History of Cullman County, Alabama

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Cullman County
Alabama
History

Cullman, Alabama

The condition of the Germany Colony of Cullman is shown by the following statement of its founder, John G. Cullman, Esq. : The first settlers arrived in this colony, May 28, 1873, and consisted of five families. In January, 1874, the number had increased to 130 families, and to-day we have nearly 500 families, of whom. 130 are living in the town, and the others are on farms in the country. In the town, where all was woods when we came here, 142 buildings have been erected. We have a furniture factory, (Southern Novelty Works,) wagon factory, cigar factory, fire-arms factory, steam flouring mill, saw-mills, tannery, five stores that keep everything for sale that is needed, and do a large business, in buying up all the produce that comes to this market, three good hotels, drug store, physicians and representatives of all trades. The first fifty families, with few exceptions, were poor people and acted as pioneers in cutting out streets and improving the town ; they were employed by myself and paid $1.50 per day ; firewood was cut and delivered to the rail road company at $1.75 per cord. This was of material assistance to settlers in the beginning. These people entered government land, and their farms are worth from $1,000 to $2,500 to day. Before the settlement of this colony the land here had hardly any value, and could be bought at from 121/2 to 25 cents an acre; today the average price is $3.00, and near town is sold at from $10.00 to $15.00. Old farms, that were offered when the settlement was begun for $300.00, were sold a year following for $1,250.00, and others, offered for $700.00, sold for $1,800.00, and so on ; over 100 old farms have already passed into the hands of new settlers. The whole territory, which forms the Colony of Cullman was not worth over $250,000.00, to-day it is worth $3;000,000. Section 15, which formerly paid $2.40 taxes, now pays about $1,200.00. Wheat, corn, rye, barley, oats, potatoes, hops, and all the products of the South and East, are raised here. Particular attention is being paid to grape culture, and with good success. The product of one acre of grape vines, in this the second year of its growth, amounts to $500.00. It is safe to assume that, with a full crop, each vine will produce 50 cents worth of grapes, and, as from 1200 to 1600 can be planted on an acre, they will bring, at least, from $600.00 to $800.00.( written by) JOHN G. CULLMAN.

A contract was entered into by the rail road company with John G. Cullman, Esq., in the fall of 1872, for the sale and settlement of the alternate sections of land granted by Congress to aid in the construction of this rail road, and included in the area lying around the present town of Cullman, of 20 by 30 miles. Mr. Cullman selected this locality on account of the peculiarity of climate and soil, and the almost entire absence of old settlers ,and the consequent availability of the entire body of even or reserved sections of land for the purpose of entry and settlement under the homestead laws of the United States. He had here under his influence and disposal over half a million acres of unoccupied lands, not rich, as the records in this book will show, when compared with other soils in Alabama, but with peculiarities of climate, soil and surroundings exactly suited, as I find now, for the establishment of a colony of German laboring people. The soil of this mountain plateau, about one hundred miles long from east to west and thirty miles wide from north to south, comes from and lies on the lower strata of the coal formations of this State, and is peculiar to this section and differs in its constituent elements from any of the other soils in the State. The strata or rocks of the upper coal measures produce the top soils in the remainder of the coal regions of Alabama. My knowledge of the analyses and natures of soils is not sufficient to enable me to point out wherein these soils differ. But there is a difference, and the difference depends upon the character of the exact strata that happens, in any given locality, to be on top, or to constitute the surface of the earth. Mr. Cullman and those in this colony imagine that they have here soils peculiarly and specially adapted to grape culture. In my travels through this section, before and since the war, I found the old settlers scattered here and there raising everywhere good crops of corn, wheat and cotton. To an indifferent observer the soils all looked alike, but to the practiced eye of these old farmers there was a difference, depending, as I have since found out, on the geological conditions above stated. The difference is but a shade over this whole area, it is true, and though it may have no influence on grape, or cotton, or fruit culture — -and I think it will not — it will always appear in the cultivation of the cereals. In my recent visit to this colony, made entirely with a view of obtaining exact information as to its status and prospects, I found at the town of Cullman a population, as stated, of about eight hundred souls, and in the colony about three thousand. Their number was somewhat of a surprise to me, but there was a matter underlying all this, and that was the material progress of those already here. I first examined the town itself, and found a flouring and corn mill in successful operation and doing a good business. I next visited a furniture manufactory, and found these people manufacturing furniture and selling it at Cincinnati prices. When I asked the price of this, that, and 'the other article, all new and apparently as good as any ever brought to Montgomery for sale, I was surprised at the low prices, and my mind involuntarily went to the auction sales of second-hand furniture at Montgomery, for a comparison of prices. I found the workmen themselves were all stockholders, and this explained the reason of these. low prices. The tannery and shoe factory I did not visit, but am satisfied that the owner (with a hard name) is doing well. I next examined a new three-story brick hotel being built by Mr. Fromwalt. In the basement is the — to these people — inevitable lager beer cellar. In this matter of lager beer, a person would feel like he was in St. Louis or Cincinnati. Their merchants were doing a thrifty and safe business, not only with their own people, but with the natives scattered all over the plateau or mountain plain. One thing I did not see, and that was any idlers, loungers, or loafers, male or female, large or small, young or old. The things described above can be built and seen any where, but they must all stand on something outside of the city or town. I next visited the country, and though I may be wrong, I will give here my exact opinion on this, the underlying subject of this colony. When this country was all in the woods, I knew every hill, every branch, and every plain, as familiarly and well as I do the streets and the houses in the city of Montgomery. But the changed appearance of every thing here now made me feel as if I had never seen the country before. It had precisely the same appearance (save that it was covered over with timber, grape-vines and undergrowth) as the rolling prairies of Nebraska and Kansas. The houses of the German settlers, one and two story, double hewed log, with their little gardens and parterres, also looked strange. I heard a woman directing her children in the German language to run the hogs out of the field. The intonations of her voice, and the ejaculations in a foreign and unknown tongue, made me feel that I was a long way from home. I went into, through, and across their fields, and I found here the familiar Indian corn stalk, but as a rule it was planted so thick that the crop was a failure. That this was not the fault of the climate or soil is very evident, from the fact that adjoining fields cultivated by Alabamians had splendid crops of corn. The other and small crops cultivated by the Germans were more varied than those cultivated by the old settlers. But in those cultivated by both, the Alabamians were ahead. The German mind is running here on grape culture. From their own statement and accounts, and from the exhibits made to me, they will succeed here in this business. They will succeed perhaps next year in corn product, as this industrious people will certainly learn from*the"old farmers here how to cultivate this soil. In one or two years they will leurn to invest their surplus labor in cotton, the normal money staple of Alabama. Such an exhibition of patient and persevering industry I have never before witnessed in my varied and checkered life. This colony will succed here ; but in the cultivation of the staples heretofore known in Alabama, they must learn from the people who have been born and raised on this soil. The soil here is not rich, when compared with the soils of eastern Kansas, Iowa or Illinois. But these soils are already occupied now up to, and even beyond the region of no rain fall in the west, as will hereafter be seen. These industrious people will, by persevering labor, supply^any deficiency in fertility in these soils, lying as they do on a subsoil every where retentive and strong. But no power of man can supply the deficiency of rain-fall in the new and now unsettled west.

Submitted by Janice Rice