Today we drove to Mobile which we had been told was originally going to be called Africa town but it turns out the history was slightly different. Africa Town is 3 miles North of downtown Mobile. It was formed by a group of 32 West Africans, who in 1860 were included in the last know illegal shipment of slaves to the United States. The Atlantic slave trade had been banned since 1808, but 110 enslaved people were smuggled into Mobile on the Clotilda which was burned and scuttled to try and conceal its illicit cargo. More than 30 of these people founded and created their own community in what became Africatown. They retained their West African customs and language into the 1950s while their children and some elders also learned English. One of the original founders lived until 1935. However we didn’t visit this area we just drove to Mobile and after picking up a packed lunch we went to Oakleigh which is in a very nice historical area and had our lunch before going in the house and having a visit. The website had suggested that tours were only available on the hour and as it was half past we were not optimistic, however on the grounds we were probably only the second people in today, as we walked in the door they offered to take us on a tour then and there so we had our own private tour of the house. It was built in 1833 by James Roper, a brick mason from Virginia who selected the site because of the clay pit which was used to make the bricks for the ground floor. It had 35 acres of woodland, and as well as being a brick mason James was also a dry goods merchant and cotton factor, or cotton broker as they are now known. He was married to his first wife Sarah who unfortunately died before the house was finished. His remarried in 1838 and had four children with his second wife Eliza. The depression of 1837 hit his business hard and he wasn’t able to pay back the loan he had taken out on the house. It is said that his brother-in-laws brought the house, half the estate and all but one of his slaves and allowed Roper and his family to live in the home rent free until 1850 when the family moved to New Orleans to become a lumber merchant. The next family to own the house was the Irwin family. During the civil War the husband and two son’s went off to fight the war leaving Margaret and her daughter in the house. When the Union army tried to commandeer the house she declared the property neutral territory as she was a British citizen, she also hung a Union Jack from the balcony which seemed to convince them and they left her alone. Three generations of the Irwin family lived in the house up until 1916 when it was sold a few more times until it was eventually brought by the historic society in the early 1950s. From here we went to the Mardi Gras museum. Mobile is the home to the oldest annual Carnival celebration in the United States. It was started in 1703 when Mobile was the capital of Louisiana, 15 years before New Orleans was founded. Mobile was the first capital of French Louisiana and the festival began as a French Catholic tradition. It has now evolved into a multi week celebration and apparently accounts for 11% of the employment in Mobile. The museum seemed to focus on the formal masked balls and elegant costumes that go along with those, there are all sorts of traditions that possibly have more in common with Victorian Britain than the carnivals we think of today. The masked balls or dances, where non-masked men wear white tie and tails or full dress costumes and the women wear evening gowns have a number of rituals and seem to present the women much like the debutant seasons in UK used to. There are mystic societies where no one is allowed to know you are a member, they hold invitation only events for their secret members and private balls which seem to start as early as November, apparently some balls can have as many as 5,000 attendees and some families pay hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to uphold the tradition. In Mobile the processions are all related to certain societies and although there are probably 300 or so societies in Mobile only about 50 have floats but they have about 15 or 20 floats so each procession is just one society which is why the celebrations can go on for as long as four weeks some years. The traditional colours of Mardi Gras are Purple and Gold. Purple for Justice and Gold for Power. Recently a third colour, green has been included which started in New Orleans, Green is said to signify faith. Unfortunately the museum closed at 4pm so we were ushered out. It was a great museum and we could probably have spent longer if we had the time but it was slightly disappointing that they didn’t have any floats in the museum at all but I am sure we will see some in New Orleans. We decided to go from there to the hotel as we need to do some laundry tonight, we also decided to have a look at what we are doing tomorrow, originally we had planned to go to the forts which are right down on the coast but as that is about an hour away and there are a lot of historic buildings in town we have decided we will walk round the historic areas instead.
