Truman H. Aldrich

Truman H. Aldrich
عضو مجلس النواب الأمريكي عن الدائرة 9th في Alabama
في المنصب June 9, 1896 – March 4, 1897
سبقه	Oscar W. Underwood
خلفه	Oscar W. Underwood
تفاصيل شخصية
وُلِد	Truman Heminway Aldrich (1848-10-17)أكتوبر 17, 1848 Palmyra, New York
توفي	أبريل 28, 1932(1932-04-28) (aged 83) Birmingham, Alabama
الحزب	Republican
الزوج	Anna Morrison (m. 1870; d. 1913) Helen Levard
الجامعة الأم	Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
المهنة	civil engineer, paleontologist

Truman Heminway Aldrich (October 17, 1848 – April 28, 1932) was an American civil engineer, mining company executive, and paleontologist who served briefly in the United States House of Representatives and as Postmaster of Birmingham. He is the only Republican ever to represent Alabama's 9th congressional district, which existed from 1893 to 1963. His brother William F. Aldrich also represented Alabama in Congress, serving three partial terms during 1896–1901 from Alabama's 4th congressional district.

 Early life and education

Aldrich was born in Palmyra, New York, on October 17, 1848, to William Farrington Aldrich, a lawyer and financier, and Louisa Klapp Aldrich. He attended public schools and a military academy at West Chester, Pennsylvania before enrolling at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, graduating in 1869 with a master's degree in engineering. In May 1870, he married Anna Morrison of Newark; she died on April 13, 1913. Aldrich later married Helen Levard.

 Alabama coalfield development

Aldrich moved to Alabama in 1872 and, despite his engineering training, began a banking career in Selma, Alabama. While in the region, he investigated coal-mining operations at Montevallo and around the Cahaba Coal Field. The following year he leased the Montevallo coal mines and began extraction operations that summer, an unorthodox practice at the time since coal demand was low. He purchased the mines outright in 1875 and named the surrounding settlement Aldrich, leasing the operation to his brother William while he prospected for new seams.

In 1876, Aldrich incorporated the Jefferson Coal Company in Morris with Marshall Morris and S. D. Holt. The following year he formed a partnership with Henry F. DeBardeleben and James W. Sloss to develop the Birmingham Mineral District. The three opened slope and shaft mines at Pratt City and formed the Pratt Coal and Coke Company in January 1878, shipping their first coal thirteen months later. Aldrich served as superintendent and mine manager until he resigned in 1881.

In 1883, Aldrich and Cornelius Cadle incorporated the Cahaba Coal Mining Company in Bibb County, capitalizing it at $1 million and controlling more than 12,000 acres across Jefferson, Shelby, and Bibb Counties. The company built a railroad connector and laid out Blocton as a company town on the bank of Caffee Creek; first coal shipments departed in 1884, with 467 beehive coke ovens producing 600 tons of coke daily. In 1888, Aldrich formed the Excelsior Coal Mine Company and the Export Coal Company, the latter shipping coal to Mexico, the West Indies, and Central and South America. By the summer of 1890 over 3,600 people resided at Blocton and the combined operation had become the largest coal and coke supplier in Alabama.

In 1890, workers at the Blocton mines organized a strike; the company resumed operations by hiring replacement workers. In 1892 Aldrich sold the combined Cahaba and Excelsior operations to the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company and became its second vice-president and general manager, resigning after the economic depression of 1893.

 Paleontological work

Alongside his business career, Aldrich collected shells throughout the region. In the 1890s he joined a "Shell Syndicate" to support naturalists Herbert Huntington Smith and Amelia W. Smith, who collected freshwater and terrestrial mollusks in Alabama and Georgia. State Geologist Eugene Allen Smith encouraged him to focus on Tertiary paleontology of the Coastal Plain, and Aldrich collected thousands of fossils from sites along the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers. He contributed an article to Bulletin 1 of the Geological Survey of Alabama on the state's Eocene fossil record, including nine plates illustrating new species. He also supplied information on the coal fields to John Witherspoon DuBose and to Squire's Report on the Cahaba Coal Field (Geological Survey of Alabama, 1890). By the end of his life he had amassed some 20,000 fossil shells and described over 200 species.

 Later career

In 1894, Aldrich accepted nominations from both the Republican and Populist parties for the United States House of Representatives. He lost a close race to Oscar W. Underwood but filed an official challenge over voting irregularities; winning the contest after more than a year of deliberations, he took his seat in the 54th United States Congress on June 9, 1896. As a Republican in a predominantly Democratic state, his term ended on March 3, 1897.

Returning to business, Aldrich served as president of the Cahaba Southern Mining Company at Hargrove in Bibb County, president of the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company, and operated the Virginia Mines in Jefferson County, the site of a fatal explosion in 1905 in Hueytown, Alabama. In 1902 he partnered with his son T. H. Aldrich Jr. in the Hillabee Gold Mining Company of Tallapoosa County. In 1905 he repurchased the Montevallo Mining Company, serving as president until 1910. President William Howard Taft appointed him Postmaster of Birmingham in 1911; he served until 1915.

Eugene Allen Smith later appointed Aldrich Curator of Paleontology of the Alabama Museum of Natural History, where he continued writing short articles on Tertiary mollusks. In 1930 Aldrich named new ichnogenera of fossil footprints discovered in a University of Alabama coalmine in Walker County, Alabama, his only venture into ichnology. The photographic plates brought renewed attention when similar trackways were discovered in 1999 at the Stephen C. Minkin Paleozoic Footprint Site. In 1932 the University of Alabama awarded him an honorary doctorate. His modern shell collection is held by the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville; his fossil shells are in the Geological Survey of Alabama Paleontological Collection and the Alabama Museum of Natural History.

Aldrich died on April 28, 1932, and was buried in Birmingham's Elmwood Cemetery.

 Publications

• Aldrich T. H. (1886). Preliminary Report on the Tertiary Fossils of Alabama and Mississippi. Geological Survey of Alabama. pp. 15–60, 6 plates.
• Aldrich T. H. & Cunningham K. M. (1894). "Paleontology". In: Report on the geology of the coastal plain of Alabama. Geological Survey of Alabama.
• Aldrich T. H. (1895). Contested election case of T. H. Aldrich v. Oscar W. Underwood. Washington: Government Printing Office.
• Aldrich T. H. (1931). Description of a Few Alabama Eocene Species and Remarks on Varieties. University, Alabama: Geological Survey of Alabama, Bulletin.
• Aldrich T. H. Sr. & Jones W. B. (1930). Footprints from the Coal Measures of Alabama. University, Alabama: Geological Survey of Alabama, Museum Paper 9, 64 pp.

 References

• Armes, Ethel. (1910) The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama. Birmingham: Chamber of Commerce.
• Emfinger, Henry A. (no date) The Story of my Hometown, Aldrich, Alabama. Aldrich: privately printed.

 External links

• Praytor, Robert E. (2000) "Truman H. Aldrich – Founder of Blocton"
• ALDRICH, Truman Heminway at the دليل سـِيَر الكونگرس الأمريكي at the Biographical Directory of the U. S. Congress
• Truman H. Aldrich at Find a Grave

مجلس النواب الأمريكي
سبقه Oscar W. Underwood	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Alabama90 !دائرة الكونگرس رقم 9 بولاية Alabama June 9, 1896 – March 3, 1897	تبعه Oscar W. Underwood