ENSLEY LAND CO. of Jefferson County, Alabama Stock 1902 Ensley, AL Iron Ore ABNC

Description

Ensley Land Company, Jefferson County, Alabama. Stock issued June 20, 1902 at Ensley, Alabama. Incorporated in the State of Alabama.
Red embossed company seal lower left. Certificate
No. 2029
was issued to J. J. Gray Jr. for one and one quarter shares of capital stock (0 per share). Company capital was
0,000
. Hand signed by company president and secretary. Certificate is about 7.5” x 11”. Black print with brown overprint/underprint on cream-colored paper.
Beautiful ABNC vignettes with mining activities, smelters, town and countryside.
The Ensley Land Company was an investment company that developed a new town of Ensley, Alabama in Jefferson County (in the Opossum Valley). Founded in 1886 by Memphis entrepreneur, Enoch Ensley, as a new industrial city on the outskirts of a rapidly developing Birmingham (then just 15 years old) and directly adjacent to a very rich source of coal (the Pratt Coal Seam). Zealously promoting and investing his own wealth in the project, Ensley soon attracted the interest of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, which bought a controlling interest in the Ensley Land Company and developed the mammoth Ensley Works. Colonel Enoch Ensley acquired significant property in Jefferson County in the early 1880s by purchasing the Pratt Coal and Coke Company, the Alice Furnace Company, and the Linn Iron Company. Joined by Alfred Shook and T. T. Hillman, he was able to effect a merger with the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (TCI) which made him president of the company on December 8, 1886. It was on TCI's behalf, then, that Ensley began laying out what he planned to become "the great industrial city of the nation".
Located near the waters of Village Creek and adjacent to the trackage of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, Ensley considered the site perfect for a center of iron and steel making and manufacture. A passenger streetcar, the Ensley Railway, connected the new city to Birmingham in 1887 and the Ensley Hotel was constructed to host visitors and prospective investors. Construction of the Ensley Works, with four huge 200-ton blast furnaces being erected simultaneously, began in 1888. The last of the four went into operation on April 4, 1889, completing what was, at the time, the largest group of steel furnaces in the world. In the first year of development, sanitary engineer Edwin Waring, Jr. of Rhode Island was contracted to lay out the new city's streets and infrastructure, including an early application of separate storm and sanitary sewers. Despite the grand beginning, a series of setbacks began with the death of Colonel Ensley in 1891. The economic panic of 1893 resulted in the dissolution of the land company. The entire property was sold at sheriff's auction for less than ,000.
In 1898 the Ensley Land Company was reorganized and active industrial development resumed, including the construction of hundreds of small workers' cottages. It was here that Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad pioneered the open-hearth process of making steel in the Birmingham District. By 1906 two more blast furnaces were completed and a record 400,000 tons of steel were produced in a single year. Schools, churches, public buildings and stores were rapidly constructed to keep pace with the scores of new mills and plants opening up. The success of the development established a corridor of industrial development reaching out to the southwest of Birmingham. During its heyday between the late 1890s and the Great Depression in the late 1920s, Ensley was known for its lively fraternal halls and dance clubs, including Tuxedo Junction at the crossing of the Wylam and Pratt City streetcar lines. In 1939 the hit song "Tuxedo Junction" made the spot nationally famous.
When U. S. Steel purchased
Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company
in 1907 they began planning a new, larger plant northeast in the center of a large planned community to be named Corey (now named Fairfield). Although the new plant was close enough that workers living in Ensley wouldn't have to relocate, the move did stifle any ongoing development.
Condition:  Very Fine+++
, very light vertical folds, very minor creasing, no tears, light signs of wear/handling/toning (see photos),
punch cancelled.
Printer:
American Bank Note Company, New York.
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