Burgreen Road and Cotton Gin

One of the area’s old landmarks has “gone with the wind” in a sense, when cotton was no longer ginned at the intersection of Burgreen Road with Brown’s Ferry Road. That location not only had a cotton gin, but it also had one of those comfortable old family type restaurants that was a favorite for many local residents over the years. In past times, cotton ginning season was “a really big deal”, with hundreds of loaded wagons hauling the recently-picked cotton bolls to be cleaned of their seeds and then baled for shipping to cotton mills in various locations. In the 1800s cotton bales from this area were shipped by riverboats to New Orleans, with subsequent shipment of some to mills in New England of the United States and others mostly to old England for mills there to produce twine, ropes, and cloth.

The Burgreen Cotton Gin at Burgreen Road and Browns’ Ferry Road was established by John Victor Burgreen and operated by several generations of the family. Today it no longer stands as a reminder of one of the few old gins of the area, even though the historical district of Madison had four operating gins at one time. As the ginning operations became unprofitable, the facility has been used for many other functions, including sales of Mexican ironwork. However, some insights into the history of the local Burgreen family have been found in census records, Ancestry.com postings, and a 1990 update to the 1978 book “The Lure and Lore of Limestone County” by Chris Edwards and Faye Axford.

The root of the local Burgreen family for which the Limestone County road is named was traced back to 1620 in Ancestry. com postings by Linda Jane Plummer. The story of the gin’s founder starts in Sweden, where Johon Victor Berggren (Swedish spelling) was born in 1857. His parents, Israel and Gustava Johansdotter Berggren, brought him to America in 1866, right after the Civil War. They migrated through Norway into England, Ireland, New York, Indiana, and Illinois, then to Kansas in 1870. There typhoid fever killed Israel on July 12, and Gustava died of it on July 18, 1870. John Victor Burgreen (American spelling) was orphaned at age 13. He took care of his siblings, Amanda (age 10) and two-year-old Carl (Charles, per the 1870 census record), until they were sent back to Illinois to live with their older sister, Ida, and her husband. It was in Paxton, Illinois, that John married Elfrida Sophia Helmer Anderson in 1884. John and Elfrida then moved to Decatur, Alabama. They soon afterward moved to Limestone County near the line with Madison County. The 1900 census record for John Burgreen shows four children born to Elfrida at that time, with all of them being alive when the census was taken. Their children were Conrad (born November 1884), Agnes (1886), Karl (1888), and Earl (1893). The 1910 census did not include Agnes in the Burgreen household, but it added Ruby, shown at age 7 as an adopted daughter. The adopted status was again noted for Ruby in the 1920 census.

In the 1930 census John Victor Burgreen, age 72, was living in Beaumont, Riverside County, California. He was listed alone as head of his own household. Frida Burgreen at age 67 was enumerated two houses away, also alone. On the other side of John’s house listing was that of Conrad Burgreen, age 45, born in Illinois, with father and mother noted as being born in Sweden. Conrad’s listing included wife Lois and four children, all born in Alabama. The household between John and Frida was that of another sole occupant, Carl C. Benson, age 30, born in Sweden. He may have been a nephew of either John or Freda. John and Conrad were both shown with occupation as “fruit farmer”, while Carl Benson was noted as a cabinetmaker.

Karl Roland Burgreen, born in 1888, stayed in Limestone County and married Lizzie Stewart. He died in 1969. Karl Roland and Lizzie had seven children, according to “The Lure and Lore of Limestone County.” Their children were Karl Edward, Thomas Victor, Ruby, John Gilbert, Frederick Lester, Lizetta, and Bobby Wayne Burgreen. Lizzie Etta Stewart was born in 1893 and died in 1985, outliving her husband Karl by 16 years. She was a member of the Parker Chapel Methodist Church for over 80 years. Karl Roland and Lizzie share a double tombstone in the Madison City Cemetery on the north side of Mill Road. The burials of three of their children who died young are denoted by small markers married Mary Catherine Johnson of Monrovia. Karl Edward Burgreen founded the Burgreen Contracting Company and paved many roads in the state. He was a Limestone County Commissioner and member of the state legislature for a time. Mary Catherine, a daughter of Arthur and Kate Wall Johnson, was a descendant of the Pettus, Vaughn, and Balch families of the Monrovia area. Mary Catherine became the first female Limestone County Probate Court Judge. She also was the first woman to serve on the Athens State College Foundation Board.

Mary Catherine Johnson Burgreen’s ancestry connects to my own lineage through her Balch line. My ancestry includes a Hezekiah Balch who married Martha Ann Bloomer. This Hezekiah has been professed to have drafted on May 20 of 1775 the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence while he lived in Mecklenburg County of North Carolina before Thomas Jefferson became the author of a similar document for the United States of America one year later. Because of the similarities, some have suggested that Mr. Jefferson had seen the Balch document as his model. The understanding is that Hezekiah had received news of the Battles of Lexington and Concord as his stimulus to record his thoughts about the ramifications of those initial battles against British rule. This Hezekiah Balch was born in Maryland, but he moved in 1769 to North Carolina at age 55. He was my 7th great-grandfather, connecting through Rankin lines to Lemley, Burris, and Ashmore surnames to Balch of my genealogy. The local Madison County Balch lineage ties to my Hezekiah though a local Hezekiah pioneer of Mt. Zion Baptist Church, where he was the first Sunday School superintendent. The local line from this Hezekiah to my own are via the second son (John) of the Hezekiah in North Carolina. Both Hezekiahs were descendants also of the John Balch of Bridgewater in Sommerset, England, who was born before 1635 and moved to America in 1658, settling in what was then Baltimore County, but is now Hartford County of Maryland, where he resided on the north side of Deer Creek. Our John Balch may well have also been connected to a more famous John Balch born in 1579 from Bridgewater of Somersetshire in England who also came to America and was the first person to receive a Massachusetts land grant in 1635 where Beverly, Mass. is today. This early John Balch arrived from England to Cape Ann of Massachusetts in 1623, where he built the famous Balch House that may still stand as the oldest remaining house in America – and all of this may connect back to our local Burgreen families, namesake of the road just west of the Madison County line into Limestone County. Genealogy can be interesting when tied to local landmarks and families.

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