Telling ghost stories and recounting folklore were Kathryn Windham Tucker‘s special super power. A native of Selma, Alabama, she became well-known throughout the nation and Canada before her death at the age of 93 in 2011.
Birmingham Historical Society was privileged to publish her story of The Ghost in the Sloss Furnaces in 1997. Although we are no longer able to hear the story in her voice, the retelling of the tale seems entirely appropriate every Halloween. For the complete story, the book is available HERE.
Theophilus Calvin Jowers was one of many rural laborers who left farming to tie their futures to Birmingham’s early industrial promise. He married Sarah Latham in 1870, and likely worked in The Cahaba Iron Works (now located in the Cherokee Bend are of Mountain Brook) and then Eureka Mining and Transportation Company at the Oxmoor furnaces. He and his bride watched as Birmingham grew from railroad section housing to the biggest city in the South.
As a trained ironworker, Theophilus was eventually offered the job of assistant foundryman at the Alice Furnace No. One on 1st Avenue North and 14th Street, the first furnace to be built within the city limits of Birmingham. He subsequently moved his wife and five children to Birmingham in 1887.
On September 10th, 1887, only 2 months later, Theophilus fell into Alice Furnace and burned to death. The legend in the Jowers family is that only his heart could be retrieved. Afterward, it was said that he continued to walk the furnace, making sure everything was ok. He became a ghostly prototype for the thousands of miners who looked forward to his ‘visits’.
Alice furnace was dismantled in 1905, so Theophilus moved in 1927 to the only remaining furnace, Sloss on 1st Avenue, when his son John Jowers saw him working alongside him. Sloss Furnaces closed in1970 but it’s rumored that Theophilus continues to work there. Perhaps you’ll see him this Halloween!
