The Dotterer Steam Engine on display in the AL Iron & Steel Museum at Tannehill Ironworks State Park, McCalla AL dates from about 1835, making it 182 years old in 2017.
The engine (used in a rice mill) is on long-term loan from the Henry Ford Museum.
A sign near the engine reads asfollows:
"DOTTERER STEAM ENGONE
ca 1835
One of the very earliest American steam engines known to exist (Bowditch, 1993), this rare Dotterer horizontal steam engine may have been similar to the one that once powered the Roupes Valley iron furnaces at Tannehill during the Civil War.
Manufactured by Thomas Dotterer in Charleston, South Carolina, machines of this type were used to power rice mills on southern plantations. It was not uncommon to move them from agricultural environments to industrial ones.
On long-term loan from the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan, this engine was restored in 2004 by Robert L. Johnson, Whistles in the Woods Museum services, Chickamauga, Georgia through a grant from the Alabama Power Foundation. During the early part of the 19 hundreds, it was a major feature of the Ford Museum's rice mill exhibit in Greenfield Village.
[INSET]
HORIZONTAL RETURN TUBE BOILER,
Bowydd Slate Quarry, North Wales, Ca. 1850-1860, when in use was set over a brick heating chamber. The Dotterer steam engine would've been used in connection with a similar boiler to produce the steam required (Worley Top Forge Industrial Museum)."
From the Tannehill State Park website, some information on the Iron & Steel Museum of Alabama: (
visit link)
"The Iron & Steel Museum of Alabama is a southeastern regional interpretive center on 19th century iron making featuring both belt driven machines of the 1800s and tools and products of the times. It focuses on the Roupes Valley Ironworks at Tannehill which operated nearby, first as a bloomery beginning in 1830 and later as an important battery of charcoal blast furnaces during the Civil War. The ironworks gave birth to the Birmingham Iron & Steel District.
Along with Tannehill artifacts that have survived, museum exhibits graphically demonstrate how iron was made during the Civil War when 13 different iron companies and six rolling mills made Alabama the arsenal of the Confederacy. During the last two years of the war, Alabama furnaces produced 70% of the Confederate iron supply. Exhibits include a display of rare CS artillery projectiles manufactured at the Selma Arsenal and Gun Works, a part of the Steve Phillips Collection, along with Civil War weaponry actually used in battle including a 52 Cal. U.S. Spencer Repeater.
The Tannehill museum, which includes 13,000 square feet of floor space, first opened in 1981. It underwent a major make-over of exhibits in 2004-05. New exhibits include one of the oldest steam engines in America, a power source once used on a rice plantation in South Carolina. The 1835 Dotterer engine was a part of the collection acquired by Henry Ford in the 1920s and was formerly exhibited at the Henry Ford Museum at Greenfield Village. It is similar to the Tannehill blast engine once in place here.
Other displays feature a complete mid-1800s machine shop including a Townsend cannon lathe dating to 1864 and a Putnam planer built in 1860. The shop’s steam engine dates to 1870. Visitors can also see original parts of the Six Mile Bloomery Forge dating to 1863 including one of the few helve hammers in the United States. Exhibits also focus on geology, furnace fuels, cookware and Birmingham’s cast iron pipe industry which today accounts for over half of the U. S. output.
Visit the Alabama Ironworks Source Book web site for a Guide to Alabama's 19th Century Charcoal Blast Furnaces And Ironworks
Various interactive displays bring the viewer into historical environments. The museum has a 25-seat theatre, gift shop and a timeline which traces growth of the iron trade from ancient Egypt to U.S. Steel’s modern Fairfield Works in Birmingham.
Behind the museum, visit the May Plantation Cotton Gin House which dates to 1858, and the heavy industrial display building which houses artifacts from Birmingham steel mills of the 1930s-1950s."