FIVEMILE
Graysville · Cardiff · Brookside
🌊 Creek  ·  —
Five Mile Creek
🌊 Creek
01to 1879

Before the coal
Low fog lying across an open field at dawn, two large trees standing on the right, a wooded ridge behind them, and the sky going from orange near the treeline to blue above.
Low ground at Brookside on a September morning in 2022. This was farmed for about fifty years before anybody sank a shaft, and the fog still settles on it overnight the way it always did.Joe Graham

It is easy to look at these three places now and assume the coal was always the point. For about fifty years it was not. The first settlers reached the Cardiff area in the 1830s, and the Crocker family held that land for the next fifty years with the coal sitting underneath it, unbothered and unremarked on. Brookside was farm bottomland from 1838, and it stayed farm country for close to fifty years before anybody opened a mine. Even the name is plain. There is no Brookside family behind it and there never was, only a description of a town built beside a creek. What this chapter holds is farmland with something valuable underneath it that nobody had yet decided to go and get, which is worth keeping in mind when you read what happens next.

What happened, and when

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  1. 1831BrooksideSettlement

    Eighty acres to a farmer

    The ground Brookside stands on was an 80 acre tract granted to a farmer, Samuel Fields, in 1831. It was farmland for fifty years before anybody sank a mine into it.

    Bhamwiki
  2. The 1830sCardiffSettlement

    The Crockers held it first

    The first settlers reached the Cardiff area in the 1830s, and the Crocker family held the land for the next fifty years while the coal underneath it sat there unbothered.

    Encyclopedia of Alabama, Bhamwiki
  3. 1838BrooksideSettlement

    Farms first, for fifty years

    The first settlers reached the bottomland here in 1838, and Brookside was farm country for close to fifty years before anybody opened a mine.

    Encyclopedia of Alabama
  4. UndatedBrooksideSettlement

    Named for the water it sits on

    There is no Brookside family behind the name. It is a description of a town built beside Five Mile Creek, and that is all it has ever been.

    Encyclopedia of Alabama

Nothing is recorded here for Graysville in these years. If you know something that belongs in it, send it along and it will go in with your name on the source line.

Where this chapter comes from

Every entry above carries the source it came from, and these are those sources in full. All of it is public material found online, so anything here can be followed back and checked. It also means that where this chapter says something is not recorded, what that really says is that it has not turned up in any of these, which is a smaller claim. If you know better, and somebody reading this probably does, it would be good to hear from you.