Mobile Culture
Mulattos (“Creoles”)
- Creoles were originally white French men and women born in the New World French colonies such as Louisiana, Saint Domingue (Haiti) and the Caribbean. It was later taken to mean the mulatto descendents of the French and Spanish settlers.
- In the early colonial period, Indian slaves were common in French households, but there was a steady increase in black slaves after the African slave trade began in the 1720s.
- Miscegenation between masters and slaves, both Indian and African, created generations of Métis and mulattos. Some relationships were bonded by marriage and witnessed by the church, while others were common law arrangements.
- Miscegenation was a matter of concern for French and Spanish colonial officials, but was rarely enforced. The Latin culture of French and Spanish settlers was more tolerant of miscegenation than was the Anglo-Saxon culture which followed it.
- “Creoles” were always distinguished by their skin color; some light-skinned people became “white.”
- Many of the black Creoles in antebellum Mobile were descendants of early settlers such as Jean Chastang, Hilaire Dubroca, William Mitchell, Frank Mitchell, Simon L’Andre, Honore Collins, Auguste Collins, Nanette Durette, Regis Bernody, Jean Baptiste Laurendine and Julia Villars.
- Carlos Lalanda became perhaps the most prominent mulatto in Mobile. He had bought Belle Fontaine on Mobile Bay in 1796 and he later acquired other properties at Dog River, Grand Terre and Tensaw. In 1811, he commanded the mulatto militia and had obtained a contract to supply biscuit and hard tack for the Mobile garrison.
- The families of Dr. John Chastang and Simon Andry formed the nucleus of a Creole Catholic Community that still exists in the town of Chastang, 27 miles north of Mobile.
- The Adams-Onis Treaty that transferred West Florida to the United States authorized people of mixed heritage, mulattoes, full citizenship rights that included educational advantages, property ownership, the right to own slaves, inheritance rights, the right to buy and sell liquor, and the right to vote. However they were often segregated to separate facilities and had a separate social structure.
- In the 1830s, when Alabama barred free African Americans from attending school, the Alabama Legislature granted ‘free colored Creoles’ in Mobile the right to create their own separate school system.
- The Mobile Diocese created the Cathedral Creole School and the Creole schools located at St. Patrick’s Church and on Mon Luis Island for Mobile’s Catholic Creoles.
- Creole #1 Fire Company was the first volunteer fire company in Mobile, founded in 1819 by member’s of Mobile’s Creole community.
- Creole Fire House #1 was built at 13 N. Dearborn St in 1872. The company remained in the Dearborn Street house until the Central Fire Station was built in 1926
- The fire company was absorbed into the city department in 1888 and finally disbanded in 1970.
- It is said that the Creole #1 was usually the first to get to the fire because they bought rejected race horses, including Jack, the horse who could follow his nose straight to the fire. Horse drawn equipment was used until 1924.
Fire Companies
- The city fire department was created in 1888. Before the Central Fire Station was built in 1926, the fire companies were privately run operations. The small fire houses still used by the private companies were closed and centralized in the new station.
- Creole #1 Fire Company
- In the nineteenth century, the fire alarm was sounded by beating on a metal wagon wheel ring with a hammer. The fire because the company that responded first got paid. By law, every citizen was required to have a fire bucket, and three were required in cotton warehouses, taverns and hotels. The fire wardens were required to carry an 8-foot staff painted vermilion and gold as a sign of their authority. They were also fined heavily if they left the fire before it went out. – Main Street Mobile
