Flotte’s Notes on
An Unofficial Encyclopaedia
of Mobile & Baldwin Counties
Promoting local history, culture, outdoors,
businesses, attractions, food, people, and places
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·
Native
Americans and Spanish Exploration
·
The area around
·
Most of the early expeditions to La
·
1519 Alonso Alvarez de Pineda, with four ships, sails from
·
1528 Panfilo de Narvaez leads an expedition of three
hundred men was virtually wiped out by Indians, storms, and hunger as it made
its way north into
·
1540 At
the Battle of Mauvilla
(Mobila) Hernando
DeSoto was brought to the town of
o The site of Mauvilla is not
known for sure, but several sites around
o 1540 Francisco Maldonado returned with ships to
remove
o DeSoto's legacy in
·
1558 In
advance of the colonial expedition of Tristan de Luna, Guido
de las Bazares explores
the northern
·
1682 Robert Cavalier de La Salle explores the Mississippi
River, finds the Gulf of Mexico, and claims
·
1697 Under
the vague terms of Peace of Ryswick, France claimed
all west of the
·
1698 The
French Minister of Marine, Jerome de Phelypeaux, Comte de Pontchartrain,
also known as “Maurepas”, chooses Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville to
colonize
·
1699 Iberville
and a group of 100 Canadians set sail on the French ship Badine
from
o
They sighted land at
o
After the death
of its commander, Bienville takes command of
o Iberville, dissatisfied
with the settlement at
·
1702 "Fort Louis de la Mobile" was
first established at Twenty-seven Mile
Bluff on the 
French colony of
o Beginning in 1702, the French used small boats to
shuttle people and supplies from the military outpost on
o The settlement
originally governed by Iberville.
o The Old Mobile site is located in Axis on the
o From the 1880s to the 1940s, the site was cleared by
farmers for corn, plowed up, timbered.
o In 1902, prominent Mobilians
erected a stone monument at Twenty-seven Mile Bluff to commemorate the
Bicentennial of the founding of
o In 1977, local archaeology enthusiasts
became interested in locating the old town site. In 1989, an engineer at the former Courtaulds, Buddy Parnell, noted the possible presence of a
historic site on the bluff.
o Old
o The University of South Alabama
Archaeology Department continues to research and study the site, lead by Dr.
Greg Waselkov: Old Mobile
Archaeology home page
o Reference: Old
·
Iberville sent Henri de Tonti
up the river to bring the Indian leaders to the fort for a peace meeting. He
returned with three Chickasaw chiefs and four Choctaw chiefs. After Iberville
finished addressing them and presenting them gifts of guns and ammunition, they
agreed to aid the settlers.
o Iberville left within days, but the French alliance
with the Choctaw lasted for decades and proved critical in fending off British
encroachment from the northeast. For much of the rest of the century, hundreds
and sometimes thousands of American Indians -- primarily the Choctaw -- would
arrive en masse for annual congresses at
·
There were five Mobilian villages in 1700 and only one just a couple
decades later. Those who survived moved to the Mississippi Delta after the
French gave control of the land to the Spanish and British in 1763. Father Le Maire, in 1714 wrote that he was amazed "to see how
death has mowed down whole tribes since the arrival of the French in these
parts."
·
At its peak, the
town covered about 120 acres and contained 80 to 100 buildings, most of which
were homes for nearly 350 people.
o The Fort, built high on the bluff overlooking both
river and town, contained the homes of colonial officials, royal warehouses and
church, as well as military headquarters
o The little village was constantly flooded. Smallpox,
yellow fever, and other diseases took a huge toll on the local Native
population, as well as claiming many colonists.
·
1704 Apalachee Indians moved to Old Mobile from Spanish Florida. Allies of
the Spanish, they were brutally attacked by English and Creek Indian war
parties raiding their homeland in north-central Florida near Tallahassee. They
eventually found safety by resettling near the French around
o
The Apalachees were converted to Christianity by Spanish
priests in the early 1600s. In his description of the Apalachees,
carpenter and resident of Old Mobile André Pénigault
described them as "excellent Catholics."
·
1704
Iberville made a request to
o The ship also brought yellow fever, which killed many
of the colonists, including Tonti.
·
1706
Iberville dies of yellow fever in
o Bienville was partial to his fellow Canadians in the
camp, called "the coureurs de bois (or 'wood
rangers') and voyageurs, who neglected their church duties and lived sometimes
with the whites and sometimes with the Indians. Jesuit missionaries and
Canadian settlers sided with Bienville. Parochial priests and seminarians
opposed him, at least nominally because his men frequently had relationships
with native women.
·
1710 After
floods had ruined the crops at
o
Also in 1710,
Privateers from
·
1711 Following a series of
floods, the town was relocated to its present location on
o
Beginning in 1706, Gilbert Dardenne,
Pierre Leboeuf, Claude Parent, and Charles Rochon
began settling the present-day site of
o
Another wooden
o
The King's Wharf crossed swampland on the east side of the fortress to the
·
1712-1717
Mobile commerce is monopolized by merchant Antoine
Crozat who leased the
·
1713
Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, who had founded
o
Cadillac, an
aristocrat, loathed the frontier town. Charles Edwards O'Neill quoted Cadillac
in his "Church and State in French Colonial Louisiana: Policy and Politics
to 1732" as writing after his arrival at Mobile: "Here there is
nothing more than the piled-up dregs of Canada, jailbirds who escaped the rope,
without any subordination to Religion or to Government, steeped in vice,
principally in their concubinage with savage women,
whom they prefer to French girls." – PR 2/24/02
·
Deportation to
·
1720 The capital of
·
1719 With
·
1720s
·
By 1720,
plantations began to appear along the Bay. One early plantation was built by
Charles Rochon at
·
In the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, British, French and Spanish settlers also
built plantations, often settling on the sites of abandoned Indian villages. A
map of the area shows 22 plantation sites that existed by the 1770s.
·
1721 The
first slave ships from the west coast of Africa arrive in
·
1723 Construction of a new
brick fort with a stone foundation began, renamed as Fort Condé in honor of King Louis XIV’s brother.
·
1724 The
king of
·
1731-1763
·
1745
census listed 150 white men and 200 Africans in the
·
1756-1763
British fleet blockades the entrance to bay and stifles French trade.
·
Houses were
small, simple, single-story structures set close to dirt pathways. One room
deep and two or three rooms wide, the houses were often of half-timber or frame
construction and roughly plastered with a mixture of earth and lime made from
crushed oyster shells. Solid shutters covered the windows. Roofs were usually
palmetto thatch or bark, sometimes shingle. Deep covered galleries or porches
stretched across the front, the front and rear, or all the way around
structures. – Barbara Spafford, PR 2/24/2002
o While French colonial architecture at Old Mobile did
not use the oyster shell technique, it did employ the use of half timbers with
clay infilling Typically, the houses were one-room deep and two to three rooms
wide and had a porch or gallery in the front, and a gable or hip roof ran
parallel to the house, according to the book "From Fort to Port" by
Elizabeth Gould.
o In 1763, when the British took over the fort from the
French, the houses were built using the tabby construction method -- burning
oyster shells 
into a cement-type mix and the mix was poured into
wooden forms.– Kathy Jumper, PR 2/24/02
·
From a 1760 map:
– Barbara Spafford, PR 2/24/2002
o Running down the center of
o n the first block (bordered by Government, Royal,
Conti and St. Emanuel) were barracks for the soldiers stationed at
o The second block (bordered by Conti, Royal, Dauphin
and St. Emanuel) housed the commissariat, where foodstuff for the soldiers was
stored.
o In the third block (bordered by Dauphin, Royal, St.
Francis and
o Private residences were scattered throughout the palisaded district, and in the early days of the colony,
Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac lived in
o Outside the palisade at the northern edge of the
city, near the corner of Royal and
o At the corner of Conti and Conception streets is the
site of the Indian Council House. Indian meetings would sometimes draw as many
as 2,000 visitors from as far away as the
·
1763 The Treaty of Paris, ending the French and Indian War, ceded 
colony (the “14th Colony”), with
·
The West Florida
government consisted of a governor, appointed by the crown, and a twelve-member
council, which was the upper house of
·
In 1763, the
estimated white population of
·
·
Mobile harbor is
reopened to seagoing trade, employing the anchorage in the lower Bay. Major
exports include indigo, hides, timber, naval stores, cattle, pecans, corn,
rice, tallow, bear's oil, tobacco, myrtle wax, salted wild beef, salted fish,
pecans, sassafras, and oranges. Trade is now largely in the hands of private
businesses.
·
The Mobile
Catholics continued to worship in their own church, which in 1768 was the only
church building in the colony.
·
The task of
governing
o Farmer declared that English law would replace French
law and the sale of land was forbidden until titles had been duly recorded.
Those who wished to remain had to swear an oath of allegiance to King George
III within three months. Farmar promised safe
transportation to those wishing to depart, but many of the Frenchmen elected to
stay. List of Mobile Inhabitants
Taking the 1763 Oath
o
Farmar also held an Indian
congress. Although opposed to the French policy of giving presents, food, and
drink to the Indians, Farmar realized he had little
choice if he wished to win their friendship. He asked them to pay their debts
but said they would be protected against dishonest traders. He also established
a policy of "an eye for an eye." If any Indian harmed a settler, or a
settler harmed an Indian, the guilty person would be punished.
o
Farmar got into trouble
with Governor Johnstone and others over a variety of
problems and faced a general court-martial in 1768. He was found innocent but
lost his position. He returned to
·
1768 Elias Durnford,
provincial engineer and governor of West Florida, made the first survey of
·
1776 American War of
o Since 
Chester continued to run West Florida for the Crown rom
o British Loyalists, who wanted to escape the American
Revolution, moved to
o James Willing came to
·
1778 William Bartram,
eminent botanist, explored the plant life of this area. Bartram
described
o “It has been near a mile in length, though now
chiefly in ruins, many houses vacant and mouldering
to earth; yet there are a few good buildings inhabited by French gentlemen,
English, Scotch and Irish, and emigrants from the Northern British colonies.
Messrs. Swanson and McGillivary
who have the management of the Indian trade, carried on to the Chicasaws, Chactaws, Upper and
Lower Creeks, &c., have very extraordinary improvements in buildings.”
·
Foreign commerce
languishes under mercantilist Spanish government. The Indian trade is
reorganized, with trade concessions granted to private firms.
·
There were only
four towns of consequence in West Florida in 1783:
·
1780
o Col. Bernardo de Galvez, the 21-year-old Spanish Governor of
o Galvez erected a half-dozen batteries trained on
·
1781 The Battle of Mobile
was part of a British counter-offensive aimed at recapturing
o In January 1781, the
British attack on “The Village” (current-day Daphne) failed. Spanish
authorities in
o
Beginning in
1783 and continuing until 1821, the
·
1791 there
were 258 whites and 475 blacks in
·
1795 The Pinckney Treaty
(aka Treaty of San Lorenzo) established the boundary
between the
o
President
George Washington commissioned Major Andrew Ellicott, a
o
In 1798 the
o
Fort Stoddart, located on a bluff of the upper
·
1803