Magic in Stone: The Sylacauga Marble Story

By Ruth Beaumont Cook

Sylacauga—Alabama’s “Marble City”—is blessed with an abundant natural resource that nurtures both its economy and its cultural heritage. Thirty-five miles long, at least four hundred feet deep, and more than a mile wide, the Sylacauga Marble Belt yields crystalline white marble frequently compared to the Parian marble treasured by Greek sculptors and the Italian Carrara marble often chosen by Michelangelo. Artisans have quarried Sylacauga marble for tombstones since the early 1800s, and architects prized it for years as dimension stone for buildings like the United States Supreme Court. In the early 1900s, Giuseppe Moretti and Gutzon Borglum both chose this marble for magnificent sculptures.

When granite, better able to withstand industrial pollution, overtook marble as the preferred architectural stone in the 1930s, Sylacauga’s quarry owners shifted their focus to the production of ground calcium carbonate (GCC), a fundamental ingredient in manufactured products from toothpaste, foodstuffs, and disposable diapers to paints, caulks, and sealants. Many cringe at the idea of blasting and grinding marble into fine powder, but GCC is a vital factor in the local economy. Thankfully, the Magic of Marble Festival, first held in 2009, has revitalized interest in the artistic value of Sylacauga marble, inspiring sculptors from across the United States and masters from Italy to apply their skills to cream-white blocks of this beautiful stone and share their creativity with thousands of residents and visitors each year.

This is the story of quarry pioneers, investors, artists, and artisans. It's also the story of their families, who fondly remember their lives along the edge of “the hole” that provided for them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewSouth Books
• Release date: Nov 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781588384188

Ruth Beaumont Cook

RUTH BEAUMONT COOK was born in Bedford, Ohio, and is a graduate of The Ohio State University. She has lived in Alabama since 1970 and has served on the boards of the Writing Today conference at Birmingham-Southern College and the Alabama Writers' Forum. Previous books include North Across the River (1999 and 2000) and Guests Behind the Barbed Wire (2007 and 2012), which was awarded the bronze medal for outstanding historical writing by the Independent Publishers Group. She is the author of several corporate histories and numerous feature articles for Birmingham magazine, Alabama Heritage , and other publications. She lives in Birmingham with her husband Barney, near her two sons and their families.

Book preview

ALSO BY RUTH BEAUMONT COOK

North Across the River

Guests Behind the Barbed Wire

NewSouth Books

105 S. Court Street

Montgomery, AL 36104

and the

B. B. Comer Memorial Public Library Foundation

Shirley K. Spears, Director/Treasurer

314 N. Broadway Avenue

Sylacauga, AL 35150

Grateful acknowledgment is expressed to these sponsors:

B. B. Comer Memorial Public Library Foundation

The Sylacauga Marble Festival/Sylacauga Arts Council

Alabama Bicentennial Commission Foundation

Imerys Carbonates, Sylacauga, Alabama

Copyright © 2019 by Ruth Beaumont Cook

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Published in the United States by NewSouth Books, Montgomery, Alabama.

Publisher Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cook, Ruth Beaumont

Magic in stone: the Sylacauaga marble story / Ruth Beaumont Cook.

p. cm.

Includes index.

1. Art—Sculpture. 2. Marble industry and trade—Alabama—Sylacauga—History.

I. Title.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019945817

978-1-58838-404-1 (hardcover)

978-1-58838-418-8 (ebook)

Design by Randall Williams

Printed in the United States of America by the Maple Press

The Black Belt, defined by its dark, rich soil, stretches across central Alabama. It was the heart of the cotton belt. It was and is a place of great beauty, of extreme wealth and grinding poverty, of pain and joy. Here we take our stand, listening to the past, looking to the future.

To Shirley and Ted, and to Nelda

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Prologue: Ancient Origins and Important Comparisons

1Pioneers of Marble Exploration in Talladega County

2Moretti and the Marble

3Origins of the Alabama Marble Company

4The Company Village at Gantt’s Quarry

5The Moretti-Harrah Marble Company

6The Industrial Modernization of Sylacauga Marble

Epilogue: Fully Balanced Appreciation Achieved

Sources of Illustrations

Bibliography

Index

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.

— PERICLES (495–429)

Foreword

GLENN DASHER

The story of Sylacauga, Alabama, is unique in that it’s about a city built atop an outcropping of beautiful white marble. Ironically, it is also a narrative that is remarkably familiar, a story that has been retold countless times, chronicling the fascinating development of early human societies. This story of the people who settled here and their relationship with the marble, not only upon which, but from which the town was built, is not new. It has existed since ancient peoples first gathered together to harvest a natural resource and in so doing built homes, lives, and families. It is a story of community.

The oldest evidence of human expression exists in parietal art on the walls of limestone caves and in stone artifacts dating to approximately 35,000 years ago. These sites and objects represent the beginning of the human quest to understand the mysteries of nature and humans’ relationship with the extraordinary gifts of Mother Earth. As humans transitioned from nomadic hunter-gatherers to farmers and shepherds, they began establishing small semi-permanent settlements, building homes of natural ephemera, wood and clay. Unfortunately, little remains of these early sites and it was not until the development of more highly organized communities that clear evidence of early human social development exists in stone. But ultimately, it is not just any stone. It is marble, specifically, that marks the pinnacle achievements of ancient civilizations, communities, city-states, and empires. Today, we are fortunate that our forebears’ relationship with marble left behind a virtually unbroken record of human history.

Specialized communities were the hallmark of early social and technological achievements. Understandably, the name given to the origin of human technological development is the Stone Age. Initially, simple tools and crude structures were fashioned from whatever stone was conveniently available to provide food and shelter for small, isolated groups of people. Food for people and grass for cattle could be grown almost anywhere there was water. But as the material requirements of expanding social groups grew, a need to locate the best sources of durable material evolved, and Paleolithic people began to explore their environment, to understand the geology of their world, and to exploit its riches. But such resources are isolated to unique outcroppings. Bands of families began to gather together near these resources. The first ancient communities were established at sites where the best stone could be dug from the ground. So, in many respects, the quarrying of granite and marble can be credited with the foundations of the earliest organized communities.

PICKING UP STONES IS rather simple, but quarrying granite and marble required the development of highly specialized skills and technology. Quarrying and building with stone created extraordinary logistical challenges to efficiently extract, move, and lift its enormous weight. The long-term success of these endeavors required cooperation and organization to gather, feed, house, and equip healthy workers, craftsmen, technicians, and artists. The quest to make life easier, safer, and more meaningful by utilizing stone resulted in the establishment of effectively functional, stable, and complex societies. With time, art and architecture evolved beyond serving the basic needs of communities to elevating religious practice, solidifying governance, and inspiring even greater historical and cultural achievements.

As technological and logistical challenges were overcome, quarried stone could be moved over great distances to the political and religious centers of ancient cultures. While the remote quarrying communities always remained essential to providing marble as a commodity for the aggrandizement of kingdoms and empires, they ceased to serve as culturally relevant sites; little remains of them today except the holes which were dug into the landscape.

Of quarrying settlements like those in Aswan, Egypt, Mount Pentelicus, and the island of Paros in Greece, to name but a few, nothing remains. They are only footnotes to the timeless monuments of ancient Egypt, Athens, Rome, and even modern Washington, D.C. The stories of their inhabitants’ lives have long been lost, occasionally to be pieced back together by archeologists and historians, from legends and shards of stone. Although Gantt’s Quarry is—like the ancient settlements—all but gone physically from the landscape, the stories of its inhabitants—their sense of community, their work and family lives, their connection to the stone—remain fresh in their minds and in the minds of their descendants. And these have been shared for this book.

The ancient workers who carved the marble from the earth probably never saw the magnificent achievements created from their labor. Just like the quarry workers in Gantt, few would have ever traveled to their governments’ capitals to experience and take pride in the contributions they made in creating such artistic glories. However, no matter how far removed in distance and time from its origin the raw material travels, its ethereal beauty remains inextricably bound to the people and communities that ultimately gave it birth.

SYLACAUGA MARBLE IS A uniquely pure mineral, calcite. This purity, which contributes to its intrinsic beauty and translucency, has also made it the perfect source of calcium carbonate, for which there are now innumerable industrial uses. Growing industrial demands for calcium carbonate in the last half of the twentieth century created a new and utimately more profitable purpose for extracting Sylacauga marble. With the rise of modernist art and architecture in the early twentieth century, along with the realization that granite withstood weather and pollution far better than marble, interest in marble for building had already waned. Most American quarrying of dimensional stone eventually ceased, putting skilled stonecutters out of work and, in a pattern seen throughout history, diminished the communities that supported quarrying. The remarkable beauty of marble as dimensional stone was lost to the citizens of Sylacauga to a great extent and for an extended period of time.

Fortunately, in 1988 a group of government and arts leaders in Alabama recognized the importance of reuniting this exquisite material with artistic intent. Their goal was to revive awareness of the breathtaking beauty of marble from Sylacauga. Through their efforts, Sylacauga marble is now a source of civic pride for both its industrial contributions and its artistic value. Thanks to the hard work of the late Sam Wright, former mayor of Sylacauga, and the late Georgine Clarke of the Alabama State Council on the Arts, to the positive interest and support from industrial management, and to many other dedicated supporters, the magic of marble has returned to this community. The Magic of Marble Festival has made it possible for those whose lives unfold in this community, many of whom are descendants of those who harvested the stone long ago and whose stories are lovingly preserved in this book, to experience the incredible beauty that can result from the melding of nature, intellectual curiosity, and artistic expression.

Each spring since 1988, I have had the privilege of returning to Sylacauga to join with a new and growing community of sculptors who gather to celebrate a shared love of carving Sylacauga marble. We come from all parts of the country and world, from different occupations and walks of life, representing a range of skills from accomplished professional artists to enthusiastic hobbyists, in many cases with nothing in common except a desire to create something meaningful and personal from pure white marble equal in quality to that of Carrera in Italy. For two weeks each year, we are welcomed by the gracious, wonderful citizens of Sylacauga, to create a transient, egalitarian community of craftspeople who work together, share ideas, and help one another. We have made lasting friendships and have formed an indelible bond with our Sylacauga family, creating new stories in stone and in each other’s lives.

This book pays tribute to a town that grew up around a vein of pure white magic. Its pages chronicle this unique geological phenomenon and the people who have lived their lives above it, adding a new chapter to a story that has been repeated since the dawn of time. It is a story of cooperation, exploration, discovery, entrepreneurial vision, hard work and sacrifice, success and failure . . . and a story of the lives of families gathered to share with the world a natural treasure unique to the place they call home. A timeless story of community.

Sculptor Glenn Dasher is an emeritus professor of art and former dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Alabama Huntsville.

Acknowledgments

Profound thanks to my dear friend Marianne Moates Weber for introducing me to Dr. Shirley Spears and Dr. Ted Spears who gave me opportunity to explore the marble heritage of Sylacauga. For me, a fascination with marble and sculpture goes way back, beginning with Saturday morning art lessons and wanderings at the Cleveland (Ohio) Museum of Art in about third grade and continuing through a summer trip during college to the New York World’s Fair. My roommate (a fine arts major) and I made several round trips on the horizontal escalator that ran slowly past the installation of Michelangelo’s Pieta , determined to etch in our memories every detail of that magnificent work.

Although I have now lived in Alabama for more than forty years, it is only over the past decade that I have come to appreciate the incredible beauty and detailed history associated with the marble resource that underlies the Sylacauga area. Collecting documentation and personal memories related to that marble, then fashioning these into a narrative history has been a rewarding experience and one that has produced lasting friendships with people whose special memories I am now able to share.

It is probably impossible to remember and thank everyone who has offered up the gift of personal and business experiences that make this a compelling story, but I will do my best: Those who shared family memories, photographs, and documents of life in the Gantt’s Quarry/Sylacauga area include June Lessley Atkinson, the late Harry I. Brown, Dale Burns, Mabel Carlton, Jerre King Cleveland, Lelia Ezekiel, Early Gaffney Jr., Rose Glaze, Jimmy Hare, Claudette Harrison, David and Gina Haynes, Edna Hickman, Harryette Johnson Jackson, Willie Jackson, Earl Joiner, Catherine King, John King, Bettye and the late Gene Lessley, Nance Lovvorn, Catherine McCaa, Margaret Livingston Morton, Martha Waldrop, Shirley Blankenship Williams, Chuck Wilson, and Era Wilson. My thanks also to Suzanne Moulin for a wonderful tour of the marble at St. Jude and to Sonia Santepuoli who translated Giuseppe Moretti’s correspondence with Enrico Caruso.

Stories of Moretti-Harrah, the Alabama Marble Company, and their various incarnations up to and including Imerys and Omya today are richer because of memories and documentation shared by Charles Cleveland, Jim DeLoach, Bob Karell, Tommy McGahey, Winston Morris, Preston and Travis Ousley, Carla Persons and Brenda Dunsieth, Jimmy Reynolds, Mark Vincent, and Van Wilkins.

Special thanks to Sylacauga resident sculptor Craigger Browne for his artistic spirit and for his insights into the cultural and geological history of the marble itself; to the late Lewis S. Dean, formerly with the Geological Survey of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, for sharing Moretti correspondence and other material related to Alabama geological surveys; to Aileen Kilgore Henderson for the very useful material in her beautiful book about Eugene A. Smith, Alabama’s first state geologist; to Wendy Reed and the crew with Discovering Alabama for a wonderful documentary on the marble—and my first hard-hat experience; and to Peggy Perazzo for her meticulous and fascinating maintenance of the website Stone Quarries and Beyond.

I am truly grateful to NewSouth Books for welcoming this story and evolving it into a beautiful publication. Working with their staff is a joyful experience—especially with very special editor-in-chief Randall Williams and production manager Matthew Byrne. Thanks also to Suzanne La Rosa, with assistance from Lisa Harrison, for all of their help in announcing this book during a busy bicentennial year.

I’d also like to thank the librarians who guided me to so much excellent material related to this project—to Jim Baggett and his staff in the Archives at the Birmingham Public Library for Moretti, Mercer, and Caruso correspondence and other files; to Sheila Blackmon Limerick, Archives and Special Collections Librarian at the Julia Tutwiler Library, University of West Alabama, for helping with the Moretti and Mercer scrapbooks; to Debbie Pendleton with the Alabama Department of Archives and History; and to the outstanding and welcoming staff of the B. B. Comer Library in Sylacauga, including Jo Andrews, Annie Leonard, Nelda Vogel, and Shirley Williams, along with library director Tracey Thomas and Director Emerita Shirley Spears who is now the director of the B. B. Comer Memorial Public Library Foundation. There cannot possibly be a more beautiful, vibrant library anywhere, and I have spent many enjoyable hours there while at work on this project.

Last, but certainly not least, thank you to my husband Barney for his wonderful support and for his attention to the tiny details I sometimes overlook; and to my sons, Roger and Bobby, and their families for their encouragement and interest.

The chief attractiveness of Alabama marble is due to its life and to its warmth of coloring. The white marble is for the most part a cream-white rather than a bluish-white, the more common characteristic of the Italian marble. The Alabama marble is, moreover, unusually translucent, in this characteristic resembling the famous Parian marble.

—WILLIAM F. PROUTY, 1916

Prologue:

Ancient Origins and Important Comparisons

Four hundred eighty million years ago, shallow seas covered what is now Alabama’s Coosa River Valley. Beneath the sun-lit surface of these warm waters, a rich Ordovician community of marine organisms—corals and brachiopods, bryozoans and trilobites—absorbed calcium carbonate from the waters and used it to form their protective shells. When these creatures died, they bequeathed their legacy of shells to the floor of the sea.

Gradually, over the next eighty million years, the sea level lowered, and a beach of sorts—the continental shelf—emerged. Beneath this extensive shelf, rising layers of fossil shells shifted and compacted, creating loose sedimentary rock called chalk. Further sedimentation created limestone, harder than chalk but not hard enough to take a polish.

Finally, some layers, including specific ones in the middle of the Coosa River Valley, crumpled deeper into the earth’s crust where heat and pressure drove out impurities and morphed the limestone into a dense, white, crystalline substance. The Greeks gave the world a name for this substance, taking it from their verb marmairein, which means to shine or sparkle. Smaller quantities of it occur in Bibb, Calhoun, Clay, Coosa, Etowah, Lee, Macon, St. Clair, and Shelby counties.

This metamorphic substance, which would come to be called marble, angles upward between two layers of dolomite in the valley between Kahatchee and Talladega-Rebecca mountains in what is now Talladega County. These upthrusts of rock are known as falten-gebirge (fold mountains) because the layers all lean in the same direction, much like the folds of a pleated skirt. Finally, a mere sixty million years ago, as the sediment cover eroded, the marble itself was exposed and became—both literally and figuratively—the foundation of Sylacauga—the Marble City. The Alabama legislature declared marble the state rock of Alabama in 1969.

Sylacauga marble occurs entirely at lower elevations in its well-defined valley. It is slightly finer in grain than Vermont marble and much finer than Georgia marble. Because its crystals are most often highly interlocked, Sylacauga marble is more durable but also more difficult to saw. Since 1900, approximately thirty million tons have been quarried from the Sylacauga marble belt, which is approximately thirty-five miles long and as much as four hundred feet deep. It extends down through Talladega County to the flatter and lower elevations of the Northern Piedmont southeast of Talladega, reaching its maximum mile-and-a half width near Sylacauga. The marble in this belt is nearly pure calcite. In some deposits, traces of magnesia (dolomite) cause streaks of gray or sometimes blue or pink.

When William F. Prouty compared Alabama marble to the famous Parian marble in his 1916 geological survey report, he was referring to the fact that both Parian and Alabama marbles are white, close-grained, and particularly well-suited to sculpture. Both have been valued for their translucence. Because of this specific quality, Sylacauga marble was chosen for the ceiling of the Lincoln Memorial in the 1920s so that natural light could filter through it onto the statue of our sixteenth President.

Parian marble came from the Greek island of Paros, where it was quarried extensively in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. It was highly prized by sculptors across the Mediterranean region. Two of the greatest examples of ancient Greek sculpture—the Medici Venus and the Winged Victory of Samothrace (Nike) were carved from Parian marble. Paros was often referred to in Greece as the Marble Island, just as Sylacauga has come to be known in the U.S. as the Marble City. Parian marble was used not only for sculpture but also as dimension stone in the construction of temples and public buildings on Paros itself and at Delos, Delphi, Athens, and Olympia. Likewise, Giuseppe Moretti, who carved his beautiful Head of Christ and numerous other pieces from Sylacauga marble, worked extensively to promote the local quarries as sources of dimension stone. His success and that of quarry owners before and after him is evident in the long list of buildings across Alabama and the United States that display this beautiful stone.

Moretti first came to Alabama in 1904. He equated the purity and strength of Sylacauga marble with the Carrara marble of his native Italy—marble used in many of Michelangelo’s best-known sculptures. Prouty’s 1916 geological report quoted Moretti’s glowing description of what he by then considered his marble:

The color of the white marble of Alabama is brilliant and full of life with a creamy tone that gives a lustrous transparency, making our marble far more beautiful than the Italian. The Alabama marble has a uniformity of texture most satisfactory and pleasing for sculpture.

The Marble City derives its given name from its original inhabitants, a tribe of Shawnee Native Americans who made their way south from the Chillicothe area of Ohio in 1748. They established their village of Chalakagay in the Coosa River Valley and traveled to Fort Toulouse (near present-day Wetumpka) to trade with the French colonials. When the Chalakagay Shawnee noticed marble outcroppings near their village, they gathered chunks, which they chipped and shaped into arrowheads. Over time, the name of their village location evolved from Chalakagay to Sylocogga, then Souillacouga, and finally, Sylacauga.

Although the tribe is forever associated with Sylacauga, the Chalakagay Shawnee were not destined to remain contributors to the development of Alabama. By the early 1800s, they had joined the Creek Confederacy and allied themselves with the Native Americans who battled unsuccessfully against the troops of General Andrew Jackson in the Creek War of 1813 and 1814.

Tending to the medical needs of Jackson’s militiamen during the battles of Talladega and Horseshoe Bend was twenty-three-year-old hospital surgeon Edward Gantt. There is little doubt that Dr. Gantt, like the Chalakagay Shawnee, noticed the sparkling outcroppings of high-quality marble during his forays into northern Alabama with General Jackson. Following the Creek Wars, Gantt returned to Tennessee to practice medicine, but he moved to Alabama after it became a state in 1819. In January 1834, after treaties forced the Creeks and allied tribes west of the Mississippi River, the federal government opened a new land office at Mardisville, just south of Talladega, and began offering former native lands to settlers. While still practicing medicine in Selma, Gantt purchased several tracts of land for quarrying.

Antique photographs on the walls of Sylacauga’s Marble City Grill chronicle the early operations of an industry that began providing marble for monuments and sculpture in the early 1800s. By the early 1900s, quarries were supplying polished interior and exterior marble for major buildings throughout the country. By the 1930s, manufacturers were discovering the many practical uses for marble ground down to a fine powder (GCC—ground calcium carbonate).

In the 1949 film version of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, Dominique Francon (played by Patricia Neal) picks up a poker and deliberately smashes a section of marble fireplace in her bedroom so she can lure the handsome architect-turned-quarry-laborer Howard Roark (played by Gary Cooper) upstairs to fix it for her. When Roark strides into the bedroom, Francon points to the fireplace and demands that he repair it immediately. Roark examines the damage and says, This is Alabama marble. Very high grade. Very expensive.

This very high grade and very expensive marble lies at the heart of Sylacauga’s proud heritage. The purpose of this book is to preserve that heritage and to honor those individuals and businesses who have contributed to that heritage and those who continue to appreciate and utilize this valuable resource—both artistically and industrially.

1

Pioneers of Marble Exploration in Talladega County

Gantt’s Quarry is named for its original owner and developer, Dr. Edward Gantt, who was one of the first to recognize the potential of Sylacauga marble. His connection to Township 22, Range 3 East in Talladega County dates to the War of 1812 and the Creek War of 1813–1814, after which Native American influence declined steadily in Alabama.

Token of honor presented to Creek representatives at a conference in New York in 1790.

The Creek Nation had a long history of playing one European nation against another. The Creeks once controlled vast stretches of land in what became the southeastern United States, and their tribes welcomed trade with new settlers. However, soon after the American Revolution, those settlers’ unquenchable thirst for land ownership west and south of the original thirteen colonies increasingly led to pressure for Indian removal.¹

The Treaty of 1790 was signed in New York City by a delegation of Creek chiefs and Henry Knox, the Secretary of War under President George Washington. That treaty, through which the Creeks ceded a great deal of land to the Americans, solemnly guaranteed protection for remaining Creek properties within U.S. borders. Washington hoped the treaty would resolve the land issue, but it did not. As settlement by whites increased, the deer population dwindled, leaving the Creeks with less and less to trade. Because the tribes had grown used to acquiring European goods, traders often encouraged them to run up debt by continuing to buy whatever they wanted on credit, then forced them to pay back that debt by ceding even more land.²

Edward Gantt was born in that treaty year of 1790 in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. The families of his parents, Robert and Elizabeth (Compton) Gantt, had come from England in the 1600s. An 1879 biography suggests Gantt entered the University of Pennsylvania medical department as a student at the age of fourteen and became its youngest graduate in April 1811. According to this early biography, he studied privately with the celebrated Philadelphia physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Benjamin Rush.³

However, archival records at the University of Pennsylvania first list Edward Gantt of Baltimore on the medical matriculation roster for the 1807–1808 school year at the more likely age of seventeen. His family moved to Tennessee during that period, and the matriculation roster for the 1810–1811 year listed Gantt as a student from Tennessee.⁴ The University of Pennsylvania has no record of Gantt’s official graduation, but on March 2, 1814, the Tennessee Militia regiment of Colonel Ewin Allison appointed him its hospital surgeon.⁵

Dr. Gantt probably became aware of the Sylacauga marble belt during the War of 1812 when General Andrew Jackson commanded the Tennessee militia in the fight against Great Britain. Jackson viewed the Creeks in Alabama and Georgia as British allies against the Americans, so he led an army of East Tennessee militia into Alabama territory in 1813. His troops defeated the hostile Red Stick Creeks in the Battle of Talladega on November 9 and the larger Creek Confederacy, which included the Chalakagay Shawnee,⁶ in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend on March 27, 1814. These defeats effectively opened eastern and central Alabama for white settlement.

As regimental hospital surgeon, twenty-three-year-old Gantt tended to the medical needs of Jackson’s militia troops at Horseshoe Bend and may have noticed, as Chalakagay Shawnee warriors had before him, the sparkling outcroppings of high-quality marble in the area. When the war ended, Gantt returned to Tennessee to practice medicine, but sometime after Alabama became a state in 1819 he moved to Cahawba (the state capital from 1820 to 1825) and then to Selma, where, on the first Monday in April 1822, he was elected one of five town council members. In April 1826, he was reelected and then named to the position of intendant (manager of public business).

The entire Selma town council was reelected in 1827, but Gantt resigned his position as intendant at the end of that year. When the citizens of Selma