1702

1704

In January 1704, the Pelican left Loire, France for La Mobile, La Louisiana, New France. Arriving in August, it brought a group of single women, now referred to as the "Pelican Girls." 

Unfortunately, the shop also brought Yellow Fever to the fledgling colony. 

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1711

Colony moves to its present site

…after crossing the bay, it is about 70 miles through a desert almost uninhabited. There are two small settlements near the coast. At Fish River near the lower end of the bay. On the east side are four families…and going northward from thence to the American line, there are about 13 families more on the east side of the bay and river Mobile, and 15 families on the western side.

 Farmer’s Repository (West Virginia), February 1, 1811.

An extremely dissipated drunken and disorderly woman of the name of Kenchen, met her death on Wednesday night, last, in the following manner: -- It appears that she went to bed with her bonnet on, but in the

restlessness which intoxication often creates, she fell out of bed, and her bonnet becoming fastened between the bedstead or bedpost and the wall, she was so drunk as to be unable to loosen the strings and was in consequence strangled.

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Farmer’s Repository (West Virginia), February 1, 1811

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The population does not exceed eight hundred souls, inhabiting one hundred and twenty tenements…The inhabitants of Mobile are of various descriptions: about five hundred are people of color, of every shade, who are generally free and possessed of real estate. The balance are whites, of a heterogeneous character.

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Rhode Island American, July 18, 1817

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These emigrations are principally from the Carolinas, Georgia and Tennessee. Many planters worth from $20,000 to $30,000 have come on, selected their plantations, and began their cultivation on the public lands; intending to purchase at the sale, which is expected to be next fall. I am sorry to say that religion in all this country is out of the question…The Sabbath is scarcely known, except as a holiday. Profane language is as common as it is on board an English man of war. Education is sadly neglected… The dissipation and indolence of the inhabitants is surprising. Their living we northern people should call miserable.

Berkshire Star (Massachusetts), July 17, 1817.