flush times

it appears the 1850's were good years for sion and kitsie.  the area bustled with immigrants, new towns with young professionals were laid out near rivers, axes and fire cleared fields for the plow, cotton harvest brought new wealth.

the southeast corner of alabama was practically new territory.  look at the growth in population over the decades.

Decade	1820	1830	1840	1850	1860
Population	2,638	7,573	15,619	24,986	43,207

sion and kitsie were two of those numbers that appear in the 1830's.  look what happens between 1850 and 1860...18,000 people arrive...either by road or birth.  during that decade over 1000 new farms had been created.


in 1860, elba, a new town 10 miles or so east of haw ridge had 5 lawyers, 6 doctors, 2 druggists, 1 dentist, 9 merchants, 4 grocers, 7 mechanics, 6 blacksmiths, 4 carpenters, 3 carriagemakers, 3 millers, 2 shoemakers, 2 weavers, 2 brickmasons, 2 seamstresses, 2 waggoners, a millwright, a hatter, a cooper and a chairmaker.  in newton taunton's tavern there resided, however temporarily, 4 polish jews: hyman and julius yaretsky, elias witzkosky and morris alkus. traveling tinkerers, perhaps.


there was even a newspaper for some period during the 1850's published out of elba: the state's right democrat. 


sion and kitsie could not read, but the local tavern or gristmill would receive newspapers from elba, troy, montgomery and other nearby towns.  while their lives were probably little different from the ancient ways they were born into, they were surely plugged into the new industrial information grid that flowed around them. 


on the eve of the war there was energy and bustle.