The Industrial Archeology of Columbus

1828 - 1865 (Part ii)

Contributed by Historic Columbus

In the fall of 1865, the Freedmen’s Bureau became active in administering the land program in Georgia and returned much African American labor to the fields, mediating a contract-labor system between white landowners and their Black workers, many of whom they formerly enslaved. Field work—once the province of entire Black families—was transformed as the freedwomen withdrew their labor and their children’s labor to the household. Both children and adults began to take advantage of educational opportunities, usually offered by teachers from the North.

Some formerly enslaved individuals and families were flocking to towns, where they encountered overcrowding and a shortage of food. A large number of Black Georgians fell prey to epidemic diseases. Meanwhile, on farms and plantations that had depended on enslaved labor, harvests were small, with poor planning and miserable weather further diminishing them.

From the 1870s to the 1950s, thousands of rural African Americans migrated to Columbus to build a better life. The town still desperately needed a revival of its many industries. The iron foundries recovered first. Men who had learned iron working during the war continued in the business. In 1860, the city had only two foundries; by 1870, it had eight.

The Columbus Iron Works, the largest iron producer, manufactured a full range of small cast iron items, but their most important products came from the expertise gained during the war. They made a large variety of steam engines and even steamboats. After several unsuccessful attempts, it helped to manufacture an ice machine in 1872. By the 1880s, the Iron Works manufactured these machines in large numbers and sold them to ice houses, dairies, and hospitals.

By the early 1870s, Columbus factories and shops manufactured rope, jute bagging, cottonseed oil, carriages, furniture, and cigars. Bricks and lager beer were produced across the river in Girard.

Unique for a medium-sized southern city was the extensive chemical laboratory of J.S. Pemberton. He employed chemists and pharmacists who distilled a whole range of pharmaceuticals, patent medicines, hair restorers, perfumes, paints, photographic chemicals, and a great variety of sparkling soda water (such as French Wine of Coca which evolved into Coca-Cola when he moved to Atlanta in 1880).

Columbus’ chief industry was, of course, the textile mills – which had all been burned during the war.. Clapp’s Factory resumed first, as early as December 1865. In 1867 and 1868, two of Columbus’ most significant textile mills would be formed – The Eagle & Phenix and Muscogee Manufacturing Company.

During the 1870s, textile manufacturing expanded more rapidly in Columbus than in any other southern city, even though only two companies occupied the Columbus riverfront sites. Muscogee Manufacturing Company (1867) utilized one lot, while the Eagle and Phenix (1866) --the South’s largest mill in the late l870s--eventually controlled the other eighteen lots.

In 1997, plans for the international headquarters of TSYS were developed for the Muscogee Mills site. TSYS worked diligently with local, state, and federal preservation groups to develop a plan respecting the history of the area. The new campus would incorporate a stabilized Mott House (later destroyed by fire in 2014) and elements of the Carnegie Library into a new plaza area on the river. A new parking structure similar in architectural design to one of the former mill buildings was also constructed. The city and Historic Columbus partnered to move and save four historic structures that would be impacted by the campus. This move became known as the 1998 Parade of Homes.

William H. Young, with the help of N.J. Bussey and young G. Gunby Jordan, reestablished what had been the Eagle mill. Quite appropriately, they added the name phoenix, the mythical Egyptian bird which rose from its own ashes.

Mill No. l (10,000 spindles and 135 looms) of the reorganized Eagle and Phenix Manufacturing Company began operating in 1868. During the 1870s the company expanded more rapidly than any other southern textile firm, adding Mill No. 2 (15,000 spindles and 350 looms) in 1871 and Mill No. 3 (20,000 spindles and 800 looms) in 1878.

By 1880, the Eagle and Phenix led the South in the value of its textile product ($1,500,000). Visitors to Columbus, especially during the 1881 Atlanta Exposition, marveled at the company’s size and diversified products (144 different styles of cotton and woolen goods).

Mill owners financed and built housing for workers, the archetypical “mill town.”. Some owners also began to provide schools, entertainment, and churches. Entertainment throughout the latter half of the 1800s included a yearly picnic hosted for mill workers where the Eagle and Phenix Brass Band played for the crowd. These picnics were a very big deal at the time. The tactics of offering housing, savings, schools and churches were seen by business leaders as a way to keep families committed to working for the mills, but also offered some stability. However, the work hours were long, the job monotonous, noisy and dangerous, and mill owners held tight control over the mill workers’ lives. In 1880, Eagle and Phenix employed 213 children, 555 men, and 917 women.

In 1896, the mill went into receivership and was purchased by G. Gunby Jordan. One of Mr. Jordan’s investors was W. C. Bradley. In 1915, W. C. Bradley became president and owned the Eagle & Phenix Mill from then until 1947. In December of 2003 the mill property was repurchased by W. C. Bradley Co. The W.C. Bradley Co. Real Estate Division is revitalizing the complex through the adaptive re-use of the site as condominiums, apartments, restaurants, and offices.

The modern Bradley Company began as a cottonfactoring business, Bussey-Goldsmith and Company, which W. C. Bradley and his brother-in-law Samuel A. Carter bought in the late 1880s. They changed the firm’s name to Carter and Bradley and expanded the firm’s business to include the manufacturing of fertilizer and the retailing of groceries. In 1895, Carter sold his portion of the company to Bradley, who changed its name to the W. C. Bradley Company. Over the next thirty years, Bradley further diversified his holdings by investing in banks, textile mills, steamboats, farms, Coca-Cola, and the Columbus Iron Works. The W.C. Bradley Company eventually became the owner of the entire two blocks.

Today, the W.C. Bradley Co. is comprised of four companies focused on home and leisure products and services. These include the W.C. Bradley Real Estate, LLC, Zebco Brands, Char-Broil, and Lamplight. Over the past thirty years, the company has restored many buildings in town..

Established in 1854, Empire Mills, a steam-powered grist mill, was the city’s largest from 1875 to 1890 under the proprietorship of George Waldo Woodruff. The company’s proximity to the riverboat landing allowed it to supply flour, meal, and other products for the river trade to the agricultural areas south of the city. The grist mill closed in 1931, but the Empire Company continued to sell brick, ice, and coal there. The northern buildings of the complex (including the antebellum grist mill) were demolished by the early 1970s.

During the summer of 1977, Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) planners studied the remaining structures and suggested possible adaptive uses. The mill is one of the earliest examples of adaptive re-use in Columbus. It was renovated and expanded in 1980 to become a convention hotel for the new Columbus Convention and Trade Center across the street.

In the late 19th century, the Eagle and Phenix played a dominant role in the city’s economic life. When the 1873 depression struck, the company issued currency which was the only circulating medium in the area. A New York merchant advertised to exchange his dry goods for $100,000 worth of this Eagle and Phenix scrip. When telephones were installed in 1880, the Eagle and Phenix was assigned telephone numbers 1 and 2. Even the city’s political factions split according to those who supported the leadership at the Eagle and Phenix and those who opposed it. The leader of the anti-Eagle and Phenix faction, R.J. Moses, readily admitted, however, that without William H. Young Columbus would be a “dead town.”

To access the full history visit www.historiccolumbus. com/blog and ALL of Historic Columbus’ History and Preservation Spotlights. As well as Tuesdays With Justin at Historic Columbus (GA) - YouTube