History of the Alabama Confederate Soldiers Home
In 1900, Alabama counted over 2,000 survivors of the Southern armies which had surrendered 35 years before, ending America's tragic Civil War. These men were recipients of small pensions provided by the state. Many were infirmed because of age or physical disability and no less than one hundred of the old ex-Confederates were living in coutny poorhouses. Since the federal government granted pensions only to veterans of the Union cause, their Confederate counterparts were dependent upon whatever stipends were available from the individual southern states.
During the closing years of the 19th century, efforts began throughout the South to establish homes to care for the indigent "Boys of '61" The first such homes were founded during the early 1880's in Virginia, Louisana, and Arkansas and by the turn of the century similar facilities appeared in most other southern states.
Development of the Alabama Soldier's Home
At the beginning of the 20th century there were many Confederate veterans living in Alabama whose "wants cannot be supplied by means of pension funds....who have no homes, no families, no realtives, no friends, no money, or property and who are too feeble to work or earn a living." Jefferson Manley Faulkner, a Montgomery attorney and Confederate veteran, was determined that something more than just the payment of meager state pensions had to be done for his needy and disabled former "comrades-in-arms." Through his untiring efforts the Alabama Confederate Soldiers Home, the state's only facility for the care of indigent Confederate veterans, was established in the fall of 1901.
During 1902, Faulkner gave 80 acres of his own land near the summer resort community of Mountain Creek, in Chilton County, for use as a site for the Home. Various fund-raising projects and a statewide appeal for assistance secrued the finances and materials to turn Faulkner's vision of a haven for the destitute old soldiers into a reality.
Construction began, but Faulkner quickly realized that the Home could not survive on private donations alone. In October 1903 he was successful in a campaign to have the State of Alabama take over administration of the facility and to provide desperatedly needed operating funds. The new appropriations transformed the tranquil wooded hills into an impressive 22-building complex that included a 25-bed hospital as well as an elaborate water and sewage system. In 1904 the State limited the number of residents at the Home to 100. This total was exceeded during the peak of occupancy between 1914 and 1918, when the number of veterans and their wives rose to 104. Early regulations allowed the wives of veterans to live at the Home only while their husbands were alive. In 1915 this rule was changed to permit widows who were residents at the time of their spouse's death to remain at the facility.
