Theophilus Jowers

Theophilus Calvin Jowers (born 1847 in Randolph County; died September 10, 1887 in Birmingham) is a former foundryman at Alice Furnace, and is identified with tales of ghostly reappearances, most famously as the Ghost in Sloss Furnaces.

Jowers, was the youngest son of Benjamin Franklin and his second wife, Elizabeth Butler Jowers. He married the former Sarah Louise Latham at Irondale on August 11, 1870. He began working at the Oxmoor Furnace in 1873, during a time when the future of the Birmingham District's industrial development was at a nadir. According to Kathryn Tucker Windham's account, Jowers promised his wife, Sarah, that "as long as there's a furnace standing in this county, I'll be there." He was true to his word and eventually became an assistant foundryman at the Alice Furnace in the Spring of 1887. He and Sarah had five children, Mary Ella, William James Benjamin, William Anthony, Jorge and John. William James Benjamin (called "Bennie") and Jorge both died in childhood.

On September 10, 1887, while working around the edge of the furnace to loosen a bell, Jowers lost his balance and fell with it into the molten iron. The Birmingham Age report the following day described how "a piece of sheet iron was attached to a length of gas pipe, and with that instrument his head, bowels, two hip bones and a few ashes were fished out."

According to later stories, soon after the tragedy, other workers began reporting that he was seen making the rounds and checking on his former crew. After the first Alice Furnace was torn down in 1905, his ghost was reported to be seen at a second furnace until it, too, was shut down in 1927. Jowers' spirit is said to have then relocated to Sloss Furnaces across town. According to Windham's story, Jowers son, John claimed to have seen a ghostly figure striding through the hot furnace at Sloss from the 1st Avenue North Viaduct in 1927.

References

• "A Horrible Death, A Workman Falls into Alice Furnace" (September 11, 1887) The Birmingham Daily Age, qtd. in Karen R. Utz and Sloss Furnaces Foundation (2009) Sloss Furnaces. Mount Pleasant, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing ISBN 9780738566238
• Windham, Kathryn Tucker (1987) The Ghost in the Sloss Furnaces. Birmingham: Birmingham Historical Society. ISBN 0317651005
• Lewis, W. David (1994) Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District: An Industrial Epic. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0817307087
• "Sloss ghost hunters have chance to see two for the price of one." (October 30, 2006). Birmingham News
• Diel, Stan (October 21, 2007) "Spirit hunters haunt Sloss." Birmingham News
• Jowers, Willis (2009) "Jowers in the South 2010" genealogy site

External links

• Ghost at Sloss Furnaces at Alan Brown's "Alabama Ghostlore" site