Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History - History and Evolution

History and Evolution

The museum (then known as the Big Shanty Museum), in a barn that once housed a cotton gin, initially opened on April 12, 1972, appropriately on the very date which the chase occurred one hundred and ten years prior, with the General as the centerpiece. Later, the theme expanded to include Civil War pieces as well.

In the mid- to late 1990, the property of the former Glover Machine Works was to be demolished. The buildings on this site, having sat vacant for nearly 50 years, still contained records, locomotive parts, machinery for locomotive construction, and at least one complete locomotive, which had only seen a few months of active service before being repossessed. Descendants of the Glover family, who had retained ownership of the firm and its collection, in turn donated the collection to the museum in 2001.

With the acquisition of the rather large collection of artifacts, the museum closed in late 2001 and began a massive expansion to house them. During the construction, a large "box" of plywood boards was built overtop of the General to protect it. The augmented museum reopened in March 2003 as the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History. A further expansion was finished in 2007 to house the recently acquired French Merci Boxcar.