Courtesy of the Blakeney/Blakely Family
Association
A
Prominent early settler in the Mobile area
was one Josiah BLAKELEY who came from the Haven, Connecticut
by way of Santiago, Cuba where he spent six years.
He left New Haven around 1800 and arrived
in Mobile in 1806 or 1807. He purchased
2,000 acres of land across the Mobile
River from the city on the deltaic marsh island
which still bears his name, constructed a
house which he named "Festino Plantation" and operated a
farm there for several years. He is said to have
been single and lived alone. Although a professing
Protestant, he regularly attended the Roman Catholic
Church. Since Mobile was then part of Spanish
West Florida it was likely that the Roman
Church was the only game in town.
The
record shows that in 1813 he purchased a large tract
of land on relatively high ground at the eastern rim of
the Mobile River delta, on a tidewater river which also still bears his name
and along with other investors, constructed a
deep water seaport. The port was
instantly successful due to its accessibility to the Mobile Bay and Gulf of Mexico.
This was in the days before dredging and shippers depended
on naturally occurring channels for navigation. It seems that,
for most of each year a large sand bar blocked
the mouth of the Mobile river leading to the port of Mobile
and ocean traffic had to take a circuitous route
up the Spanish river to its confluence the
Mobile and then back down about twenty miles to
the port. A shipping boom began in 1817 but the ensuing panic
of 1819 slowed growth. The greatest era of prosperity
for the port was from 1821 - 1825. Josiah died in 1815 and is
reportedly buried at the old town of BLAKELEY. In recent
years a popular movement has developed
to restore what is left by BLAKELEY it has been officially
designated a Historic Area.
