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    Fairhope
    Fairhope
    Fairhope
    Ebook178 pages1 hour

    Fairhope

    By Cathy Donelson and Fannie Flagg

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    About this ebook

    Three centuries of Utopian dreams came true in the 1890s, when a group of idealists founded Fairhope as a cooperative colony on a lush bluff along Alabama's Gulf Coast. The visionary settlers thought their experimental village had a "fair hope" of success. An oasis of idealism and equality, Fairhope not only succeeded but grew into an elegant enclave of individualism and intellect. The bayside town is the world's oldest and largest single-tax colony as well as a popular resort that draws visitors from around the world. Photographic images herein capture the unique

    development by adventurous characters with diverse backgrounds. This book is a map of "Old Fairhope."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439617182
    Fairhope
    Author

    Cathy Donelson

    Cathy Donelson�writer, historian, and former director of two area historical museums�has brought together many rare early photographs and postcards of Fairhope�s fascinating past. This volume is a must for the libraries of residents as well as visitors who experience the cosmopolitan charm of the town rooted in a rich individualist heritage.

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      Book preview

      Fairhope - Cathy Donelson

      Flagg

      INTRODUCTION

      Long before the English humanist and statesman Sir Thomas More published his Utopia in 1516, man dreamed of finding or establishing a perfect place.

      Fairhope, a small town that has played a large role in American history, is the result of those kinds of dreams. The site of the model community founded from scratch on Alabama’s Gulf Coast by visionaries in 1894 had been imagined as an ideal location for a city by many others before them.

      Vintage views of the remarkable colony created out of their vision of a Utopian society are presented in the pages of this book, which conveys a special sense of time and place.

      Utopia means no place in Greek. Ironically the founders of Fairhope had selected the name of their experimental colony in the late 19th century before they decided on a place for the town they thought would have a fair hope of succeeding.

      Idealists and freethinkers from across the country who were devoted to the economic theory of a single tax on land pooled their resources to create an intentional community to demonstrate their ideals. They cast their fortunes and futures upon a forested bluff with a sweeping and panoramic view of the bay for their communal colony based on a concept of cooperative individualism.

      From the beginning of European exploration of the Gulf of Mexico, the inviting bluff on the Eastern Shore of the bay was part of a struggle for a New World empire. Spain first claimed the scenic region that early conquistadors believed held a fabled fountain of youth.

      Alonso Alvarez de Pineda, an explorer who had sailed with Christopher Columbus, was the first to map the bay in 1519. Laying claim to the region for Spain, he named the bay Espiritu Santo, or Bay of the Holy Spirit.

      Despite Spanish efforts to hold title to the lush stretch of semi-tropical coastline, it was the French who established a permanent settlement there. A colonization expedition sent by Louis XIV, the flamboyant Sun King, landed on a Gulf beach south of the future site of Fairhope in 1699 and built a fort upriver.

      Mobile was established in 1711 and became the capital of old Louisiana, named in honor of King Louis. French plantations to supply the colony were located on the bluffs across the bay.

      Two Canadian brothers, Jean Baptiste le Moyne, sieur de Bienville, and Pierre, sieur d’Iberville, led the expedition to settle the area to squeeze the rival British out of the Atlantic Coast where they had founded colonies.

      In 1703, d’Iberville was named the first governor of French Louisiana. He asked the king for a grant of land around Mobile Bay, including the great bluffs on the Eastern Shore, but the crown refused. The rich land was intended to attract settlers from France.

      D’Iberville’s tenure as governor was short-lived. He died in Havana in 1706 while planning an invasion to drive the English from the Eastern Seaboard. If the plan had succeeded, it would have changed the course of American history.

      The first recorded settler may not have arrived willingly at what is now Fairhope. Pierre Laurendine, a 21-year-old soldier, arrived in the Louisiana colony in 1727 on a ship listing its passengers as Deserters and Others Sent by Order of the King.

      He became a landowner and established a plantation on the Eastern Shore. After his death in 1769, his holdings passed to his son Jean Baptiste Laurendine.

      Old Louisiana was dismembered after the Peace of Paris in 1763, when part of the area passed to Britain, essentially becoming a 14th colony, British West Florida. The two leading British officials of the province established plantations on prime lands north and south of Laurendine and laid out a new town there to supplant Mobile.

      However, the Revolutionary War scuttled plans for their dream town on the Eastern Shore. In 1779, the British surrendered the area to Spanish forces.

      In 1800, Laurendine, calling himself an old inhabitant of this District, petitioned the Spanish commandant at Mobile for pastureland across the bay because, he said, an Appalachee tribe uprising placed him at risk of losing his cattle.

      His request was granted, and in 1805, Laurendine sold his land, which also contained a house and kitchen, for $120 to Louis de Feriet of New Orleans. The French baron was a lieutenant with a Spanish regiment of Louisiana Infantry serving in Mobile.

      The rest is history, illustrated by maps, drawings, and photographs contained in this book. The images tell the story of still another dream town, Alabama City, which was platted on the bluff. But yet another conflict, the Civil War, intervened. The site of Fairhope remained pine and pastureland until the so-called single-taxers arrived to create their model town.

      Their creation became the oldest and largest single-tax colony in the world and the most successful.

      The unique village drew progressives and Populists, Socialists and Quakers, artists and intellectuals, and even nudists and free-love advocates. Many of the major social reformers of the early 20th century—from Dewey to Darrow—made pilgrimages to Fairhope. Strong individualists, fine minds, independent spirits, and colorful characters of all sorts came to inhabit the town founded on principle.

      Thanks go to all who treasure the mystique and magic of Old Fairhope, especially those who shared their historic documents and heirloom photographs along with their memories of some of its forgotten people and

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