Background
He was born on April 7, 1820 at Mooresville, Limestone County, Alabama, United States, the son of Joseph and Clarissa (Wasson) Sloss. His father, an immigrant to Virginia in 1803 from County Derry, Ireland, had served in the War of 1812.
He was born on April 7, 1820 at Mooresville, Limestone County, Alabama, United States, the son of Joseph and Clarissa (Wasson) Sloss. His father, an immigrant to Virginia in 1803 from County Derry, Ireland, had served in the War of 1812.
James's education was limited.
At fifteen he was working as bookkeeper for a butcher, which position he held for seven years.
In 1842 he opened a store in Athens, Alabama. His business grew, and by the fifties he had mercantile establishments at several points in northern Alabama. He continued to prosper and bought a number of plantations in the Tennessee Valley about Decatur.
From early years he was deeply interested in railroads, seeking to extend them through southern Tennessee and northern Alabama, and after the Civil War he combined a number of short lines into the Nashville & Decatur Railroad, becoming the president of the combine in 1867. This line now forms that portion of the Louisville & Nashville system which connects the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers.
His ambitions drove him to encourage the extension of the line southward, through the new and booming coal and iron center of Birmingham, to Montgomery, where it made connection with a line from the Gulf. Thus brought into contact with the rising Birmingham district, Sloss, in 1876, together with James Thomas, leased the Oxmoor iron furnaces, a few miles south of the new industrial city.
In January 1878, with Truman Aldrich and H. F. De Bardeleben, he formed the Pratt Coal & Coke Company. The Company exploited the Browne Seam, a large body of coal just west of Birmingham, later called the Pratt Seam in honor of Daniel Pratt. In 1879 Sloss withdrew from this company and concentrated his interests in the Eureka Mining Company, the first concern to make pig iron with coke instead of charcoal in the Birmingham district.
In 1881 he organized the Sloss Furnace Company and put up two furnaces on the eastern edge of the growing city. His plant was well located with relation to the railroads, and prospered. After some years of operation he sold his control, in 1886-87, to J. W. Johnston of the Georgia Pacific Railway and others having New York capital, and the plant later became one of the units of the Sloss-Sheffield Steel & Iron Company.
He died in 1890.
James Withers Sloss was highly respected as one of the great men of the Birmingham district, persuaded the Louisville and Nashville Railroad to finish a line of railroad track between Birmingham and Decatur. He formed the Pratt Coal & Coke Company, the first big concern organized in the Birmingham district, Sloss became the first person to show that pig iron could be made in Birmingham purely from Alabama's iron ore, coke, and limestone. He also organized the Sloss Furnace Company.
Quotes from others about the person
The Birmingham press suggested in 1881:
"His excellent business qualifications, brilliant intellect, splendid character, and fine executive ability, all combined, make him the grandest man in Alabama today for our chief executive. He is the very personification of Christian manhood and integrity, possessing the qualifications of head and heart which we should emulate. "
He married Mary Bigger, April 7, 1842. By his first wife, Mary Bigger, Sloss had nine children, of whom six died young; and by his second, Martha Lundie, he had three, all of whom survived him.
