7/25/2023 0 Comments Black man railroad story![]() He used the money to buy some land from his former slave owners’ estate and began to work the land. It might not have seemed like much, but it was enough to leave the coal mines behind, head back to his home near Kowaliga. He worked tirelessly until he finally saved up $100. John moved to Shelby and worked the mines for sixty cents per ton. Thousands of miners worked mines in cities scattered across Shelby and Bibb County. In the early 1900s coal was big business in the area. If he wanted that land, then he needed money and the best place to get it at the time was the Shelby County coal mines. The Benson Plantation was home to John and although he was a slave growing up on the Kowaliga Creek, the land still meant so much to him and his family. With a new life ahead of them the two went back to Alabama to begin a new. With his life in jeopardy every day, John searched through the plantations of Florida for an entire summer until he finally found his sister. A young Black man traveling alone right after the end of the Civil War was a death wish, but he went anyway. With his newly acquired mule, John headed from Alabama to Florida to bring his sister home so they could start a new life. Now that John was free, the young boy knew he was the only one who could save his sister. After Congress passed the Confiscation Act of 1861, Union Generals would often confiscate property from rebels after a battle and give it to freed slaves. He was freed after the Civil War and given a mule. would begin its Civil War, which would loom over the country for the next five years.īy 1865, things would change for John and all he needed was little opportunity. Once James Benson died and his estate divided among his family, John was sent to Talladega, Alabama to work as a slave for an heir. We don’t know if James was John’s father, but it wouldn’t be far-fetched. In the 1850s it was not uncommon for slave owners to birth children with the Black women they kept in bondage, then sell them to other plantations. John also had a sister he was very fond of who was sold to a plantation in Florida. If John was born a slave, then his mother was a slave. There is barely any mention of John’s mother or father, but they’re a few things we know. His slave owner James Benson owned a plantation in Alabama near Kowaliga Creek. John Jackson Benson was born September 1850 on the shores of Kowaliga Creek in Alabama. But before there was a lake there was John Benson and his small Black community near Kowaliga Creek. ![]() The dam is used to generate hydroelectric power for the Alabama Power Company.īecause of its size, Lake Martin is a very popular tourist destination and it hosts events throughout the year. ![]() The enormous Lake has nearly 700 miles of shoreline and covers 41,000 acres. Lake Martin, which is located In Tallapoosa, Elmore, and Coosa counties in Alabama, was created in 1926 after the construction of the Martin Dam. But because any remanence of the once flushing town was drowned under one of the largest lakes ever made, folklore prevails. The majority of this story is steeped in the truth. and you’ve probably never heard of either of them. His son would continue his legacy by building a school as well as the first Black-owned railroad in the U.S. In the 1800s, a Black man from Alabama named John Benson escaped the thumb of slavery, traveled across state lines to save his sister, then became a wealthy man who founded a Black community on the same land where he was once a slave–but that’s just half the story. MORE: The Antebellum Tale Of Black Slave Girl Molly And The Haunting Of Sorrel-Weed House ![]()
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