About Us

The Mississippi Industrial Heritage Museum, Inc., a non-profit corporation founded in October 2002, has tax-exempt status under the Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3). This organization owns the Soulé Steam Feed Works historic site in Downtown Meridian, Mississippi. A nine-member board of directors governs the preservation and educational activities of the museum. The public has called the site Soulé Steam Museum for many years. The Museum now uses the name in signage and public outreach. 

Generous donations by Jim McRae and a host of other private donors have helped preserve and interpret the site for the past 22 years. Two endowments provide operational funds for the industrial heritage museum. The Community Foundation of East Mississippi manages the largest endowment, the McRae Endowment for Tourism Development in East Mississippi. We continue to work to raise funds for the endowment and to provide museum accessibility. It has been our dream that all visitors enjoy the employee locker room and assembly room upstairs. It is also the Museum's goal to provide interesting exhibits and interpretation of existing areas that will inspire young people to become engineers, scientists, inventors, machinists, woodworkers, and other traditional trades. 

Dozens of local, state, and national volunteers have joined this grassroots effort to not only preserve historic Soulé, but have helped with our best-known event, Soulé Live Steam Festival. The Museum has hosted this since 2003 and attracts thousands of visitors each year. Volunteers work as greeters, docents, re-enactors, tradesmen, and security throughout the two-day event. Other volunteers bring their full-sized steam engines, model steam engines and hit-and-miss engines. They also demonstrate broom-making, spinning, weaving, mold-making, metal casting, and letterpress print shop (with Linotype). These volunteers also help with restoring and maintaining historic equipment and steam engines all through the year. We alway need volunteers throughout the year.

The site is not a collection of historic items, but a factory (now a museum) that retains much of its original furnishings and equipment (about 80%). The Soulé company appears trapped in time – 1920 to 1945. The belt-driven machine shop has the longest operating line drive shaft (106’) in the United States. An antique three-phase electric motor turns this shaft and powers belt-driven machines that date back to the early 1900s. 

The Soulé family operated Soulé Steam Feed Works for 110 years under founder George W. Soulé and his descendants. Mr. Soulé was a noted inventor in his day and held at least 25 U.S. patents. George patented innovations used in products that fulfilled the needs of the small to medium-sized sawmills that boomed from 1885-1930 in the South. Read more about the company by clicking on the HISTORY hotkeys located above. 

The museum displays the company’s most noted products that were sold worldwide. Soulé produced about 2,300 Rotary Steam Engines and 4,301 Spee-d-Twin Steam Engines. The last steam engine produced at the factory is displayed and operated in the steam demonstration room. A rare Soulé Rotary Steam Engine from the early 1900s is displayed and operated in steam engine demonstration room. Only four Soulé Rotary Steam Engines are known to have survived. 

In 2005, a board member spearheaded a preliminary Historic American Engineering Survey for site documentation using a Summer Work Program Grant from The Riley Foundation. An extensive historical documentation and research project completed that same year revealed that Soulé Steam Feed Works was one of only five remaining late 19th/early 20th century foundry/machine shop/factories with original workings in the United States. This fact was quite a surprise considering that there were more than 1,000 such businesses prior to World War II. Soulé Steam Feed Works was truly a rare survivor of America’s industrial past. Since 2005, two of these remaining sites have lost many of their original features. The Watts-Campbell Company factory site has lost its foundry and pattern shop. In 2011 Hurricane Sandy destroyed the roof of the machine shop and assembly area. The company offices have been heavily vandalized since that date. A tornado damaged The Appomattox Iron Works in Petersburg, Virginia in 1993. After the tornado the owners sold the historic machinery to fund repairs, however it left an empty factory building without the same significance as before the storm. Now the list of comparable industrial sites is down to three: Soulé Steam Feed Works, W.A. Young and Son’s Foundry and Machine Shop (Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area, Rice’s Landing, Pennsylvania) and Knight Foundry and Machine Shop (Sutter Creek, California).
MISSION
The Industrial Heritage Museum at historic Soulé Steam Feed Works, promotes the heritage, labor, and innovation that influenced and shaped our country's rise as an industrial and manufacturing pioneer.
VISIONA museum's vision is a guiding image of success formed in terms of its contribution to society. A description in words expresses the institution's eventual destination. As a public institution, the Industrial Heritage Museum will:
Encourage a deep interest in the story of American industry by interpreting Soulé Steam Feed Works' and Meridian's industrial heritage within the context of our Nation's history;

Actively develop a dynamic institution providing relevant, creative exhibitions and educational programs;

Provide an enlightening, entertaining and fun experience in an environment where visitors of all ages feel like welcomed guests;

Support lifelong learning and inspire new generations to chart their own paths of discovery;

Serve as a complimentary resource to industrial and cultural sites, historical organizations and educational institutions;

Preserve and interpret the historic Soulé Steam Feed Works site.

DESIGNATIONS

Soulé Steam Feed Works site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1979 due to the historical significance of George W. Soulé, inventor.

The site was designated a Mississippi Landmark in October 2003.

Mississippi Industrial Heritage Museum was designated the Official State Historical Industrial Museum in July 2004 by the Mississippi legislature.
About us

Our team

Jim McRae

Mark A. Scarborough

Greg Hatcher

Walter Clement

Maurice Hall

Curt Friday

Mike McKnight

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