Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2009, had a population of about 1,212,848; approximately one-quarter of Alabama's population. Birmingham was founded in 1871, just after the American Civil War, through the merger of three pre-existing farm towns, notably, former Elyton. It grew from there, annexing many more of its smaller neighbors, into an industrial and railroad... transportation center with a focus on mining, the iron and steel industry, and railroading. Birmingham was named for Birmingham, one of the major industrial cities of the United Kingdom. Most of the original settlers who founded Birmingham were of English ancestry. The city was planned as a place where cheap, non-unionized, and African-American labor from rural Alabama could be employed in the city's steel mills and blast furnaces, giving it a competitive advantage over industrial cities in the Midwest and Northeast.
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| County: | Jefferson County |
| State: | Alabama |
| Country: | United States of America |
| Population: | 228,798 |
| Area: | 151.9 sq. mi. |
| Time zone: | Central Time zone |
| Also known as: | Birmingham, Alabama, Shelby County / Birmingham city |