by

Carolyn Kellermann Millhiser, Great Granddaughter of Joseph Lodge

In 1876 Joseph Lodge came to South Pittsburg and went to work for the
Southern State Coal and Land Company, known as “The Old English
Company” due to its English investors. By 1882 Lodge had become the
superintendent for the blast furnaces and the coal mines for the company.

A series of tragedies resulted in the demise of the company, which was
sold to the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company. Many of the
families associated with the Old English Company left South Pittsburg.

In 1882 the Episcopal Church in South Pittsburg formed a building
committee, whose members were Joseph Lodge, the Old English Company
physician Dr. Middletown, and Alma Parker Marcell. Bishop Charles Todd
Quintard consecrated Christ Church in 1884. The Reverend Joseph Hayton
Blacklock was its first rector from March 1887 through August 31, 1890.
Reverend Blacklock and his family moved to South Pittsburg from Rugby,
Tennessee. Henry Blacklock, the fourth son of Joseph and Amelia Eliza
Galpin Blacklock was married to Catherine Warren Bostick on December 17,
1890 in Christ Church.

Sandborn maps are part of the Library of Congress collection of fire
insurance maps drawn for use in establishing fire insurance rates for
properties in cities across the United States. The 1887 Sanborn maps for
South Pittsburg locate the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company’s
foundry and machine shop at the corner of Cedar Avenue and 1st Street. The
1891 maps have the same location for the TCI&RR Co. and list the products
manufactured as “machinery, boilers, house-drainage pipes, sanitary
plumbing supplies, smoothing irons, etc”. The 1897 Sanborn maps indicates
the same physical plant as the TCI&RR Co. but the name is now the
Blacklock Foundry with the products manufactured as “stove and country
hollowware, sad irons, grates, fenders, kitchen sinks etc.”

In 1892 Joseph Lodge and his brother William James Lodge started the
Shuster Foundry to manufacture soil pipe. In 1896 Joseph Lodge, age 48,
began another business – a cast iron foundry which he named in honor of
the first Christ Church Episcopal rector Joseph Blacklock. That foundry
was the Cedar Avenue and 1st Street facility which Lodge leased from the
TCI&RR Co. Henry Blacklock joined the new company.

In 1899 a New York company, the Central Foundry Company, bought the
Schuster Foundry and engaged Joseph to start the Central Coal and Iron
Company near Tuscaloosa, Alabama. While Joseph Lodge was in Alabama,

Henry Blacklock became the manager of the South Pittsburg foundry in 1901.

In Alabama Joseph Lodge started The Central Coal and Iron Company in
Tuscaloosa. In 1906 he resigned that presidency and went to work for
Woodard Iron Company, Woodward, Alabama. In 1908 he returned to his home
in South Pittsburg to manage the Blacklock Foundry.

The night of May 19th 1910 a fire burned part of the Blacklock facility.
On July 30, 1910, George G. Crawford President of TCI&RR Co. released
Joseph Lodge from his lease for the property. The letter reads ” In
consideration of the relinquishment by you of your rights under the lease
agreement between you and the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company,
evidenced by instrument dated the 13th day of September, 1900, and in
further consideration of rental payments which you have made for the use
of the premises leased under said agreement, to the date of destruction by
fire of a portion of the premises leased, the undersigned does hereby
release you from any obligations imposed upon you by the terms if said
lease.”

For $6,000.00 on June 16, 1910 Joseph Lodge purchased a meadow from John
C. and Emma H. Scott and John J. and Rose E. Ingle, the site of the
present Lodge facility. The company reorganized as Lodge Manufacturing
Company with Joseph Lodge as President and incorporated on August 10,
1910. The molders poured the first castings in the new foundry on August
26, 1910.

After Henry Blacklock left Lodge, he managed The Lowman Inn owned by his
sister-in-law Mary Hunt Bostick Lowman in South Pittsburg. About 1909
Henry and Catherine Blacklock moved to Birmingham, Alabama. There he was
in the automobile business. Later he and his wife Kate ran a boarding
house for girls on 8th Avenue South in Birmingham.

Bibliography

Sherwood, Elizabeth Lodge, The Joe Lodge Story, Founder of Lodge
Manufacturing Company
Thomas, Susan Rogers, editor, Christ Church Episcopal South Pittsburg
Tennessee A History 1876- 2001
Marion County Historical Society, The Story of Marion County Its People
and Places
Library of Congress, Fire Insurance Maps
Papers of Joseph Lodge
Records of Lodge Manufacturing Company

Deeds