The Vine and Olive Colony was an effort by a group of French Bonapartists who, fearing for their lives after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Bourbon Restoration, attempted to establish an agricultural settlement growing wine grapes and olive trees in the Alabama wilderness. The area that they settled later became the counties of Marengo and Hale. [1]
The Vine and Olive Colony was an effort started by the French Emigrant Association, made up of high-ranking officials and followers of Napoleon fearing for their lives after the restoration of Louis XVIII to the French throne. In the fall of 1816 the group, headed by the former General Charles Lallemand, decided to petition Washington, D.C. for four townships upon which they could settle. [2] They began scouting the western frontiers of the Southern United States for an appropriate place upon which to establish their endeavor, with a location at the confluence of the Black Warrior and Tombigbee Rivers being chosen after being recommended by other western pioneers. [2] The United States Congress agreed to allow them to settle and on 3 March 1817 approved an act that granted them four contiguous townships totaling 92,160 acres (373.0 km2) of land for the price of $2 per acre on the condition that they cultivate grapes and olives. [2] This condition was because several other Bonapartist colonies in the world were thought to be little more than military operations with the intention of returning Napoleon to power. [2]
After their journey across the Atlantic, they first arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the largest group of settlers chartered a schooner, the McDonough, to sail them from Philadelphia to Mobile, Alabama. [3] They arrived in Mobile by 26 May 1817 and began the ascent up the rivers. [3] En route, the party stopped at Fort Stoddert and then Fort Montgomery, where they met General Edmund P. Gaines. [4] The group arrived at their destination of Ecor Blanc, literally meaning White Bluff or White Cliff, on the Tombigbee River by 14 July 1817. [3]
The most prominent and wealthy immigrants was Count Charles Lefebvre Desnouettes, who had been a cavalry officer with the rank of Lieutenant-General under Napoleon. He was to serve as the leader of the colony. Other prominent settlers included Lieutenant-General Baron Henri-Dominique Lallemand, brother of Charles, Count Bertrand Clausel, Joseph Lakanal, Simon Chaudron, Benoît Chassériau, Pasqual Luciani, Colonel Jean-Jerome Cluis, Jean-Marie Chapron, Colonel Nicholas Raoul, and Frederic Ravesies. [5] The colonists, about 200 people, soon established the town of Demopolis, or "City of the People", on top of White Bluff, but following a survey in August 1818, they learned that their actual land grants began less than a mile to the east of their newly cleared land. After abandoning the settlement of Demopolis, they soon established two other towns, Aigleville and Arcola. [6] Aigleville was named in honor of Napoleon's ensign, featuring an eagle. [6] Arcola was named for the Battle of the Bridge of Arcole, site of a Napoleonic victory in 1796. Arcola became the largest town in the colony. [7]
After settling into their new surroundings, the colonists soon discovered that their land was not suited to fulfill the condition placed by Congress on their grants, the cultivation of grapes or olives. [8] The colony sent a representative, Charles Villar, to Washington to plead their case and Congress complied with a supplementary act on 26 April 1822 that allowed the settlers to retain their land in the event that growing grapes and olives proved fruitless. [8] In addition, the colony had few laborers, faced a constant encroachment on their territory by American squatters, and experienced floods and droughts in these first few years. [8] All of these factors led to the eventual collapse of the colony. After 1825, most of the settlers left the colony to return to France or settle in Mobile or New Orleans, Louisiana, although a few did stay on their grants permanently. [9]
Demopolis continues as a town into the present day; Aigleville and Arcola were largely gone by the eve of the American Civil War. [9] The settlers' efforts are remembered by the name of the county, Marengo, and the name of the county seat, Linden. The county was named Marengo to commemorate Napoleon's victory at the Battle of Marengo over the Austrian armies on 14 June 1800. [10] The county seat was originally known as the Town of Marengo, but in 1823 the name was changed to Linden. [10] Linden is a shortened version of Hohenlinden, scene of another Napoleonic victory in Bavaria in 1800. [10]
Marengo County is a county located in the west central portion of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 census, the population was 19,323. The largest city is Demopolis, and the county seat is Linden. It is named in honor of the Battle of Marengo near Turin, Italy, where French leader Napoleon Bonaparte defeated the Austrians on June 14, 1800.
Demopolis is the largest city in Marengo County, in west-central Alabama. The population was 7,162 at the 2020 census.
Linden is a city in and the county seat of Marengo County, Alabama, United States. The population was 1,930 at the 2020 census, down from 2,123 at the 2010 census.
The Battle of Hohenlinden was fought on 3 December 1800 during the French Revolutionary Wars. A French army under Jean Victor Marie Moreau won a decisive victory over an Austrian and Bavarian force led by 18-year-old Archduke John of Austria. The allies were forced into a disastrous retreat that compelled them to request an armistice, effectively ending the War of the Second Coalition. Hohenlinden is 33 km east of Munich in modern Germany.
Charles, comte Lefebvre-Desnouettes or Lefèbvre-Desnoëttes became a French officer during the French Revolutionary Wars and a general during the Napoleonic Wars. He later emigrated to the United States.
François Antoine "Charles" Lallemand was a French general who served Napoleon I of France, tried to found a colony in what is now Texas, and finally returned to France to serve as governor of Corsica.
The Fighting Kentuckian is a 1949 American Adventure Western film written and directed by George Waggner and starring John Wayne, who also produced the film. The supporting cast featured Vera Ralston; Philip Dorn; Oliver Hardy portraying Wayne's portly sidekick; Marie Windsor; John Howard; Hugo Haas; Grant Withers and Odette Myrtil.
The Demopolis Historic Business District, currently officially known as Demopolis Historic District, is a historic district in the city of Demopolis, Alabama, United States. Demopolis had its beginnings in 1817 with the Vine and Olive Colony. The historic district is a ten block area, roughly bounded by Capitol Street, Franklin Street, Desnouettes Street, and Cedar Avenue.
Demopolis Town Square, currently officially known as Confederate Park, is a historic park in the city of Demopolis, Alabama, United States. It is one of the oldest public squares in the state. Demopolis had its beginnings in 1817 with the Vine and Olive Colony, and the park was established in 1819. The park covers one city block, bounded by Main, Capitol, Walnut, and Washington Streets.
White Bluff, also known as Ecor Blanc, is a historic site located along the Tombigbee River in Demopolis, Alabama. It is a chalk cliff, roughly one mile long, that is composed of a geological layer known as the Demopolis Chalk Formation, part of the Selma Group. The upper portions of the cliff stood almost 80 feet (24 m) above the river before the construction of the Demopolis Lock and Dam downriver. It now averages about 30 feet (9.1 m) above the river.
Ashe Cottage, also known as the Ely House, is a historic Carpenter Gothic house in Demopolis, Alabama. It was built in 1832 and expanded and remodeled in the Gothic Revival style in 1858 by William Cincinnatus Ashe, a physician from North Carolina. The cottage is a 1+1⁄2-story wood-frame building, the front elevation features two semi-octagonal gabled front bays with a one-story porch inset between them. The gables and porch are trimmed with bargeboards in a design taken from Samuel Sloan's plan for "An Old English Cottage" in his 1852 publication, The Model Architect. The house is one of only about twenty remaining residential examples of Gothic Revival architecture remaining in the state. Other historic Gothic Revival residences in the area include Waldwic in Gallion and Fairhope Plantation in Uniontown. Ashe Cottage was added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on August 22, 1975, and to the National Register of Historic Places on 19 October 1978.
Altwood is a historic plantation house located near Faunsdale, Alabama. It was built in 1836 by Richard H. Adams and began as a log dogtrot house. It was then expanded until it came to superficially resemble a Tidewater-type cottage. Brought to the early Alabama frontier by settlers from the Tidewater and Piedmont regions of Virginia, this vernacular house-type is usually a story-and-a-half in height, displays strict symmetry, and is characterized by prominent end chimneys flanking a steeply pitched longitudinal gable roof that is often pierced by dormer windows.
Bermuda Hill, also known as the Liver House, is a historic plantation house in Hale County, Alabama, near Prairieville, Alabama. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 7, 1994, as a part of the Plantation Houses of the Alabama Canebrake and Their Associated Outbuildings Multiple Property Submission.
The Alfred Hatch Place at Arcola, also known as the Arcola Plantation and locally as the Half-house, is a historic plantation house and historic district on the Black Warrior River several miles northwest of Gallion, Alabama.
Hawthorne, also known as the Browder Place, is a historic Italianate plantation house and historic district in Prairieville, Alabama, USA. This area of Hale County was included in Marengo County before the creation of Hale in 1867. Hawthorne is included in the Plantation Houses of the Alabama Canebrake and Their Associated Outbuildings Multiple Property Submission. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 7, 1994, due to its architectural significance.
Champ d'Asile was a short-lived settlement founded in Texas in January 1818 by 20 French Bonapartist veterans of the Napoleonic Wars from the Vine and Olive Colony. The party was led by General Charles Lallemand. Land was offered to French settlers on March 3, 1817, after a vote by the United States Congress. Champ d'Asile was situated along the Trinity River and was abandoned in July of the same year.
Arcola is a ghost town on the Black Warrior River in what is now Hale County, formerly Marengo County, Alabama. Named to honor the French victory during the Battle of Arcola, it was established in the early 1820s by former French Bonapartists as part of their Vine and Olive Colony, after they were forced to abandon their first town at Demopolis and many found Aigleville unsuitable. The first settler at the site was Frederic Ravesies, who established himself at what later became the Hatch Plantation. Although never more than a village, Arcola became the largest settlement in the colony. Beginning in the 1830s American settlers moved into the area and purchased most of the former French land grants, primarily using Arcola as a river landing. By the 1850s the French settlement had disappeared, replaced by a community of adjoining plantations.
Aigleville, literally translated as Eagle Town, was a town on the Black Warrior River in Marengo County, Alabama, United States that is now a ghost town. The settlement was established in late 1818 by former French Bonapartists and refugees from Saint-Domingue, as a part of their Vine and Olive Colony. It was named in honor of the French Imperial Eagle, the standard used by the Grande Armée of Napoleon I, and is now within the city of Demopolis.
L'Abeille américaine, Journal Historique, Politique, et Litteraire à Philadelphie was an American French language newspaper, based in Philadelphia The weekly newspaper, published by A.J. Blocquerst, began publication in 1815. The founder of the newspaper, Jean Simon Chaudron, had escaped from Santo Domingo. now Haiti. (Saint-Domingue).
Jacques Garnier, also called Garnier de Saintes, was born in Saintes on 30 March 1755, and drowned in the Ohio River in 1817 or 1818 was a French politician, a lawyer and a revolutionary.
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