History Of Mobile, Alabama

Mobile was founded as the capital of colonial French Louisiana in 1702 and remained a part of New France for over 60 years. During 1720, when France warred with Spain, Mobile was on the battlefront, so the capital moved west to Biloxi. In 1763, Britain took control of the colony following their victory in the Seven Years' War. During the American Revolutionary War, the Spanish captured Mobile and retained it by the terms of the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

Mobile first became a part of the United States in 1813, when it was captured by American forces and added to the Mississippi Territory, then later re-zoned into the Alabama Territory in August 1817. Finally on December 14, 1819, Mobile became part of the new 22nd state, Alabama, one of the earlier states of the U.S. Forty-one years later, Alabama left the Union and joined the Confederate States of America in 1861. It returned in 1865 after the American Civil War.

The Seven Years' War (aka French and Indian War) began
in 1756 and ended in 1763, with Mobile ceded to Britain,
while land west of the Mississippi plus New Orleans had
been ceded to Spain; see: Treaty of Paris (1763).

Mobile had spent decades as French, then British, then Spanish, then American, spanning 160 years, up to the Civil War.

Conquistadors: 1519 to 1559

Spanish explorers were sailing into the area of Mobile Bay as early as 1500, with the bay being marked on early Spanish maps as the ''Bahía del Espíritu Santo'' (Bay of the Holy Spirit). The area was explored in more detail in 1516 by Diego de Miruelo and in 1519 by Alonso Álvarez de Pineda. In 1528, Pánfilo de Narváez traveled through what was likely the Mobile Bay area, encountering Native Americans who fled and burned their towns at the approach of the expedition. This response was a prelude to the journeys of Hernando de Soto, more than eleven years later.

Hernando de Soto explored the area of Mobile Bay and beyond in 1540, finding the area inhabited by a Muscogee Native American people. During this expedition, his forces destroyed the fortified town of ''Mauvila'', also spelled ''Maubila'', from which the name Mobile was later derived. The battle with Chief Tuscaloosa and his warriors took place somewhere north of the current site of Mobile. The next large expedition was that of Tristán de Luna y Arellano, in his unsuccessful attempt to establish a permanent colony for Spain, nearby at Pensacola in 1559–1561.

Colonial period

French Louisiana: 1702 to 1763

Although Spain's presence in the area had been sporadic, the French, under Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville from his base at Fort Maurepas, established a settlement on the Mobile River in 1702. The settlement, then known as ''Fort Louis de la Louisiane'', was first established at Twenty-seven Mile Bluff as the first capital of the French colony of Louisiana. It was founded under the direction of d'Iberville by his brother, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, to establish control over France's Louisiana claims with Bienville having been made governor of French Louisiana in 1701. Mobile's Roman Catholic parish was established on 20 July 1703, by Jean-Baptiste de la Croix de Chevrières de Saint-Vallier, Bishop of Quebec. The parish was the first established on the Gulf Coast of the United States. The year 1704 saw the arrival of 23 women, known to history as " casquette girls" to the colony aboard the ''Pélican'', along with yellow fever introduced to the ship in Havana

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