One may easily infer from that already said about these peculiar colonists, who settled in the early years of the nineteenth century, at the confluence of the Tombigbee and Black Warrior Rivers, that life under such conditions must have been strikingly novel throughout. It was an attempt to graft an exceptional European civilization, with all its traditional peculiarities of many centuries, into the raw wilderness conditions of western civilization, and to preserve intact, the customs of the gay Gallic capital of Europe, on the prairies of black mud in Alabama. The log huts which lined the streets of primitive Demopolis, were made as nearly palaces as they well could be, and the streets themselves were lighted at night, in imitation of the French capital. It was a play doll performance, as pathetic as it was patriotic and loyal.

The French founded and named Demopolis “the city of the people,” seeking thus to blend a miniature Paris with democratic sentiment. In vain did these people seek to grow the olive and the vine in an unfriendly soil, and the attempt was gradually abandoned, and by every possible makeshift they eked out a bare subsistence. In a fertile soil, vegetables and corn were easily grown, and with these and with such supplies as they could get from the game of the woods, they struggled on against odds. They were not without annoyance from the Indians, and more from the American settlers who were now beginning to come into that quarter of the Alabama territory. These latter would entrench on the lands of the French which gave rise to much friction, and an agent had to go to Washington to sue for protection against such invasions. This occasioned opposition to the “furreners,” as the French came to be popularly called, in the neighboring log cabins of the American squatters.

As an indication of the extremity to which the French were reduced, Colonel Raoul, a large, handsome and dignified cavalry officer in the Napoleonic army, had to establish a ferry on the river to convey travelers from one side to the other, while his beautiful queenly wife sold gingerbread and persimmon beer on the bank, at the ferry. With her delicate jeweled fingers she would manufacture these crude refreshments, and with much grace serve them to the rude pioneers.

Years afterward, when Raoul had been restored to the confidence of the French government, and was occupying a lucrative position in Paris, after serving for some time in the Mexican army, he was visited by John Hurtel, who was also one of the French colonists, but now a prosperous merchant in Mobile. Intimate and even affectionate as friends, Colonel Raoul gave a dinner to his Mobile friend, and invited to the banquet many of his distinguished Parisian friends. To a group, Raoul was relating his pioneer experiences as a ferryman, which all laughingly doubted, when Raoul called to Hurtel, in another part of the room to join them. He then asked Hurtel what he (Raoul) did at Demopolis. He replied that he kept a ferry. “And what did the madame do?” asked Raoul. “Sold ginger cakes and simmon beer,” said Hurtel, all of which was greeted with roars of laughter.

As an expression of devotion to his imperial sovereign, General Desnoettes built a shanty near his log cabin, which shanty he called his “sanctuary.” In the center of this humble museum stood a bronze statue of Napoleon, encircled by relics of war captured by Desnoettes—swords, pistols, spears, spurs and saddles—while in graceful folds about the walls hung the captured banners. The customs of the people were often as grotesque as they were pathetic. After days of struggle and labor, the evenings would be spent in music and dancing in the log cabins, or else along the narrow grassy streets of the village would resound, till a late hour of the night, the notes of musical instruments. The great generals of a hundred battles preserved their military dignity and conventionalities while working with might and main in their laboring garbs, with their broad-brimmed hats flapping about their heads. Every stranger would be greeted with the military salute, no matter who he was.

In compliance with the requirements of the territorial laws, every male citizen of a given age, had to meet statedly at some point named by the commanding militia officer, to drill. From this the French were not exempt, and these experts in military science were compelled to join in the ranks of the rough and tumble yeomanry on the muster ground, and go through with the rude evolutions known to them from the days of their cadetship.

These were the days of the country grocery, and of the crossroads grocery, which were inseparable from the muster ground and the rural drill, and their presence meant fisticuff fights, gouged eyes, broken noses, and dislocated teeth. There was not the best feeling toward the “furrener,” at any rate, and there was a disposition in this region especially, to provoke him to difficulty. It is related that on one occasion a bully under the sway of liquor, sought a difficulty with one of the French, which ended in the Frenchman being knocked down and jumped on by the rough militiaman. The poor fellow knew not a word of English, and he cried in his extremity for “enough” the French word “bravo,” which he knew had something to do with fighting. He repeatedly yelled “bravo” with the hope that some one would pull off his assailant, but the assailant interpreted it to mean an expression of defiance, and was brutally pommeling the Gaul. Some of the by-standers properly construed the meaning of the Frenchman, from the tone of his appeal, and pulled the ruffian off.

In the geographical names of that region—Arcola, Agleville (Eagleville), Linden (Hohenlinden), and Marengo, not to mention Demopolis—one finds the evidence of the past occupation of the French. During the first year or two, a number of other French came from France and joined the colony, but the object which they had in view, failing, that of raising grapes and olives, the colony gradually dissipated, the emigrants going in different directions, and in Mobile and New Orleans, as elsewhere, may be found the descendants of some of these original colonists, still bearing the names of their ancestors of almost a century ago. Long after the occupied domain had been abandoned, there could be seen in the waxy mud in the region of Demopolis the imprints of the delicate shoes of those Parisian women.