FIVEMILE
Graysville · Cardiff · Brookside
🌊 Creek  ·  —
Five Mile Creek
🌊 Creek
031890 to 1899

Charters and churches
A cast metal Alabama historical marker headed Town of Cardiff, with the state seal at the top and about fifteen lines of raised text, standing in mown grass beside a road.
The marker on the Cardiff roadside, put up in May 2010.Joe Graham
A dirt street running uphill between utility poles, with a clapboard church on the left carrying an onion dome and a three bar Orthodox cross on its tower, bare winter trees, a plank fence, frame houses on the right, and a bare eroded hillside across the valley behind.
A Brookside street in February 1937. The onion dome and three bar cross above the roofline are the Orthodox church, still in the clapboard it was finished in and twenty eight years short of the brick. The stripped hillside behind it is what the mine left.Arthur Rothstein, Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress

This is the decade the camps turned into towns, and it happened on two fronts at once. Sloss could not find enough skilled miners in Alabama, so its recruiters went to the Austro Hungarian Empire, and Slovak and Carpatho Rusyn families arrived in Brookside through the 1890s. At Cardiff the names had come from further west: the Stewarts from Scotland, the Woodfords from Wales, the Negrons from France, and the Tombrellos from Sicily, all of them listed by name on the marker that stands in town today. Those families built what they had come from. St. Nicholas was founded in 1894, one of the first Russian Orthodox congregations south of the Mason and Dixon line, and SS. Cyril and Methodius followed in 1895, which is two churches inside two years in a town that was not yet ten years old. The paperwork caught up at the same time. Graysville incorporated in 1897 and was the first of the three to do it, Brookside followed in 1898 twelve years after its mine opened, and the Robinson Ramsey coal washer that went in at Brookside in 1897 put the mine ahead of most of what was operating around it.

The lines these three drew in the 1890s, as they stand today. Graysville took its charter in 1897 and Brookside in 1898, and the creek that brought all of it here runs west through the middle of them. The channel and the gauge are the US Geological Survey's, and the town limits, roads and rails are OpenStreetMap's.

What happened, and when

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  1. The 1890sBrooksidePeople

    Sloss went to Europe for miners

    Sloss could not find enough skilled miners here, so its recruiters went to the Austro Hungarian Empire. Slovak and Carpatho Rusyn families arrived through the 1890s.

    Encyclopedia of Alabama, Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International
  2. The 1890sCardiffPeople

    Stewarts, Woodfords, Negrons, Tombrellos

    The Stewarts came from Scotland, the Woodfords from Wales, the Negrons from France, and the Tombrellos from Sicily. The marker in town lists them by name.

    Town of Cardiff marker
  3. 1894BrooksideChurch

    St. Nicholas is founded

    The parish was founded in 1894, one of the first Russian Orthodox congregations south of the Mason and Dixon line. The building standing there today came later.

    Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International, Wikipedia
  4. 1895BrooksideChurch

    And the Catholic parish the year after

    SS. Cyril and Methodius followed in 1895. Two churches inside two years, in a town not yet ten years old.

    Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International
  5. The 1890sBrooksidePeople

    What is buried on Tiger Hill

    Brookside in the 1890s was a rough place, and several times in that decade the roughness took the form of violence between Black and white miners. The cemeteries on Tiger Hill hold the dead from that alongside the dead from accidents and disease. A marker for two men killed here, Jake McKenzie and Tom Redmond, was dedicated at Sloss Furnaces in 2019.

    Bhamwiki
  6. 1897GraysvilleGovernment

    Graysville takes its charter

    Graysville incorporated in 1897, the first of the three to do it.

    Encyclopedia of Alabama
  7. 1897BrooksideCoal

    A coal washer at the mine

    The Robinson Ramsey washer went in at Brookside in 1897, which put the mine ahead of most of what was operating around it.

    Wikipedia
  8. 1898CardiffTown life

    The Primrose won the state cup

    The Welsh and Scottish miners at Cardiff put together a football club and called it the Primrose. In 1898 it won the Alabama Foot Ball Association Cup.

    Encyclopedia of Alabama
  9. 1898BrooksideGovernment

    Brookside takes its charter

    Brookside incorporated in 1898, twelve years after the mine opened. A couple of sources say 1896 instead, and the census cannot separate them.

    Encyclopedia of Alabama, Wikipedia, Bhamwiki
  10. 1899 to 1904BrooksideFire and storm

    Typhoid, a tornado, and a fire

    Typhoid broke out in 1899 and a tornado came through that spring. Fire took a run of houses and businesses in 1900, and a second tornado hit in 1904. The mine worked straight through all of it.

    Bhamwiki
  11. October 1899BrooksideGovernment

    No liquor on a Sunday

    Wiley Burton took office as mayor in October 1899 and banned the sale of spirits on Sundays shortly after. Brookside had saloons enough to make that a decision worth taking.

    Bhamwiki
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.