page_title: Demopolis, Alabama
section_title: American settlement
hierarchical_section_title: Demopolis, Alabama / History / American settlement
caption_attribution_description: English: Bluff Hall in Demopolis, Alabama.
context_page_description: Demopolis is the largest city in Marengo County, Alabama, in southwest Alabama. The population was 7,483 at the time of the 2010 United States Census.
  The city lies at the confluence of the Black Warrior and Tombigbee rivers. It is situated atop 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 within the Black Belt.
  Demopolis was founded after the fall of Napoleon's Empire and named 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 failed 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. First settled in 1817, it is one of the oldest continuous settlements in Alabama. It was incorporated on December 11, 1821."
context_section_description: Upon learning of the survey and that the French grants lay elsewhere, American settlers began to quickly purchase the property of the former French settlement with the intent of turning it into a major river port.  A land company was formed in 1819 with the express purpose of purchasing the land and laying off of a town, the White Bluff Association (later renamed the Company of the Town of Demopolis). George Strother Gaines was named as the company spokesman and he bought the town site atop White Bluff as soon as it offered for sale.  Commissioners for the company were George Strother Gaines, James Childress, Walter Crenshaw, Count Charles Lefebvre Desnouettes, and Dr. Joseph B. Earle.
  The commissioners were responsible for overseeing the survey of the site, lot sales, and the early operations of the town.  The commissioners laid off the site into streets, blocks, and lots, with a block of roughly two acres divided into eight lots.  The Demopolis Town Square, encompassing one city block, was established in 1819.  The first lots were sold beginning on April 22, 1819. When Count Desnouettes died in 1822, Allen Glover was appointed to replace him.  As other commissioners retired they were succeeded by David E. Moore, William H. Lyon, Thomas McGee, and George N. Stewart.
  The streets were laid off utilizing a grid plan, using Philadelphia as a model.  The original streets running north-south were named for trees, such as Ash, Cedar, Cherry, and Chestnut. Exceptions were made for Commissioners, Strawberry, and Market (now Main) streets. Several short north-south streets were also named for commissioners, such as Desnouettes, Earle, Glover, Griffin, and McGee.  The east-west streets were named for national and local heroes, as well as commissioners, such as Childress, Fulton, Gaines, Lyon, Monroe, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Jackson.  Most streets were designed to be 66 feet (20 m) wide.  A strip of land that remained public property, for the use of all, was the land adjoining the Tombigbee River from where Riverside Cemetery is today, to the southwest of the city proper, all the way to the Upper Landing in the north, with Arch Street following the route along the top of the cliff.  Only the portion of Arch Street adjacent to the cemetery remains intact.
  Some flaws and limitations of the original town plan had become apparent by the late 1820s and 1830s. 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 citizens of the town, although some grand mansions did begin to appear by the late 1820s.  One of the first was the brick ​2 ¹⁄₂-story Federal-style Allen Glover house at the foot of Capitol street.  It was one of the, if not the first neoclassical structure to appear in Marengo County.  It was soon followed by Bluff Hall, built in 1832 by Allen Glover for his daughter, Sarah Serena, and son-in-law, Francis Strother Lyon.
  One major flaw in the town plan was that there was no clearly defined business district, resulting in commercial and residential buildings mixed together all over town.  This eventually resulted in numerous blighted areas. Some stores did open around the town square, however, and warehouses started to appear adjacent to the town's three major river landings, Upper Landing, above the modern Demopolis Yacht Basin and Marina, Webb's Landing at the western terminus of Washington Street, and Lower Landing to the west of Riverside Cemetery and the Whitfield Canal.
  By the 1830s Demopolis had developed into a regional 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 townhouses in the community or on its outskirts, including the Allen, Ashe, Curtis, DuBose, Foscue, Glover, Griffin, Lane, Lyon, McAllister, Prout, Reese, Strudwick, T
caption: Bluff Hall in 2008
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