William Goold

Background

William Goold was born on November 5, 1830, near Glasgow, Scotland. He was the son of James Goold, a coal-miner, and Jeannette (Smith) Goold.

Career

At the age of ten, Goold deserted the schoolroom for the coal-mine and entered upon a long life of association with the coal trade. In 1852, he emigrated to America and settled in the Pennsylvania coal-fields.

For two years, he plied the coal trade in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, making enough money to send for his wife and son, who were still in Scotland. At this time, there was considerable coal-mining activity in Alabama.

Sensing possibilities in this new field, Goold went South in and leased the Hewell mines near Tuscaloosa, where he made the first coke produced in the state. Thus began one of the most romantic careers in the history of the coal industry in Alabama.

For more than fifty years, he tramped the vast mineral solitudes of the state and probed and prospected for adventure and wealth. In the Tuscaloosa, mines failed and Goold became manager of mines at Montevallo.

Two years later, he opened the Raglan mines in St. Clair County and shipped large amounts of coal down the Coosa and Alabama Rivers.

During the Civil War, he opened mines in the Cahaba field, near Helena, from which he shipped large quantities of coal to the Confederate iron works at Selma. Burned out by the Wilson raiders, he entered the cotton-brokers’ business at Selma, failed, and then resumed coal-mining and coking in Shelby County in the “Goold seam. ”

In 1871, he took to the woods again. During the next thirty years, the call of the rugged blackjack and scrubby pine ridges kept this small, slightly built, wiry man, tramping and grubbing for hidden treasures.

He covered the vast mineral region from the Coosa River to Tennessee, opening several mines of his own and prospecting and managing mines for large coal companies organized in the district.

To the well-known Pratt Coal & Coke Company, organized to exploit the Browne seam, Goold sold his small property for a pittance.

He assisted in opening the Pratt mines, then plunged into the woods again, prospecting for himself and for companies in the Birmingham and Sheffield districts, and managing mines for them.

Achievements

• Goold's most notable achievement was tapping the Browne seam in the Warrior field, which contained a vast quantity of first-class coking coal, and from which the first coke pig iron in Alabama was made.

Personality

“Uncle Billy” Goold, as he was called, knew the history of Alabama’s coal and iron industry and told many thrilling stories of its checkered course. The stubborn hills he loved yielded him fair wealth, but he lost it in his last mine, in Tuscaloosa County. At eighty-two, he lay down to rest, a quaint, jovial, and canny old Scotchman.

Connections

Father:

James Goold

Mother:

Jeannette (Smith) Goold