Founding
county seat of Mobile County, Alabama, United States
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Mobile ( moh-BEEL; French: [mɔbil] ⓘ) is a city and the county seat of Mobile County, Alabama, United States. The population was 187,041 at the 2020 census and estimated at 204,689 following an annexation in 2023, making it the second-most populous city in Alabama. The Mobile metropolitan area, with an estimated 412,000 people, is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the state.
Alabama's only deep-water port, Mobile is located on the Mobile River at the head of Mobile Bay on the north-central Gulf Coast. The Port of Mobile has always played a key role in the economic health of the city, beginning with the settlement as an important trading center between the French colonists and Native Americans, and now to its current role as the 12th-largest port in the United States. During the American Civil War, the city surrendered to Federal forces in April 1865, after Union victories at two forts protecting the city.
Considered one of the Gulf Coast's cultural centers, Mobile has several art museums, a symphony orchestra, professional opera, professional ballet company, and a large concentration of historic architecture. Mobile is known for having Mardi Gras, the oldest organized Carnival celebration in the United States. Alabama's French Creole population celebrated this festival from the first decade of the 18th century. Beginning in 1830, Mobile was home to the first organized Carnival mystic society to celebrate with a parade in the United States.
The city is named after the Mobile tribe that the French colonists encountered living around Mobile Bay. Although it is debated by Alabama historians, they may have been descendants of the Native American tribe from the small fortress town, Mabila, in central Alabama. The Mobile tribe became allies with the French colonists and suggested the location for the original town of Mobile and a river fort. The tribe's language was the basis for Mobilian Jargon, a Choctaw-derived lingua franca widely used to facilitate trade among the various Gulf Coast peoples. About seven years after the founding of the French Mobile settlement, the Mobile tribe, along with the Tohomé, gained permission from the colonists to settle near the fort.
In 1702, French colonists founded the Old Mobile Site south of existing Native American villages on the Mobile River. The Fort Louis de la Louisiane was built on a bluff that today is 27 miles (43 km) upriver from the Mobile River's mouth. The original town of Mobile was built on lower ground just downriver from the fort. French Canadian brothers Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville founded the site to establish control over France's claims to La Louisiane. From 1702 to 1711, it was the French colonial capital.
In July 1703, Mobile's Roman Catholic parish was established by Jean-Baptiste de la Croix de Chevrières de Saint-Vallier, Bishop of Quebec, and was the first French Catholic parish established on the Gulf Coast. In 1704, the ship Pélican delivered 23 Frenchwomen to the colony, but passengers had contracted yellow fever at a stop in Havana; though most recovered, many colonists and neighboring Native Americans contracted the disease and died. African slaves were transported to Mobile on a supply ship from the French colony of Saint-Domingue in the Caribbean.
Disease and flooding plagued French colonists at the Old Mobile Site. The colony grew to 279 persons by 1708 but shrank to 178 persons two years later. In 1711, Bienville ordered the settlement to relocate downriver and Mobile moved to its present location at the confluence of the Mobile River and Mobile Bay. French colonists burned the Old Mobile Site to the ground, likely to prevent their enemies from occupying it.
An earth-and-palisade Fort Louis was constructed at the new site. In 1720, the capital of La Louisiane was moved to Biloxi, and Mobile became a regional military and trading center. In 1723 the construction of a new brick fort with a stone foundation began and it was renamed Fort Condé in honor of Louis Henri, Duke of Bourbon.
In 1763, Britain defeated France in the Seven Years' War. The Treaty of Paris ceded French territories east of the Mississippi River to Britain, including Mobile. The city became part of the expanded British West Florida colony. The British changed the name of Fort Condé to Fort Charlotte, after Queen Charlotte.
The British promised religious tolerance to the French colonists, and 112 French colonists remained in Mobile. The first permanent Jewish settlers came to Mobile in 1763 as a result of the new British rule and religious tolerance; Jews were not allowed to officially reside in colonial French Louisiana due to the Code Noir. Most colonial-era Jews in Mobile were merchants and traders from Sephardic Jewish communities in Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina. In 1766, the town's population was estimated to be 860 people, although the borders were smaller than during the French colonial period. During the American Revolutionary War, West Florida and Mobile became a refuge for loyalists fleeing the other colonies.
While the British were fighting rebellious colonists along the Atlantic coast, the Spanish entered the war in 1779. The Spanish wished to eliminate any British threat to their Louisiana colony west of the Mississippi River, which they had received from France in the 1763 Treaty of Paris. In 1780, Bernardo de Galvez, the Spanish Governor of Louisiana, captured Mobile during the Battle of Fort Charlotte. Their actions were condoned by the revolting American colonies, partially evidenced by the presence of Oliver Pollack, representative of the American Continental Congress. Due to strong trade ties, many residents of Mobile and West Florida remained loyal to the British Crown. The Spanish renamed the fort as Fortaleza Carlota, and held Mobile as a part of Spanish West Florida until 1813, when it was seized by United States General James Wilkinson during the War of 1812.
When Mobile was included in the Mississippi Territory in 1813, the population had dwindled to roughly 300 people. The territory was split in 1817, and the eastern half, including the Mobile Bay area, became the Alabama Territory for two years before being admitted to the union as the state of Alabama. Mobile's population had increased to 809 by that time. Mobile was well situated for trade, as its location tied it to a river system that served as the principal navigational access for most of Alabama and a large part of Mississippi. River transportation was aided by the introduction of steamboats in the early decades of the 19th century. By 1822, the city's population had risen to 2,800.
The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain created shortages of cotton, increasing prices on world markets. Much land well suited to growing cotton lies in the vicinity of the Mobile River, and its main tributaries the Tombigbee and Alabama Rivers. A plantation economy using slave labor developed in the region and Mobile's population quickly grew. From the 1830s onward, Mobile expanded into a city of commerce focused on the cotton and slave trades. Slaves were transported by ship in the coastwise slave trade from the Upper South. Many businesses in the city were related to the slave trade, and the city's booming businesses attracted merchants from the North; by 1850 10% of its population was from New York City, which was deeply involved in the cotton industry.
Mobile was the slave-trading center of the state until the 1850s, when it was surpassed by Montgomery. The prosperity stimulated a building boom that was underway by the mid-1830s. This was cut short in part by the Panic of 1837 and yellow fever epidemics. The waterfront was developed with wharves, terminal facilities, and fireproof brick warehouses. The exports of cotton grew in proportion to the amounts being produced in the Black Belt; by 1840 Mobile was second only to New Orleans in cotton exports in the nation.
Mobile slaveholders owned relatively few slaves compared to planters in the upland plantation areas, but many households had domestic slaves, and many other slaves worked on the waterfront and on riverboats. The last slaves to enter the United States from the African trade were brought to Mobile on the slave ship Clotilda, including Cudjoe Lewis, who was the last survivor of the slave trade.
By 1860, Mobile's population within the city limits was 29,258 people. It was the 27th-largest city in the United States and 4th-largest in what would soon be the Confederate States of America. The free population in the whole of Mobile County, including the city, consisted of 29,754 citizens, of which 1,195 were free people of color. Additionally, 1,785 slave owners in the county held 11,376 people in bondage, about one-quarter of the total county population of 41,130 people.
During the American Civil War, Mobile was a Confederate city. The H. L. Hunley, the first submarine to sink an enemy ship, was built in Mobile. One of the most famous naval engagements of the war was the Battle of Mobile Bay, resulting in the Union taking control of Mobile Bay on August 5, 1864. On April 12, 1865, three days after Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, the city surrendered to the Union army to avoid destruction after Union victories at nearby Spanish Fort and Fort Blakeley.
On May 25, 1865, the city suffered great loss when some three hundred people died as a result of an explosion at a federal ammunition depot on Beauregard Street. The explosion left a 30-foot (9 m) deep hole at the depot's location, and sank ships docked on the Mobile River; the resulting fires destroyed the northern portion of the city.
Federal Reconstruction in Mobile began after the Civil War and effectively ended in 1874 when the local Democrats gained control of the city government. The last quarter of the 19th century was a time of economic depression and municipal insolvency for Mobile. One example can be provided by the value of Mobile's exports during this period of depression. The value of exports leaving the city fell from $9 million in 1878 to $3 million in 1882.
The turn of the 20th century brought the Progressive Era to Mobile. The economic structure developed with new industries, generating new jobs and attracting a significant increase in population. The population increased from around 40,000 in 1900 to 60,000 by 1920. During this time the city received $3 million in federal grants for harbor improvements to deepen the shipping channels. During and after World War I, manufacturing became increasingly vital to Mobile's economic health, with shipbuilding and steel production being two of the most important industries.
During this time, social justice and race relations in Mobile worsened. The state passed a new constitution in 1901 that disenfranchised most blacks and many poor whites; and the white Democratic-dominated legislature passed other discriminatory legislation. In 1902, the city government passed Mobile's first racial segregation ordinance, segregating the city streetcars. It legislated what had been informal practice, enforced by convention. Mobile's African-American population responded to this with a two-month boycott, but the law was not repealed. After this, Mobile's de facto segregation was increasingly replaced with legislated segregation as whites imposed Jim Crow laws to maintain supremacy.
In 1911 the city adopted a commission form of government, which had three members elected by at-large voting. Considered to be progressive, as it would reduce the power of ward bosses, this change resulted in the elite white majority strengthening its power, as only the majority could gain election of at-large candidates. In addition, poor whites and blacks had already been disenfranchised. Mobile was one of the last cities to retain this form of government, which prevented smaller groups from electing candidates of their choice. But Alabama's white yeomanry had historically favored single-member districts in order to elect candidates of their choice.
The red imported fire ant was first introduced into the United States via the Port of Mobile. Sometime in the late 1930s they came ashore off cargo ships arriving from South America. The ants were carried in the soil used as ballast on those ships. They have spread throughout the South and Southwest.
During World War II, the defense buildup in Mobile shipyards resulted in a considerable increase in the city's white middle-class and working-class population, largely due to the massive influx of workers coming to work in the shipyards and at Brookley Army Air Field. Between 1940 and 1943, more than 89,000 people moved into Mobile to work for war effort industries.
Mobile was one of eighteen United States cities producing Liberty ships. Its Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company (ADDSCO) supported the war effort by producing ships faster than the Axis powers could sink them. ADDSCO also churned out a copious number of T2 tankers for the War Department. Gulf Shipbuilding Corporation, a subsidiary of Waterman Steamship Corporation, focused on building freighters, Fletcher-class destroyers, and minesweepers. The rapid increase of population in the city produced crowded conditions, increasing social tensions in the competition for housing and good jobs.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Mobile, Alabama”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.