Demopolis, Alabama Demopolis, Alabama Aerial view of Demopolis, Alabama.
Aerial view of Demopolis, Alabama.
Location in Marengo County and the state of Alabama Location in Marengo County and the state of Alabama Demopolis is the biggest city in Marengo County, Alabama, United States.
It is situated up on a cliff composed of the Demopolis Chalk Formation, known locally as White Bluff, on the east bank of the Tombigbee River. It is at the center of Alabama's Canebrake region and is also inside the Black Belt. Demopolis was established after the fall of Napoleon's Empire and titled by a group of French expatriates, a mix of exiled Bonapartists and other French migrants who had settled in the United States after the overthrow of the colonial government in Saint-Domingue following the floundered Saint-Domingue expedition.
The name, meaning in Greek "the People's City" or "City of the People", was chosen to honor the democratic ideals behind the endeavor.
By July 14, 1817, a small party of pioneers had settled at White Bluff on the Tombigbee River, at the present site of Demopolis, beginning the Vine and Olive Colony. After abandoning the settlement of Demopolis, they soon established two other towns, Aigleville and Arcola. A territory business was formed in 1819 with the express purpose of purchasing the territory and laying off of a town, the White Bluff Association (later retitled the Company of the Town of Demopolis).
The Demopolis Town Square, encompassing one town/city block, was established in 1819.
A strip of territory that was remain enhance property, for the use of all, was the territory adjoining the Tombigbee River from where Riverside Cemetery is today, to the southwest of the town/city proper, all the way to the Upper Landing in the north, with Arch Street following the route along the top of the cliff.
The typical town lots, at 75 feet (23 m) wide and 150 feet (46 m) deep were not conducive to the building of the stately homes desired by the more prosperous people of the town, although some grand mansions did begin to appear by the late 1820s.
One primary flaw in the town plan was that there was no clearly defined company district, resulting in commercial and residentiary buildings different together all over town.
Some stores did open around the town square, however, and warehouses started to appear adjoining to the town's three primary river landings, Upper Landing, above the undivided Demopolis Yacht Basin and Marina, Webb's Landing at the end of Washington Street, and Lower Landing to the west of Riverside Cemetery and the Whitfield Canal. By the 1830s Demopolis had advanced into a county-wide commercial river hub, attracting American and European-born craftsmen and merchants including the Beysiegle, Breitling, Breton, Dupertuis, Foster, Hummell, Kirker, Knapp, Marx, Michael, Mulligan, Oberling, Rhodes, Rudisill, Rosenbaum, Schmidt, Shahan, Stallings, and Zaiser families.
Numerous plantation owners also established town homes in the improve or on its outskirts, including the Allen, Ashe, Curtis, Du - Bose, Foscue, Glover, Griffin, Lane, Lyon, Mc - Allister, Prout, Reese, Strudwick, Tayloe, Whitfield, and Vaughan families.
However, unlike many other suburbs in the Canebrake and Black Belt, Demopolis was never overwhelmed by a homogeneous planter class that came to dominate so many of the others.
These encompassed the prohibition of selling or purchasing any article or commodity from or to a slave without written permission from their master or overseer, no slave was allowed to purchase alcohol without written consent, if any slave were convicted of assault upon "any white man, negro, or mulatto" the owner would be fined $50, any slave caught running "any horse, gelding, or mule" through town would be subject to fifteen lashes unless the owner pays a fine of $1, any slave caught driving any wagon or cart or driving a horse or mule on or athwart the sidewalks of the town would be subject to 10 lashes, unless the owner pays a fine of 50 cents. Trinity Episcopal Church, this structure was assembled in 1870 after the previous building burned in 1865 amid the occupation of the town/city by Federal troops.
With its eclectic mix of citizenry, Demopolis was slow to erect homes of worship.
Mainline Protestant churches were slow to take root, in fact no churches at all were assembled in Demopolis until 1840.
The Methodist congregation was established in 1840 and the first building was instead of in 1843.:6-8 Present in Demopolis from the beginning, the Catholic congregation in town was listed as a mission of Saint John the Baptist in Tuscaloosa in 1851.
Several the rest were dedicated to almost exclusively to Demopolis and the cotton trade, including the Allen Glover, Canebrake, Cherokee, Demopolis, Frank Lyon, Marengo, and the Mollie Glover.
The year 1853 saw a yellow fever epidemic strike the city, with some interments in an ill-defined two acre cemetery to the north of town in the river bend.
This led to the establishment of the chief burial ground for the city, Riverside Cemetery, officially opened with the sale of additional plots to the enhance in 1882. A circular Gothic Revival-style amphitheater, complete with a crenelated roof-line, was instead of in 1859 north of town in Webb's Bend at the fairgrounds.
With the start of the Civil War, a several Confederate companies drew heavily from the populace of the Demopolis region and Marengo County.
These encompassed the 4th, 11th, 21st, 23rd, and 43rd Alabama Infantry Regiments in addition to the 8th Alabama Cavalry, Company E of the Jeff Davis Legion, and Selden's Battery.
These brought in thousands of soldiers into town at a time, one that had a had just over a thousand of its own inhabitants before to the war, putting an enormous strain on food and accommodations in the town.
Many hundreds of the soldiers who died in the hospitals amid the war were buried in a Confederate cemetery on the south end of Webb's Bend, but the site is under water today, following the damming of the river below Demopolis in the 20th century. After the loss of its major east-west barns amid the war, the Confederate government instead of the Alabama and Mississippi Rivers Railroad from Selma through Demopolis and on to Meridian, Mississippi in 1862.
The universal had been in the works since the 1850s, but a several miles between Demopolis and Uniontown had not been rather than when war erupted.
As the war raged in all directions around Demopolis in 1864, the town/city was subjected to a huge influx of war refugees.
March 1865 saw Demopolis preparing to defend the town against Union threats, with the fortification of key positions.
A flotilla of eighteen Confederate gunboats and packet ships were relocated to the Tombigbee River at Demopolis around this same time.
With the surrender of the last of the Confederates, Demopolis was left a much different town/city from what it had been before to the war.
Even with some bright spots in relations, the Episcopal Church in the South was slow to give up on the notion of the Confederacy, resulting in the military governor of Alabama method all Episcopal churches in the state, effective on September 20, 1865.
Trinity Episcopal Church in Demopolis was put under Federal guard, and amid this time the church mysteriously burned down.
Demopolis City Hall in 2010.
During Reconstruction, the new authorities in charge of the government decided to move the governmental center of county of Marengo from its central locale in Linden to Demopolis by an act allowed on December 4, 1868.
Whitfield to build or buy a new courthouse in Demopolis.
This building serves as Demopolis City Hall today.
The move of the governmental center of county was highly controversial, and the Alabama Legislature set April 18, 1870 as the date for a county-wide popular vote to decide if Dayton, Demopolis, or Linden would turn into the county seat.
Linden continued an attempt to persuade the state council to move the governmental center of county back to their town, with success in February 1871.
The former courthouse buildings reverted from county ownership to Demopolis and remain town/city property today. The John Quill at Webb's Landing in Demopolis in 1912.
Demopolis had electric lights, water works and a sewerage system, chert-covered streets, paved sidewalks, and a fire department by the second decade of the 20th century.
Major financial establishments encompassed the Commercial National Bank, City Bank and Trust Company, and Robertson Banking Company.
Although the improve had many newspapers throughout its first 100 years, the only one to survive into the 21st century, The Demopolis Times, was established in 1904. Rooster Hall, following its incarnations as a church, courthouse, and then a town/city property, was leased for use as the Demopolis Opera House from 1876 to 1902.
Enumeration Bureau, the town/city has a total region of 12.5 square miles (32 km2), of which 12.2 square miles (32 km2) is territory and 0.2 square miles (0.52 km2) (2.00%) is water.
Alabama state highways include State Route 8, State Route 13, and the close-by State Route 69.
Demopolis is served by a several stockyards companies, including Norfolk Southern Railway, BNSF Railway, and the Alabama and Gulf Coast Railway.
The Alabama State Port Authority has inland docks at the Port of Demopolis with direct access to inland and intracoastal waterways serving the Great Lakes, the Ohio and Tennessee rivers and the Gulf of Mexico via the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. The Demopolis Municipal Airport is positioned northwest of the city, adjoining to Airport Industrial Park and the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway.
During the 2000 United States Census, there were 7,540 citizens , 3,014 homeholds, and 2,070 families residing in the city.
In the city, the populace was spread out with 29.1% under the age of 18, 8.4% from 18 to 24, 26.6% from 25 to 44, 21.6% from 45 to 64, and 14.3% who were 65 years of age or older.
During the 2010 United States Census, there were 7,483 citizens , 3,049 homeholds, and 1,998 families residing in the city.
In the city, the populace was spread out with 27.0% under the age of 18, 8.8% from 18 to 24, 24.1% from 25 to 44, 25.3% from 45 to 64, and 14.8% who were 65 years of age or older.
The town/city runs its own citywide enhance school system, the Demopolis City School District.
Private schools in the town/city include one integrated Christian school, West Alabama Christian School.
The town/city is also home to the Demopolis Higher Education Center.
It presently serves as the command posts of the Marengo County Historical Society and also homes history exhibits and the works of Geneva Mercer, a Marengo County native who attained fame as an artist and sculptor.
Other historic sites in Demopolis include White Bluff, the Demopolis Historic Business District, Demopolis Town Square, Lyon Hall, Ashe Cottage, the Curtis House, the Glover Mausoleum, and the Foscue-Whitfield House. Their unit passes through the port of Mobile, Alabama, where John Breen, played by John Wayne, meets the pretty Fleurette De Marchand, played by Vera Ralston, from Demopolis.
He makes sure the unit passes through Demopolis on its way back home and he stays there as the unit leaves.
List of citizens from Demopolis, Alabama National Register of Historic Places listings in Marengo County, Alabama "ADAH: Marengo Historical Markers".
"Alabama's Canebrake".
The Peoples City: The Glory and the Grief of an Alabama Town 1850 1874.
Demopolis, Alabama: The Marengo County Historical Society.
History of Alabama and dictionary of Alabama biography, Volume 1.
Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Demopolis Upper Landing Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Demopolis Lower Landing (historical) d Smith, The Peoples City Marengo County Heritage Book Committee: The tradition of Marengo County, Alabama, pages 34 46.
Smith, The Peoples City, 16 19 Smith, The Peoples City, 73 74.
Smith, The Peoples City, 339.
Smith, The Peoples City, 105-56.
D Smith, The Peoples City, 129 218.
Smith, The Peoples City, 219 332.
Smith, The Peoples City, 268 274.
City of Demopolis.
Owen, History of Alabama and dictionary, 482 483.
"Historic Markers: Marengo County".
"Demopolis Airport".
City of Demopolis.
Demopolis, AL Greyhound Station Intercity Bus Service "Demopolis city, Alabama: Population Finder".
D e "Demopolis city, Alabama: Enumeration 2000 Demographic Profile Highlights".
"Demopolis City Audit for September 30, 2009" (PDF).
City of Demopolis.
"United States Enumeration 1930".
"United States Enumeration 1940".
"United States Enumeration 1950".
"United States Enumeration 1960".
"City Government".
City of Demopolis.
Marengo County Heritage Book Committee: The tradition of Marengo County, Alabama, page 15.
"Alabama: Marengo County".
"Demopolis Stories of Hellman and Wyler".
"Demopolis: Lillian Hellman".
Climate Summary for Demopolis, Alabama The Story of Demopolis a condensed history of the beginning and evolution of Demopolis, Alabama.
The citizens 's town/city the glory and grief of an Alabama town, 1850 1874.
Demopolis, Ala: Marengo County Historical Society.
The French Grant in Alabama: A History of the Founding of Demopolis.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Demopolis, Alabama.
Municipalities and communities of Marengo County, Alabama, United States Cities in Alabama - Demopolis, Alabama - Populated places established in 1817 - Vine and Olive Colony - Former county seats in Alabama - 1817 establishments in the United States - Cities in Marengo County, Alabama - French-American culture in Alabama
|