Cedar Bluff, AL news and local guide

Near Cedar Bluff, General Nathan Bedford Forrest captured Union Colonel Abel D. Streight's raiders on May 3, 1863; a 1939 marker says Forrest had 322 men and Streight 1,466. Other accounts place the surrender near Gaylesville, at Lawrence or about 21 miles southwest of Rome, Georgia. Forrest is said to have marched his men past the meeting place repeatedly to make his force look larger. In 1862 the Confederacy commissioned the Noble Brothers of Rome, Georgia, to build the Cornwall Furnace near town. About 1,000 laborers dug a canal and tunnel and mined brown hematite to build it in less than a year, and though it made only about six tons of pig iron a day, its iron went into cannon and gun carriages. General William T. Sherman, occupying Cedar Bluff and Gaylesville in 1864, twice sent men to destroy it, but the stack still stands, one of the best preserved in the Southeast. It ran again from 1867 until 1875. Sources Wikipedia: Cedar Bluff, Alabama The Historical Marker Database: Gen. N.B. Forrest Captured Col. A.D. Streight (United Daughters of the Confederacy) The Historical Marker Database: Cornwall Furnace (Cherokee County Historical Society) Wikipedia: Cullman, Alabama