Really cool old pic

So maybe those are not sand bags but rather bags of grain of some sort?

I read anything book related I can find from this era as there was a lot written in the 1800's but I only know what I read and I am sure there were people who didn't know what they were talking about back then just the same as today.

From what I understand those bags are probably cottonseed. They had about 500 landings in AL during the Steamboat days they would have the Cotton Warehouse at the top of a bluff, preferably and the chute to slide the bales down. Seems like if they could get the bales to the warehouse they wouldn't need the bluff but that's how they did things. They would also collect the cotton seed at different landings and then they would take it up or down the river to wherever there was another landing with a seed mill. At the cotton seed mill they would press the seed to get the seed oil that was used in about everything from soap to cooking oil, etc. I would guess those bags laid up there unprotected are cottonseed bags. From the seed mill you would see what looks like whiskey barrels getting loaded. A lots in photographs someone might claim as whiskey barrels are in-fact just cottonseed oil.

The cotton or seed from Selma went to two places. Prattville or Mobile. Prattville it would be ginned, milled, and spun into product, then train loaded to Atlanta and up the east coast and to Charleston for international shipment. If it went to Mobile it usually hopped over to New Orleans then back up the Mississippi to the center of the country or went anywhere a boat could go. Lehman Brothers had their main business office in Montgomery but the Selma and Demopolis offices did the real trading. One of those guys in that picture may have been a Lehman man checking a shipment.

Yes. There was a time those towns in the black belt were some of the richest in the whole country.

Maybe cotton seed.

I have one of these we used to move cattle feed with. It is retired now and just gathering dust. The handles are worn slick from usage over the years. Not for sale.

Cahawba was in the top 5 wealthiest cities on Earth prior to the Civil War.

And a lot of those plantation owners were northerners creating their fortunes. Some fought for the confederacy and others just went back north.

Me too! Both my parents are from that part of the state and era as were my grandparents. My grandfather wrote down some things about growing up. One of the stories was about riding the train from Greenville to Selma then on by car to Camden to see his grandmother and other family. The ride was something special his mother did. Anyway, when they stayed at a fancy hotel in Selma, the kids wanted to go to a movie down the street. She wouldn’t let them saying “this isn’t Greenville, it’s the big city,” so they spent the evening riding in the hotel’s elevator. That would have been in the nineteen teens.

The hotel would have been the Hotel Albert. It was known far and wide for its ornate Greek Architectual style. The theatre was The Wilby. The theatre burned in the late 60's or early 70's. If it was later than this it would have been the Walton theatre. It was down the street on the other side of Broad. It is still standing and is used as a performing arts theatre and they still show movies there, although last years tornado caused roof damage that closed it for awhile, maybe it still is. The Hotel Albert was torn down so they could build City Hall there. One of the stupidest things the City ever did. Watch the movie "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" if you want to see the Hotel Albert and Old Town Selma in all its glory. It was filmed there.

It seems like The Wilby is in the movie too. I know the Downtowner and Selma Del restaurants are.

Another fact about the movie is that the carnival scene was filmed in the Winter and had to look like Summer or vice versa. One of my friends was one of the extras and said they were either really cold, or really hot, I can't remember which, but they didn't get paid. What the film company did was set up a real carnival and everything, rides and eats were free. They had plenty of extras show up for that as long as they could stand the cold (I think it was in Winter and needed to look like Summer).

Thanks! I’ll take a look at that. I couldn’t remember name of the hotel, but looking at pics of it, I believe that’s what he wrote.

I believe Natchez was #1 for a while . It was one of the top ports for cotton export to England. A tour guide said just before the war , $750, 000 ,( in 1850 money), worth of cotton was shipped every week during the fall. Across the river was a long row of huge cotton warehouses. Some of those cotton barons in Natchez were the richest men in the world. Guy named Stanton , owned a bunch of plantations, his family in England owned mills and they owned their own ships.