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<p><b>Birmingham</b> is the <a href="/pages/w/138215766202329">most populous city</a> in the <a href="/pages/w/109424399076333">U.S. state</a> of <a href="/pages/w/104037882965264">Alabama</a> and the <a href="/pages/w/107892445909958">county seat</a> of <a href="/pages/w/137917169569956">Jefferson County</a>. The city's population was 212,237 in the <a href="/pages/w/104097652960274">2010 United States Census</a>. In the 2010 US Census, the <a href="/pages/w/573772415979225">Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Statistical Area</a> had a population of about 1,128,047, which is approximately one-quarter of Alabama's population.</p><p>Birmingham was founded in 1871, during the post-<a href="/pages/w/113182632029312">Civil War</a> <a href="/pages/w/180928098620342">Reconstruction period</a>, through the merger of three pre-existing farm towns, notably, former <a href="/pages/w/114914988525928">Elyton</a>. It was named for <a href="/pages/w/113052622042476">Birmingham</a>, England, the UK's <a href="/pages/w/132275566811761">second largest city</a> and then major industrial city. The Alabama city annexed smaller neighbors and developed as an industrial and <a href="/pages/w/108201402547247">railroad transportation</a> center, based on mining, the new <a href="/pages/w/108072055880622">iron and steel industry</a>, and <a href="/pages/w/111660018853193">railroading</a>. Most of the original settlers who founded Birmingham were of <a href="/pages/w/118533568517614">English ancestry</a>. The city was developed 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 unionized industrial cities in the <a href="/pages/w/108586072505070">Midwest</a> and <a href="/pages/w/543544552380010">Northeast</a>.</p>