The Eclectic Industrialism of Antebellum Baldwin County

Abstract

Longleaf pine, not cotton, was king in antebellum Baldwin County. Sawmills and turpentine distilleries dotted the landscape; lumbermen and turpentine producers dominated the society. The industrialists who pursued profit in lumber and its by-products during the peak of the cotton economy illustrate the alternate avenues to personal wealth and regional development taken by southern entrepreneurs. Astute businessmen—rarely women—they exploited southern institutions to build profitable firms, selectively buying and hiring engineers, artisans, and laborers. Many of the skilled workers they hired injected cultural heterogeneity into the rural Alabama landscape. Protestant and Catholic, they came from Germany and the British Isles, joining workers from across the country. Artisans unaffiliated with the extractive industries added their unique cultural and craft diversity to the county. With large Mobile merchant houses just across the bay, these “makers” survived by tapping niche markets and providing goods and services the merchants could not competitively match. Women, free black and white, increasingly entered the market as dressmakers, seamstresses, and workers in the service industries. Most artisans and laborers lived in rural communities surrounding the plantations and mills of the industrialists. Others clustered in racially blended communities in the county’s few towns. Together these industrialists, slaves, independent artisans, and laborers sustained the industrial expansion that accompanied the cotton boom and created the eclectic industrialism that characterized antebellum Baldwin County.1 ANGELA LAKWETE