06/18/2026
On an abandoned building in downtown Selma, I found a name cast into iron.
C. Peacock Iron Foundry, Selma, Alabama. 1898.
More than 125 years have passed since someone poured molten iron into a mold and left their mark on this city. The business is gone. The builders are gone. The people who walked through these doors are gone.
Yet here it remains.
Weathered. Overlooked. Forgotten by most.
Still refusing to disappear.
Standing there, I found myself thinking less about the building and more about the hands behind it. The hands that poured the iron. The hands that lifted it into place. The hands that helped build a city, never knowing that more than a century later, someone would stop to notice their work.
We often think history belongs to famous names, grand monuments, and major events. But sometimes history survives in something much smaller. A name. A date. A piece of iron attached to a forgotten building.
A quiet reminder that long after we’re gone, the things we create may continue telling our story.
