you may think that after being out and traveling for the last three or four weeks that I would want to stay home today well you're wrong today I'm an old Cahawba and after this intro I'll explain to you what that is [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so in 1819 Cahawba was Alabama's first state capital right now the state capital is Montgomery but in 1819 it was Cahaba it was carved out of an old Mississippi Indian village on this property at one time that by 1819 had turned into a ghost town so they built the town of Cahawba on top of the Indian ghost town in 1826 just seven years later the state capital was moved to Tuscaloosa but Cahaba survived it grew into a wealthy River town a place that was dependent upon cotton in slavery to succeed during the Civil War thousands of Union soldiers were held captive here and after the war Cahawba briefly became a refuge for newly emancipated slaves but then suddenly and mysteriously the town was abandoned they don't know if a flood came and and ran everybody off but it turned into a ghost town overnight today it's a pretty important archaeological site here Cahaba is an authentic ghost town here is the river the river runs around the edge of this entire town which is why when it flooded it flooded the the entire town washing away all the buildings that were here there's all kind of rare and supernatural occurrences that happen here on the property noises lights you name it it happens here on this pretty in 1819 wall this was a thriving riverfront city they used these concrete blocks to symbol a street name here's remnants of an old washing tub buried here in the forest this pipe right here is an artesian wheel where the people who lived here in Cahaba got their water there were quite a few of these wheels located around the city of cava through the 1800s they continuously flowed water this place was already a ghost town had been a ghost town for many many many years the whales were flowing but in 1990 mysteriously all the whales throughout this entire property went dry even located right next to the the river no one knows why they all went dry in 1990 [Music] one of the few buildings still standing on the property is right here beside me the church the reason that it survived the floods was because in 1887 it was moved away it was moved down the road a little ways far enough away from the water that when all this flooded and it tore everything up it didn't make it to the church the church was built here and was here from 1854 to 1887 22 years they moved it this place flooded and it tore up everything here in Cahawba then they decided to make this this ghost town a archaeological and historical site so they moved the church back that's why it's still standing I absolutely love the Gothic style on it in because the upkeep of parks like this is important and it requires money you can rent the st. Luke's Episcopal Church the Gothic style Church from the 8th from 1854 you can rent it out for certain occasions weddings events like that to give you just to give you a great backdrop and they do that so that they can make money to keep this park up the doors were locked so I couldn't get inside this is how they identified their street names in 1819 you can see this placar with documents back in 1817 where they were drawing up Sahaba you can see your health it loops around just as the river here's another one here that also shows the Cahaba River Cahaba River how it comes off and and this is where the town will be but it also shows the city blocks that where they were planning it may be I enjoyed the stuff so much because in school my favorite subject was history I've always loved history and Cahaba this area this is some darn good Alabama history here [Music] love me now I've made my way over to the corner of second South Street and Mulberry Street here in Cahawba and there's two important buildings here that are still standing the first one was Cahaba schoolhouse kaaba's schoolhouse was a one-room building hopefully is structurally sound [Music] like I said it was a one-room building where students would learn let's not forget though by the time that this schoolhouse was built the majority of the students who would have been coming here were the children of emancipated slaves it's kind of amazing to me that after all this time sitting out here in the wilderness with no shelter this wood has survived at one time they provided heat the windows are just boarded was where the teacher would stand to teach I don't know about about you guys but I love this kind of stuff as you can see here though the inside is still together but like I said the elements have not been kind to the outside truth be told though it's been here since 1819 so it's almost 100 years old sitting behind the schoolhouse a water will this was their outhouse as you could tell not a lot has changed in the way a toilet looks in the last hundred years this being steel ours now being porcelain and I don't know about you guys but because of indoor plumbing now and bathrooms I am spoiled I don't know that I would be able to come out of my house early in the morning right when I wake up and say you know freezing temperatures to go to the bathroom weather number one or number two especially number two I wouldn't be able to do that and they didn't really have a choice in that time but now with the way our restrooms are now like I said I'm spoiled I don't like to be cold that would be that would have been miserable for me if I lived during that time period sitting directly next to the schoolhouse was the Cahaba Methodist Church it is nothing but ruins now again because of the flooding and being here in the elements for so long you can see the interior of it the bricks are scattered over the grounds that's how long it's been tore down grass is growing up through the bricks pretty interesting at the wall it was three layers of bricks at the time how many bricks do you think it took to make this entire church this is just a cylinder concrete pillar they laid bricks and then put concrete over the outside of it to make the pillar it's kind of interesting here is a plaque er that shows what the church looked like before it was tore down that's a good picture there you can still see here's the pillar here's the pillar that I was just talking about this one's missing all together or it's buried there somewhere part of it but that's a nice Church during this time this would this is what the inside looked like and here is just a random picture with some people standing out front of it in a little car here this placards is during his first year in Cahawba Reverend James L Cotton's congregation was composed of 83 whites and 150 african-americans at first he held services for the enslaved people under the floor of a cotton warehouse later he was able to obtain a lot nearby so the african-americans could build their own log Church always worship was overseen by the white minister so when I mean so patient came kaaba's african-american residents wanted a church that was truly their own they formed an African American and African Methodist Episcopal congregation Cahaba zweite Methodist had moved away so the black congregation was able to use this vacated church from then on this building was known as st. Paul's African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1954 sparks from a fire and the nearby woods ignited the wooden steeple it ignited the steeple there the brick walls toppled before the fire squad could respawn in the end the number of worshippers had dwindled to seven well that's an amazing piece of history there it's absolutely horrible that it burned down it would be wonderful if it was still standing today what I found out here [Music] just hiding back in the woods that same logo here on the other side I don't know what this is here for how long it's been here but they have it set up it's two four six they haven't set up to sleep six people or had it it's obviously no longer used now maybe people who were attempting to keep the park up employees or something may have lived in that at one time or maybe it belonged to squatters who knows there are a few residential properties here on this location only because this wasn't always recognized as a national landmark or an archaeological archeological site the state of Alabama had the records showing that in 1819 there was a location here where the first Statehouse was built but they it was buried it was in the woods and they had to set out in search parties to find it chances are homeless people or nomads had found these property this property first looking for shelter and you run across that schoolhouse or something and it made good shelter for them they have it fenced off because the property isn't [Applause] [Music] they think it was created out of two smaller homes put together to make this one giant mansion for the judge to live in you can see here that it's so unstable they have had to erect boards to keep it upright and keep it from falling over you can also see this open doorway here that leads down into the basement this is their will they've had to post plot word on this entire end of the house because it's just a raid all they had to board up almost this entire property to keep it from falling down anymore undoubtably and kaha va's heyday this would have been a mansion of all mansions here it would've been a beautiful lavish home someone lived in this home as most recently as 1995 which would have been this young lady right here miss Maddie Orca who was the daughter of this gentleman mr. Ezekiel author who was slave to mr. William Fambrough and family this house was built in 1840 property here at one time was a two-story print slaveholder two-story slaveholders made out of brick you know luxury quarter we're not typical but because Cahaba was a very wealthy town they could be found here Stephen worker built these fours in eighteen of Stephen Barker's mansion which is this and this building that we see here is this after the Civil War Confederate veteran Samuel mccurdy Kirkpatrick and his wife Sarah purchased mr. Barker's mansion and all the outline properties laid house they talked me into a very large farm three generations of Kirkpatrick's manage the farm from that point on in 35 a fire destroyed the mansion and all that was left was the slave quarters by that time all the slaves had already been emancipated and the two-story brick slave house was just sitting here empty you can look here on this property you can see these four pieces here are actually covering the entrance because this building was sitting empty when the mansion burned down and this may as well have been a mansion itself at the time the Kirkpatrick's gave it an upgrade they added some columns to the front of it which are no longer standing now and turn this into their home they also added in the extra section back here in the back this at one time was a door and entrance and exit and you can see they have covered it up the original two-story slave house section to that and expanded the slave house now I guess I have to watch where I'm going I don't do snakes rule when they added the columns they also added find it kind of interesting he didn't build the rear of the house all the way over here we built it over about half way and that was it this placard we come up to now says death in the street a May afternoon in 1856 and an angry John they'll round at this corner which is where we're standing this building set right there on the hook on this corner he passed by Edward careens fine brick store which is right here where we're standing and continued south down the sidewalk under his coat he carried two pistols and a knife he was not here to shop Matthew Troy had filed a civil suit against Bell but at that moment he was sitting under the shade of a Chinaberry tree out front of his office with his head down reading the paper when bill reached Troy he beat him until the Hickory stick broke battered and bruised dr. Troy rolled into the street there are three members of the bail family quickly surrounded him all with pistols drawn fortunately for Troy his two brothers-in-law ran in to defend him shots were fired when the smoke cleared John Beale was dead in the street his father John our bill was dying dr. Troy recovered from the attack and won his suit against Bill's estate I guess they shouldn't have missed with mr. Troy that day after my snake encounter I'm a little worried about walking in here this was a shopping center the hole there was the basement of the shopping center it had eight different stores or offices or partitions however you know back then it was called a row but it had eight different individual stores two brothers came down from Staten Island New York who were businessman and opened it up this is where people came to buy their cotton and to do any shopping that they had to do they did it right here right behind the merchant shops he built his mansion which was pictured here so he built his mansion and directly behind it were the rows of shops these pillars over here to the right are these pillars here that have survived the test of time the rest of the mansion however has fallen into the hole here the Cochran's the gentlemen from Staten Island who built their home here and the stores behind it also invested in a line of steam ships and if you look right here you can see this is the Cahaba River and they're steam ships were able to come right into the right in to this area right next to the merchant shops and right in to where their house was an Alabama natural wonders the Cahaba River another interesting side note about the Corcoran mansion here during the Civil War shortly after the Battle of Selma the Union General James Harrison Wilson and General Nathan Bedford Forrest of the Confederacy both of them traveled here to Cahaba under a white flag of truce to discuss they came here to discuss a prisoner exchange they both stayed in the Corcoran mansion that was right here behind us of course the Corcoran's had had an allegiance to the Union but you know obviously they really didn't have a particular side they they tried to stay as neutral as possible they did own slaves who work and presided in the house but but at any rate Nathan Bedford Forrest in general Wilson both stayed in this house shared a meal together sat down and talked discuss the war and had a quiet evening together here in this house in this mansion the next day after they had shared their meal in their conversation they they both rode away you know to resume the bloody war that had pitted them against one in each other only because of their allegiance not as people they got along as people they rode away from Cahawba the following day the very next day general robert e lee surrendered at Appomattox the very next day where often though in all these other streets we've been to homes were scattered they were not on this one road this one Road it was lined with buildings as you would see in any other downtown area and thriving with shops and merchants everywhere [Music] you can see that there are basically no remnants of that this area here it was actually a whale a public weal for anybody come get water they had it right smack dab in the middle of the street so you can stop and get some water as you were going in that building would have been Alabama's first Statehouse in 1862 the Confederacy used one of Tabas break cotton warehouses to temporarily house men captured at the Battle of Shiloh in 1863 they officially converted the warehouse into a military prison the inmates caught at Castle Morgan reportedly after the daring Confederate raider John Horhn Hunt Morgan the warehouse only measure 200 by 125 feet but at the end of the war 3,000 men were confined in this small space over the course of the war thousands more passed through the prison and yet only 140 to 147 men died here such an exceptionally low death rate can be attributed to the artesian wheels that supply fresh water for drinking bathing and sanitation as the war drew to a close floodwaters inundated the prison making a bad situation worse after several days of standing in foul water the captive boys in blue will remove from Cahaba is sent to Vicksburg Mississippi for parole at the end of the war many of the federal soldiers from Catawbas prisons will place a bora steamboat called the soul Tana after surviving blood Liebeck bloody battles and harsh prison life they were finally hit at home joy ended in tragedy when the crowded boat exploded near Memphis on the Mississippi River most of the men aboard were killed the Sultana disaster is still considered one of the worst maritime disasters in US history you can see here this minor place is the only thing left the former storage plant / prison right here on this street corner was salt marsh Hall in the late 1850s Cahaba experienced a building boom everyone expected the town to prosper because of a new railroad which is not too far away from here one of the first large brick structures built at that point and it was it was completed in 1856 by dr. salt marsh he wanted the town to have a large hole for public occasions balls the second floor was fitted up as a concert and an exhibition hall on it and they had a ton of fancy dress balls there in 1876 there were 307 registered voters out of Cahaba Oh out of the 307 all of them but nine were african-american that means there were non-white people and 298 african-americans who were Republican who voted Republican here in Kahala Cahaba had become a town of politically active freedmen but shortly thereafter the settlement paid it away we recorded a lot of footage today hopefully I can get it all to fit into one video we've seen a ghost town of Cahaba now this is one of the places on my list of important places to vlog and now we've done it we've seen it and it was a great experience there's a lot of history here I am going to head back home now so with that being said I got quite a few hours drive home this evening so I want to thank you all for watching and I will see you tomorrow have a good night [Music]