Coalburg is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

Jefferson County, Alabama Jefferson County is the List of counties in Alabama, most populous county in the U.S. state of Alabama, located in the central portion of the state. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, its population was 674,721. Its county seat i ...

, United States.

History

Coalburg was home to coal mines first developed by John T. Milner, who sold them in May 1883 to the

Georgia Pacific Railway The Georgia Pacific Railway was a railway company chartered on December 31, 1881, consolidating the Georgia Western Railroad and the Georgia Pacific Railroad Company of Alabama. The Georgia Western Railroad was chartered by the Georgia Legislat ...

. Edward Magruder Tutwiler became the superintendent of the mines. Sloss-Sheffield Iron and Steel Company operated coke ovens at Coalburg during this time. At its peak, the Coalburg mines produced four thousand tons of coal per day. Overall, the Coalburg mines produced over 186,000 tons of coal. Sloss used

convict labor Penal labour is a term for various kinds of forced labour that prisoners are required to perform, typically manual labour. The work may be light or hard, depending on the context. Forms of sentence involving penal labour have included invo ...

to work in the Coalburg mines, with 320 men working in 1889. As the mines grew, the number of convicts used to work in the mines increased. The coal mined at and coke produced in Coalburg was sent to

Sloss Furnaces Sloss Furnaces is a National Historic Landmark in Birmingham, Alabama in the United States. It operated as a pig iron-producing blast furnace from 1882 to 1971. After closing, it became one of the first industrial sites (and the only blast furnac ...

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

to be turned into

pig iron Pig iron, also known as crude iron, is an intermediate good used by the iron industry in the production of steel. It is developed by smelting iron ore in a blast furnace. Pig iron has a high carbon content, typically 3.8–4.7%, along with si ...

. In 1890, eleven miners were killed in a mine explosion. A post office was operated in Coalburg from 1883 until the 1980s.

Demographics

Coalburg was listed on the 1890 U.S. Census with a population of 842.

Notable people

Ed Sherling Edward Creech Sherling (July 18, 1897 – November 16, 1965) was a Major League Baseball pinch hitter and pinch runner who played in with the Philadelphia Athletics. He batted left and threw right-handed. He attended college at Auburn Univers ...

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB i ...

pinch hitter In baseball, a pinch hitter (PH) is a substitute batter. Batters can be substituted at any time while the ball is dead (not in active play); the manager may use any player who has not yet entered the game as a substitute. Unlike basketball, A ...

and

pinch runner In baseball or softball, a pinch runner is a player substituted into a game for the purpose of base running. Description A pinch runner may be faster or otherwise more skilled at base running than the player for whom the pinch runner has been s ...

who played in with the

Philadelphia Athletics The Philadelphia Athletics were a Major League Baseball team that played in Philadelphia from 1901 to 1954, when they moved to Kansas City, Missouri, and became the Kansas City Athletics. Following another move in 1967, they became the Oakland ...

* Guy Tutwiler,

first baseman A first baseman, abbreviated 1B, is the player on a baseball or softball team who fields the area nearest first base, the first of four bases a baserunner must touch in succession to score a run. The first baseman is responsible for the majori ...

who played two seasons with the

Detroit Tigers The Detroit Tigers are an American professional baseball team based in Detroit. The Tigers compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League Central, Central Division. One of the AL's eight chart ...

(1911, 1913)

References

Unincorporated communities in Jefferson County, Alabama Unincorporated communities in Alabama {{JeffersonCountyAL-geo-stub