Exploring Our Family History in Tannehill State Park: A Beautiful Place to Take Your Family

Last year my cousin Amber sent me a VHS video clip of an interview she did with our Maw-Maw back in the 1990s.

In this video, Maw-Maw told us there is a cabin in Tannehill State Park that once belonged to our great-great grandparents.

Once I learned we have an ancestral home on display in Birmingham, Alabama, I knew we had to go check this out!

My kids love it so much when I drag them out on these sorts of adventures. Ha!! No, they hate it when I make them go exploring with me, but they lived. Plus, I think they even enjoyed it a little bit, whether they admit it or not.

Our extended family hosts a family reunion at Tannehill State Park every year. However, my little branch of the family has never been to the reunion or to the state park at all. We are not from the Birmingham area.

I was so excited to finally get to explore it and find the family cabin!

We piled up in the van in the blazing Alabama July heat. Of course, we took a stop at Buc-ee’s on the way!

When you first pull in to Tannehill State Park, you will pay a small fee at the gate. Then you will come to this grander old home in the front of the park. This is the park office.

This park boasts over a dozen genuine pioneer cabins. Eleven of them are available as overnight rentals.

I was delighted to discover that our family’s pioneer house, the Williams House, is one of the rental cabins! Plus, it is modernized to include heating and air and indoor plumbing.

I’m not sad that they modernized the cabin. If this park service had not taken on these log cabins and made them into nice rentals, we would not still have these homes to enjoy today. I love that the park keeps them in tact for generations to get to see.

We obtained a map from the park office, found our house, and drove right over to the Williams House.

Thankfully, no one was staying in the cabin at the time. We were able to climb on the porch and walk all around the place without trespassing on anyone’s vacation. If I’d thought this through more, I could have asked park staff to let us look around inside since we are family of the original owner. They might not have let us, but we could have asked.

The sign in the photo above sits in front of the cabin. It tells a little about the family who built and lived in this home. My great-great-grandmother was one of the ten children who was raised in this cabin.

Jim Williams was my great-great-great-grandfather. He was born in a town called Pitchers in Tuscaloosa County in 1859. By 1870, they lived near Calera, Alabama.

Jim’s father was born in North or South Carolina, where his people lived since migrating from England in the mid 1700s.

The 1870 U.S. census lists Jim’s father, Hilliary Williams, as a teamster. Ironworker unions didn’t form until 1896. Therefore, this 1870 census occupation of teamster refers to a man who drove a team of horses or oxen pulling a wagon, often for the Army.

By 1880, Jim was twenty and working in the iron mine right there near Birmingham. Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park tells the story of the area’s iron and steel industry. That makes Jim’s house a perfect fit for this location.

In February of 1881, Jim married Martha in Tuscaloosa County. Martha lived from 1861-1943. Martha’s people migrated to America in the 1790s, from Germany, to South Carolina.

Jim and Martha had ten children, and my great-great-grandmother was their firstborn child. According to the sign, Jim was a coal miner and a farmer. By the time of the 1900 U.S. census, he is reported only as a farmer.

The 1930 U.S. census reports that this house was located on Greenpond Blocton Road in the town of Kingdom in Bibb county, Alabama.

The censuses also tell us that Jim and Martha could both read and write. In 1930, they owned their home free and clear with no mortgage. By 1930, they had lived in this house for a little over forty years.

By 1930, James and Martha were seventy and sixty-nine respectively, and they still lived in this house. They had a seven-year-old living with them named Gertrude. She was their granddaughter. Gertrude’s mother was Leona Williams, the second of Jim and Martha’s seven children.

Leona died in childbirth in 1923, leaving behind several children. It would appear that the baby lived, and that baby was Gertrude, raised by her grandparents, also in this house. That’s just going off what I could find in the census reports.

Jim died in 1938, at the age of seventy-eight. I believe he died in his home.

Martha went by the nickname “Mattie”, and she moved in with one of her grandsons and his family in Birmingham after Jim passed away. Mattie lived to the age of eighty-two. She passed away in 1943.

The whole scene looks so picturesque from this angle, even in person. You can tell they added on a back portion, which I’m sure was necessary with ten children.

We enjoyed walking around the front porch and swinging on the porch swing. This took me back to the days of childhood, back when all of our grandparents had a front porch swing. That was such a pleasant staple of southern homes back then.

Perhaps there was a loft up top for such a small house to sleep so many? I know some of the log cabins in the Little House on the Prairie series had lofts. My hope is to one day get to go inside the cabin!

I am sure the park service has fixed this cabin up a great deal. It was donated in the 1970s, and I don’t know if anyone lived in it after 1938.

The Williams family was probably conscientious and kept it up well in its day too. I’m making that assumption going off of my great-grandfather, their grandson, who I knew personally until I was ten.

Great-grandaddy hung a photo of this cabin up on his wall. He was proud of it.

Great-grandaddy was always so impressive to all of us too. He was a preacher, a farmer, and a carpenter. Plus, he was a kind and gentle but strong man. He loved to make sure the kids were entertained and to take us fishing in his little catfish pond.

Great-grandaddy had a wood shop, chickens, vegetable gardens, and goats. He built his own house in the 1940s and lived there until he died in the 1990s. We all loved him. He was very generous with all that he possessed.

The women in the family all appreciated how he would sometimes be found washing the dishes in the kitchen.

Knowing that Great-grandaddy’s mother grew up in this house, I can bet you anything she and her parents were salt of the earth people too.

I absolutely love places like this one. It hearkens us back to a simpler time, a time of bare feet, shelling peas, and no internet.

Who knows if Jim and Martha even had electricity in this house? Alabama Power company was not founded until 1906. Maybe they eventually did get power. I’m really not sure.

However, if you book a stay at this cabin, or others like it in Tannehill State Park, they do all now have power and indoor plumbing. If that is not appealing to you, they also have “primitive cabins” available for rent, with less modern amenities.

Other park attractions:

This little train that runs around the park was a charming, fun addition. Our younger boys simply had to ride it. It is functional too though. Tannehill is on 1500 acres. This train is a fun way to get around and see more of the park without having to use your car.

Pioneer Farm

There are several different sections of Tannehill Ironworks State Park.

The cabins are scattered throughout several different park areas.

I liked that the Williams cabin is basically the anchor of the Pioneer Farm area. It made it feel extra special. They have it set up like it would all go together. You have the cabin in front. Then behind it are the rest of the Pioneer Farm buildings. They have a corn crib, blacksmith shop, and several other buildings all right together.

Alan and I have always taken our kids to pioneer and colonial historical parks like this. These places usually include a blacksmith shop because they were an important part of that way of life. One time when our oldest son was in first grade, he and a friend drew out a map of their own theme park design. I thought it was so funny because their theme park had a ferris wheel and all sorts of rides. Then in the middle of their theme park, there was the blacksmith shop. BAAAhahahaha!

There is a lovely stream that separates the Pioneer Farm from the restrooms, mill, and picnic area.

We spent most of our day over by the Williams house and Pioneer Farm. Thanks to the heat, by the time we finished exploring this area and rode the train, we were beat.

Tannehill Park keeps going and going though. Since we were so tired, we loaded up in our minivan and drove around the rest of the park.

Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park has so much to see that we didn’t have time to see half of it.

The other areas of the park include several campgrounds, another creek, the Iron and Steel Museum and Visitor Center, an event center, a Country Store, the Cane Creek School, and a country church and cemetery. One of these spots was also selling ice cream.

In the back of the park, there is even a Furnace Area with an archaeological research site. I would have loved to have seen the archaeology part. It would also have been nice to visit the museum. Maybe next time.

We did manage to drive by a few of these places and take a photo of the church. It was pretty.

I don’t remember where the church was from or what denomination it was. Maybe Methodist?

On our way out of the park, we saw these lovely deer, having lunch by the road.

I would tell you to visit the Tannehill State Park website to see a schedule for this year or to book a cabin, but their site is currently being redone.

You can try that link to see if it’s back up.

In the meantime, there is also a Tannehill park Facebook page. They will announce events there.

This is such a happy memory. I love that we got to go see this tangible piece of our family’s history. Even if you aren’t from Bibb county, I think it’s a fun outing for a family who likes to camp, fish, hike, or visit museums or historical parks.

You should also go if you have a kid who loves trains. That alone would have made some of our toddlers ecstatic.

I’m so proud of the hard working people that I come from. Maybe some day I will get to move back to Alabama and have a little place of my own too.

I have a good excuse to go to Tannehill and visit the cabin again too. My mom and my brother still haven’t seen this place. Maybe they will go with me.

If you like exploring historical parks, check out these other past adventures in photos:

Pioneer Park in Troy, Alabama

Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

Gettysburg Battlefield, Pennsylvania