It’s ironic that the title of this Birmingham Historical Society book, Hand Down Unharmed, featured the important contribution of the first major donor to Birmingham Southern, M.P. Phillips. He believed so strongly in the legacy of Birmingham Southern that he gave his large lumber fortune to the college in a secret trust agreement, along with the M. Paul Phillips Library. A true visionary, how disappointed he would be in its May 2024 permanent closure. Have we handed down his legacy, unharmed? What have we lost?
from BHS newsletter dated February 2008
Phillips also celebrated green spaces and parks and brought attention to the Olmsted Brothers by funding the publication of their park plan for Birmingham. Birmingham Historical Society has published several books on the importance of this far-sightedness.
Only recently, in 2022, Birmingham Southern hosted a showing of the PBS special on Olmsted, entitled “Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing America”. Our quality of life in Birmingham owes a great debt to the vision of these men. It is our ongoing responsibility to use this legacy wisely. Thank you M.P. Phillips. Everyone who benefitted from Birmingham Southern College will remember your commitment and celebrate your legacy, even if the college cannot remain open.
Please mark your calendars for this book signing and talk about the history of Birmingham’s largest employer and one of the nation’s largest transplant programs. Based on the book by Dr. Arnold Diethelm, cardiovasular surgeon Dr. William Holman will recount the leadership of visionary doctors at UAB medical center.
About our speaker: Dr. Bill Holman Following training at Cornell and Duke Universities, the cardiovascular surgeon joined the UAB faculty in 1987.
Currently Emeritus Professor in Surgery, Dr. Holman championed the editing and publishing of Order from Chaos, his father-in-law’s unpublished manuscript.
Director Marjorie White, greeting Ehney Camp. Tim Pennyciat, UAB Archivist on leftPeggy Balliet showing Dr. bill Holman a photo of the first fundraising gala for the Kidney Foundation.BHS Volunteer, Katie TiptonSpeaker, Dr. Bill HolmanBHS Director, Marjorie WhiteFirst fund raising gala for the Kidney Foundation.Peggy Balliet organized the first fund raising gala for the Kidney Foundation. She, Joe Farley and Marie Ingalls are in the photo along with UAB faculty.Tim Pennyciat, UAB Archivist with Dr. Bill Holman
The 82nd Annual Meeting of the Birmingham Historical Society featured an array of ‘Fruity Wonders‘ cakes from participants as young as 14, as well as entries by four different members of the same family who love to bake. Yum! Thank you to all who participated. Winners in multiple categories were announced at the meeting.
Always a popular annual event, this year’s entries included one cake which gave a nod to the speaker’s topic on Ancient Life in Alabama and was crawling with dinosaurs instead of fruit. The young baker explained that the dinosaurs were eating the fruit layer because it came into being during the age of dinosaurs! A special thanks to Trustee Carolanne Roberts who organized this event.
Did you know that Alabama has a state fossil? (Although it looks like a dinosaur to the untrained eye, it’s a whale/mammal and dinosaurs are reptiles.) It was famously immortalized in Herman Melville’s, “Moby Dick” in 1851.
“But by far the most wonderful of all Cetacen relics was the almost complete vast skeleton of an extinct monster, found in the year 1842, on the plantation of Judge Creagh, in Alabama.
The Alabama doctors declared it a huge reptile…but some specimen bones of it being taken across the sea to Owen, the English Anatomist, it turned out that this alleged reptile was a whale, though of a departed species…”
A replica of the Eocen whale is currently suspended at the Alabama Museum of Natural History in Tuscaloosa, as presented by aquatic biologist and amateur paleontologist, Dr. William Deutsch, at Monday night’s packed 82nd annual meeting of the Birmingham Historical Society.
Photo by Louise McPhillipsPhoto by Louise McPhillipsPhoto by Louise McPhillips
His talk showed how and why Alabama is rich in fossils with “the highest fossil diversity of any state east of the Mississippi River”. He acknowledges the contributions of the many who’ve unearthed its history. And he tells why an understanding of our ‘deep time’ is important today.
Deutsch illustrated his talk, “A Walk Through Deep Time: 500 Million Years of Alabama History,” with a rope curled and stretched across the large auditorium to replicate time since the Big Bang. The indiscernible, minute, end point of the rope represented our modern times, causing him to end the presentation with a theological thought he ponders often on the age of the fossils he studies.
“The next time you see a fossil along a creek, roadside, or on display, stop ponder, and preferably hold it in your hand. The lowly fossil speaks a clear nonverbal message:
I am real. I am very old. I lived long before you–long before your species. If you allow, I will guide you to think deeply about time, life, death, and meaning. It’s in your hands. “
Please join us on Monday, February 26 at 7 p.m. in the Auditorium of the Birmingham Botanical Gardens for the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Birmingham Historical Society. President Wayne Hester will preside.
Recorded history is said to have begun with the drafting of the Sumerian cuneiform tablets, approximately 5,000 years ago. Beginning in the 19th century, the study of fossils has evolved to tell a significantly longer span of earth’s history: 500 million years, i.e. “Deep Time.” Per our speaker Bill Deutsch: “Alabama has been part of this unfolding story since the modern science of Paleontology began, and fossil richness will keep it center stage.”
Deutsch will take us on a mesmerizing“Walk Through Deep Time”, unfurling Alabama’s rich fossil legacy and its connections to our history, geology, and world-class biodiversity. (Add to your FB calendar HERE)
Following Dr. Deutsch’s talk, Carolanne Roberts will announce the winners of the Fruity Wonders Cake Competition, praising our members’ creations and sharing comments from our esteemed judges.
Then, we invite you to get a copy of Ancient Life in Alabama, to chat with Bill Deutsch, sample cake, and pay 2024 Society dues. Copies of Deutsch’s book will be available for sale for $30 cash, check, or charge.
About the Author
Dr. William (“Bill”) Deutsch is a Research Fellow Emeritus in the Auburn University School of Fisheries, Agriculture, and Aquatic Sciences. The New York native holds degrees in Biology, Anthropology and Zoology, and Aquatic Ecology, the later a PhD from Auburn. During his 26 years as an aquatic ecologist in Alabama, With a longstanding interest in fossils, Deutsch participated in fossils hunting expeditions across the nation He has taught, lectured, and written widely about the natural wonders of our state, especially its rivers and its fossilsand what they can tell us about the present and times long past.
“Since moving to Alabama nearly 40 years ago, I’ve learned about its rich variety of fossils. Rock outcrops are fanned out in a relatively discernible pattern, with bands of fossils representing each geological era. The story of more than 500 million years of life is here, just under our feet. Tropical seas teemed with sharks, mosasaurs, and reef life. Coal-forming swamps ringed coastlines with huge dragonflies and millipedes, slithering amphibians, and towering horsetail plants. Dinosaurs of several types were here along with toothed birds, legged whales, rhinoceroses, mastodons, and giant sloths—the highest fossil diversity of any state east of the Mississippi River! In Alabama? Who knew? How and when did this happen?”
–-Bill Deutsch, “Preface,” Ancient Life in Alabama : The Fossils, The Finders & Why It Matters, July 2022.
“Fruit came with the flowering plants in the Mesozoic age [145 to 66 million years ago]. Late dinosaurs probably imbibed.” Bill Deutsch.
THE RULES: Bake your cake and bring the form and your cake for judging to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens Auditorium between 3:30 and 4:00 p.m. on February 26.
JUDGING CATEGORIES: Most Colorful + Best Creative Use of Fruit + Best Visual Presentation +Best Flavor Profiles + Best Memory Statement + Best Overall
Alabama governors have had their share of controversy over the years, but no one can forget “Big Jim Folsom”. A huge man, at 6’ 8” and weighing 250 pounds, he was hard to miss in a crowd, and his larger than life personality matched his size. A notorious ladies man, as a recently widowed governor, he once organized an event where young women lined up to kiss him, earning him the title of ‘Kissin’ Jim’.
He was a populist, grew up very poor in Elba, Alabama, and often traveled with a hillbilly band, the Strawberry Pickers, along with a mop and a bucket to ‘clean up’ politics where he also collected donations. He was loved by the people he supported, but ultimately ruined his career due to his alcoholism and bawdiness.
Sunday, October 29, 3:00 p.m. at 2827 Highland Avenue Signed books will be available for $19.95 – or available now on AMAZON.com
His grandson, Jamie, has written a book about Big Jim’s relationship with his grandmother Christine Putman, who met Folsom when she was a cashier at the Tutwiler Hotel. Although the relationship lasted several years, over multiple cities, and resulted in a son, Big Jim kept the relationship hidden from the general public during his political campaign. Despite multiple marriage promises to Christine, and even after the birth of their son, he never married her. Years later, he publicly acknowledged paternity, and made a financial settlement. However in the interim, to her heartbreak, he had married another woman. His political opponents capitalized on this with songs like the one below:
Written and performed by his political opponents, this was one of several songs focusing on Big Jim’s foibles.
She was poor but she was honest, honest, honest No victim of a rich man’s whim Till she met that Southern gentleman, Big Jim Folsom And she had a child by him. It’s the rich what gets the glory; It’s the poor what gets the blame; It’s the same the whole world over, over, over; It’s a dirty gosh-darn shame. Now he sits in Governor’s Mansion Makin’ laws for all mankind While she walks the streets of Cullman, Alabama Selling grapes from her grapevine So, young ladies, take a warning And don’t ever take a ride With Alabama’s Christian gentleman Big Jim Folsom And you’ll be a virgin bride. (to chorus)
Jamie Putman’s father, James Douglas Putman, Sr. authorized this version of his mother’s story written by Alabama author, William Bradford Huie. Published in 1977, it’s the story of the rebirth of the illegitimate son of one of the most powerful men in American politics.
(Clockwise left to right: “Kissin’Jim” – Alabama Department of Archives; Strawberry Pickers – Burgin Mathews; James E Folsom, Sr. – Encylopedia of Alabama; Christine and Big Jim – AL.com; James E Folsom, Sr. – Encyclopedia of Alabama; Big Jim at the Governor’s Conference – Public Domain)
The remarkable story of Anne “Missy” Roberts Gayler in One Hundred Years can be accurately told because of the care with which she saved photographs, newspaper clippings, letters, scrapbooks, and journal entries. She documented and saved material that she compiled at the age of one hundred, typing while nearly blind, leaving the manuscript in the care of her family. Her grandson digitized the manuscript, and relatives helped with additional photographs, dates, and research. Fortunately, her granddaughter, Sumter Carmichael Coleman, as a Trustee of the Birmingham Historical Society, felt that it was a story that needed to be shared, not only because of the author’s ties to Birmingham, but because it’s the story of a gallant Southern lifestyle in the 19th century that’s gone with the wind…
Anne Gayler’s story began in Charleston, SC where she was born in 1882 before moving to Birmingham in 1884 when her wealthy and well-connected father financed and came to Bessemer to manage Henry DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company. She grew up in a life of extreme privilege with schooling in New York and Germany, summers in the mountains and at the seashore, and vacations abroad. After marrying a naval officer, Lieutenant Ernest Gayler, she traveled the world, carefully documenting her adventures, but returning often to her family’s several homes in Birmingham as well as to the home of her sister Belle Hazzard. She encountered presidents, foreign dignitaries, and was present at many historical events. This is the well-written, entertaining story of an exciting life, well-lived, with multiple ties and descendants in Birmingham. Please join us along with family members for a publication celebration.
October 1, 4:00 p.m., 100 Years Publication Celebration, 2827 Highland Avenue.
Birmingham Historical Society 