October 28, 1758

Jean-Simon Chaudron, a poet, silversmith and orator who lived his final years in Mobile, was born at Vignery in the Champagne province of France. He migrated to Haiti, at the time a French colony, in 1784, and upon the outbreak of revolution there left for Philadelphia. In the United States, he had a successful silversmith’s shop that featured the work of the renowned Bavarian artist Anthony Rasch. Chadron also made his name as a writer, primarily of poetry but also of the then well-known “Funeral Oration on Brother George Washington.” In 1817, his family acquired land in Alabama made available by Congress to French exiles; it was part of the ill-fated Vine and Olive Colony near Demopolis. Health problems prompted Chaudron to move to Mobile, where he hosted the visiting Marquis de Lafayette in 1825. Chaudron died in Mobile in 1846.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Marengo County was the site of the Vine and Olive Colony, a failed agricultural endeavor in what would become Alabama. The lands surrounding what is now Demopolis were granted by the federal government with the initial requirement that they be used to grow grapes and olives, but the residents soon shifted to cotton. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Ginger Ann Brook)

In 1820, a French artist created a panoramic painting depicting scenes from the French settlement of Aigleville, in Marengo County. This scene is part of a wallpaper reproduction of the painting that was donated to the Alabama Department of Archives and History by Alabama Power Executive Thomas Martin. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Alabama Department of Archives and History)

This section of a panoramic wallpaper commemorating the Vine and Olive Colony depicts settlers in French military costume. Several of the original settlers of the colony were members of the French military. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Alabama Department of Archives and History)

Construction of Aigleville, capital of the state of Marengo, on the banks of the Tombechbé (Tombigbee) The settlement was established in late 1818 by former French Bonapartists and refugees from Saint-Domingue as a part of their Vine and Olive Colony. (Charles Abraham Chasselat, National Museum of French-American Friendship and Cooperation at Blérancourt)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.