison; Yancey, William Lowndes; Union Army; Auburn, AL
Pebble Hill was the home of Nathaniel J. Scott and his family from 1847 to 1871. When Rousseau’s men swept through Auburn in July 1864, William Lowndes Yancey’s widow resided at Pebble Hill and Union soldiers looted the building because of her presence. It was reported that Nathaniel Scott’s family had silver near a spring on the property and though Union soldiers watered their horses at this spring, the silver was never found.
History of Pebble Hill Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Davis, Jefferson; Montgomery, AL; Confederacy; Confederate Army; East Alabama Male College; Columbus, GA; Rousseau, General Lovell Harrison; New Orleans, LA; Richmond; United Daughters of the Confederacy; Auburn, AL; Wilson, General James Harrison
In February 1861, president-elect Jefferson Davis rode a train from his plantation in Mississippi to Atlanta and then to Montgomery, Alabama for his inauguration as president of the Confederacy. On February 16, at the Auburn train depot, president-elect Davis reviewed the Auburn Guards, a company of cadets from the East Alabama Male College who were reportedly the first of the Confederate Army to be reviewed by Davis. Because the Montgomery and West Point Railroad connected Auburn with the state capital at Montgomery and the vital industrial city of Columbus, GA, the Auburn train depot and tracks were later destroyed under Rousseau and Wilson's raids, in 1864 and 1865 respectively. It was replaced by a second station after the end of the war which was located to the west of the current (and final) depot. In 1893, the Auburn cadets formed an honor guard when former Confederate president Jefferson Davis's body was sent by train from New Orleans to Richmond. In commemoration of the former president's visit to Auburn, on March 30, 1914, the United Daughters of the Confederacy unveiled a marker near the depot that stands today.
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Dowdell, Betty; Auburn Bank; Lincoln, Abraham; United Daughters of the Confederacy; Auburn, AL
Near the modern-day Auburn Bank, a boulder imprinted with a plaque commemorates the raising of the first Confederate flag in Auburn by student Betty Dowdell on March 4, 1861 — the same day that Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as the 16th President of the United States. The plaque was dedicated by the United Daughters of the Confederacy during the postwar period.
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Auburn, AL; Samford, William F.; Historic Home; Secession
This historic home that sits on what is now South College Street was the site where the 14th and 18th Alabama regiments were mustered in 1861. William F. Samford, known as the “Penman for Secession” for his nationally published diatribes on secession, owned the home and the connecting plantation.
Auburn Villager: Remembering the "Penman for Secession"
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Religion; African American History; Payne, Lonnie; Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church
After the end of the Civil War, newly freed African-American men and women constructed Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church on what is today known as Baptist Hill, skirting East Thach Avenue. Lonnie Payne, a white land owner, deeded the property to a member of the congregation in 1865 and it was constructed by logs from the Frazer plantation northeast of Auburn. It was the first African-American church built in the area.
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Opelika, AL; Rousseau, General Lovell Harrison; Auburn, AL
The city of Opelika, Alabama was incorporated on February 9, 1854. Because of the many rail lines that snaked through the city, warehouses were built during the war to store cotton and other goods. When General Lovell Harrison Rousseau’s men stormed through Auburn and Opelika in July 1864, they destroyed railroads and other property including Opelika’s warehouses.
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Phenix City, AL; Columbus, GA; Wilson, Major General James Harrison; Union Army; Russell County, AL
Formerly known as the city of Girard, Phenix City, Alabama (along with Columbus, Georgia) was the location of one of the last land battles of the Civil War. On April 16, 1865, Bvt. Major General James Harrison Wilson swept through Auburn and Opelika and then into Phenix City with three divisions of Union soldiers. After crossing over the 14th Street Bridge from into Columbus, the once mighty industrial city would fall within mere hours.
Education; Lee County, AL; Auburn University; East Alabama Male College; Button, Stephen Decatur; Civil War; General Lovell Rousseau; Morrill Act; Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College; Old Main Hall; William J. Samford Hall
After the state awarded East Alabama Male College its charter on February 7, 1856, the Board of Trustees set about securing funds to build an administrative and educational building. The trustees initially allocated $25,000 for the facility, but the building that came to be known as Old Main Hall required an expenditure of approximately $60,000 to complete. Stephen Decatur Button, a nationally prominent architect, designed and built the four-story Italianate-style academic building. Old Main Hall was the primary building of the East Alabama Male College from 1856 until 1887. During the Civil War, EAMC suspended operations like so many of the country’s other academic institutions. As faculty, staff, and students left school to join the Confederate war effort, the EAMC shuttered its doors from 1861 to 1864 when Old Main Hall, Langdon Hall, and the Chapel were converted into makeshift hospitals for wounded soldiers arriving from Atlanta. In 1864, Texas’s state legislature paid to convert Old Main Hall into a convalescent hospital that they dubbed Texas Hospital. The ramshackle hospital housed over four hundred Confederate soldiers, many of whom never saw their homes again and were buried in nearby Pine Hill Cemetery. Old Main also acted as a parade ground where soldiers from nearby Camp Beauregard and Camp Johnson marched and drilled during the war. In July 1864, Major General Lovell H. Rousseau and his force of approximately 2,500 Union cavalrymen raided the cities of Auburn and Opelika where they destroyed thirty-five miles of railroad tracks, the local post office, and Pebble Hill. In an effort to defend the city, sixteen-year old John Hodges Drake and approximately thirty or forty convalescents from the Texas Hospital offered some token resistance to Rousseau's raid, to little avail. The Federal cavalrymen left the bedridden and newly minted prisoners alone and did little damage to civilian property. In fall 1866, students returned to attend classes in a building ravaged by the elements and war. In the early morning of June 24, 1887, a fire broke out in Old Main Hall’s lower basement chemistry lab. The ensuing conflagration consumed the entire building. In the immediate aftermath of the fire, the students met for classes in the Chapel. In 1888, the school erected a new administration building, William J. Samford Hall, on Old Main Hall’s original foundation. Old Main Hall’s cornerstone is still visible at the base of the northeast corner of Samford Hall. Old Main Hall’s building originally occupied the space that is now 182 South College Street, Auburn University.
Image Source: http://www.auburn.edu/communications_marketing/150/lecture.html Text Source: Ralph Draughon, Jr., Delos Hughes, and Ann Pearson, Lost Auburn: A Village Remembered in Period Photographs (Montgomery: NewSouth Books, 2012), 9-11.
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Union Army; Rousseau, Major General Lovell Harrison; Sherman, General William T.; Decatur; Johnston, Major General Joseph; Atlanta; Confederate Army; Texas Hospital; Wilson, General James H.; Phenix City; Columbus, GA
On July 10, 1864, Major General William T. Sherman ordered Major General Lovell Harrison Rousseau to depart from Decatur, Alabama with approximately 2,500 men. Their goal was to sever the Montgomery and West Point railroads - a vital link for funneling supplies from central Alabama to Confederate Major General Joe Johnston's overwhelmed and outnumbered forces in Atlanta. Along the way, Rousseau's men were to destroy every scrap of government supplies or materials that could be used to aid the Confederate defense of Atlanta. Local slaves in the Auburn/Opelika area funneled information to Rousseau and his men about the area's weak defenses. In Auburn, only a handful of patients at the Texas Hospital were able to offer even token resistance. As Rousseau and his cavalry rumbled through the streets of Auburn and then Opelika, they burned warehouses, burned train depots, the post office, and disabled the local rolling stocks. Union soldiers returned once again on April 15, 1865, this time under the command of Major General James H. Wilson. They swept through Auburn, Opelika, and Phenix City, before finally making their way across the 14th Street Bridge into their intended target, the massive industrial city of Columbus, Georgia.
Encyclopedia of Alabama: Rousseau's Raid Encyclopedia of Alabama: Wilson's Raid New York Times July 27, 1864: Gen. Rousseau's Raid Routes of Union Activity in Alabama (Maps)
Auburn and Opelika at the End of the Civil War
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Auburn, AL; Opelika, AL; East Alabama Male College
The emancipation of slaves, a widespread labor shortage, and the collapse of the Confederate financial system all coalesced to bring the cities of Auburn and Opelika to ruin at the end of the Civil War. It would be ten years before a new home would be constructed in Auburn and the area’s educational system was completely wrecked. What was once a bustling and growing village would soon fall into stagnation. Though the East Alabama Male College reopened in 1866, it did so with fewer students and many unpaid professors.
Auburn University Sesquicentennial Series: Auburn in the Civil War Era by Ralph Draughon Jr. Book: Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama by Walter L. Fleming Storey, Margaret M., Loyalty and Loss: Alabama's Unionists in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004.
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Yancey, William Lowndes; Chambers County, AL; Secession; Pebble Hill
Before the outbreak of the Civil War, Yancey was a fiery orator and politician who ardently defended slavery and secession. Representing Chambers County during the Alabama secession convention, he voted for the state to leave the Union and during the war spearheaded a failed diplomatic attempt to coerce Europe into recognizing Confederate independence. The Yancey family spent many summers with the Scott family at Pebble Hill.
Encyclopedia of Alabama: William Lowndes Yancey
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Armstrong, Henry Clay; East Alabama Male College; Confederate Army; Reconstruction; Alabama House of Representatives; Brazil; Auburn, AL
Henry Clay Armstrong was a student at the East Alabama Male College prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. After becoming a lawyer, he enlisted and became a captain in the Confederate Army where he served until the end of the war. During Reconstruction, he served as a state legislator, speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives, state superintendent of education, and eventually the Consulate General to Brazil. He returned to the EAMC where he served on the board of trustees and the executive council.
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Dowdell, James Ferguson; East Alabama Male College; Auburn, AL
James Ferguson Dowdell served during the Civil War as the organizer and commander of the 37th Alabama infantry regiment. After the war, he assumed the presidency of the East Alabama Male College from 1866 to 1870.
Lee County, AL; Civil War; East Alabama Male College; Darby, John; Auburn, AL
A professor of natural science and one of the original trustees of the East Alabama Male College, he also taught chemistry and developed a “Prophylactic Fluid” which was widely used as a disinfectant and antiseptic by Civil War surgeons and hospitals. A potassium permanganate solution, it was probably made in a building close to where the president’s home stands today.
Auburn, AL; Lee County, AL; Civil War; East Alabama Male College; Samford, William James; Confederate Army; Baker's Creek, Mississippi; Slaton, William F.; Johnson's Island; Lake Erie; Old Main Hall; Samford Hall
When the East Alabama Male College opened its doors in 1859, William James Samford was one of the first eighty students to enroll. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Samford enlisted as a private in the Confederate Army where he was soon promoted to Lieutenant. Serving primarily in the western theater of operations, he campaigned in Tennessee and Kentucky before he was captured at Baker's Creek, Mississippi in 1863. He then spent eighteen months in prison at the prisoner-of-war camp on Johnson's Island in Lake Erie where he met his former professor William F. Slaton. After the war, he returned to Auburn for a year to farm and study law under his father, after which he served in both houses of the Alabama legislature and eventually in Congress where he appropriated money for the reconstruction of Old Main Hall which had burned to the ground in 1887. He became the 31st Governor of Alabama in 1900. The newly reconstructed building was named Samford Hall in his honor in 1929.
Encyclopedia of Alabama: William J Samford
Auburn University; Lee County, AL; East Alabama Male College; Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama; Alabama Polytechnic Institute; Social Clubs; Auburn; Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage; Civil War
The Lane House was built in 1853 at the corner of Thach and College Streets in Auburn. It was the residence of several prominent figures in the history of Auburn University. The home was leased in 1873 by Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama Treasurer E.T. Glenn. Future owner (and the home's namesake) Brigadier General James H. Lane was a revered Confederate veteran from Virginia. He rose in the ranks from Major to Brigadier General by age thirty in 1862. He was wounded three times and fought in every major battle of the Army of Northern Virginia before the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia in April 1865. It was a squad of his own men who accidentally shot Major General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. After arriving in Auburn, Lane taught Civil Engineering, eventually becoming the Chair of the Engineering Department. General Lane purchased the home in 1884. He was also a leading figure in the establishment of the School of Engineering and the college's Corps of Cadets. The property was sold by his daughter in 1960 to Auburn University to become the site of the school's new library. To save the home, Mollie Hollifield Jones purchased it for the Auburn Women's Club, moving it to its current location at 712 Sanders Street. Added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage in 1991, the home continues to serve as the offices of the Auburn Women's Club.
Image: Home: User sfwife, waymarking.com, http://www.waymarking.com/gallery/image.aspx?f=1&guid=2b230b57-b2a2-4de6-b5a8-1160869852fb Text: Lee County Heritage Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants: 2000), Kenneth Phillips, James Henry Lane, Encyclopedia of Alabama, http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1614
Located in West Opelika on Highway 431 (Lafayette Parkway) between Sougahatchee Creek and Chambers County Road 290. Coordinates: 32.7425, -85.42333
Located in Bleecker, Alabama on Lee County Road 240 Coordinates: 32.5195831, -85.2221628
Located in Smiths Station along Lee Road 249 near Highway 379. Coordinates: 32.5795822, -85.1127148
Located in Beulah, Alabama on Lee Road 270. Coordinates: 32.7129106, -85.17494
Located in Parkers Crossroads, Alabama on Moores Mill Road. Coordinates: 32.5576368, -85.3352222
Located in Auburn along Moores Mill Road. Coordinates: 32.5643029, -85.398002
Located in Auburn on Shug Jordan Parkway at Wire Road. Coordinates: 32.5920792, -85.5043942
Located in Bleeker along County Road 179. Coordinates: 32.5945811, -85.1732725
Located in Smiths Station along Lee Road 252. Coordinates: 32.64917, -85.23134
Located in Waverly along West Farmville Road. Coordinates: 32.657355, -85.5232839
Located in Beauregard along Gullatt Road. Coordinates: 32.4843058, -853391108
Located on Talladega Street. Coordinated: 32.6331897, -85.3955022
Located in Loachapoka along East Farmville Road. Coordinates: 32.665104, -85.4896719
Located in Smiths Station along Lee Road 254. Coordinates: 32.648746, -85.174384
Located in Loachapoka along County Road 652. Coordinates: 32.6243002, -85.6110637
Located in Opelika along Frederick Road. Coordinates: 32.6265232, -85.3957799
Located in Loachapoka along Ensminger Road
Located Beauegard along Estate Drive. Coordinates: 32.5731914, -85.4252251
Located in Beulah along Lee Road 252. Coordinates: 32.6862443, -85.2496645
Located in Auburn at South Dean and Old Mill Road. Coordinates: 32.6037457, -85.4646708
Located in Beulah along Lee Road 279. Coordinates: 32.702633, -85.2027186
Located in Beauregard along Lee Road 136. Coordinates: 32.525138, -85.3018877
Located in Beauregard on Jenkins Road. Coordinates: 32.4762507, -85.3138322
Located in Beulah along Lee Road 279. Coordinates: 32.6937444, -85.1941072
Located in Beulah along Lee Road 373. Coordinates: 32.7092995, -85.1929962
Located in Opelika along West Point Parkway. Coordinates: 32.6759664, -85.3241113
Located in Loachapoka along Arrowhead Road. Coordinates: 32.6109672, -85.6049524
Located in Beauregard along Lee Road 133. Coordinates: 32.5151385, -85.2674422
Located in Beauregard along Lee County Road 240. Coordinates: 32.51997, -85.23179