Mon Louis Island
Mon Louis Island, originally known as Isle aux Maraguans or Miragoine, is an island on the coast of the U.S. state of Alabama, south of Mobile. Located in southeastern Mobile County, it has an average elevation of. Roughly wide and long, it is bounded by Fowl River on the north and west, Mobile Bay on the east, and the Mississippi Sound on the south. Mon Louis is traversed by Alabama State Route 193, which travels in a north to south direction along the eastern edge of the island. The Gordon Persons Bridge on the southern end of Route 193 connects the island to Dauphin Island. The unincorporated communities of Alabama Port, Heron Bay, and Mon Louis are located on the island.History
Mon Louis Island was first settled in the early 18th century by French Louisiana colonists. A land grant was made to Nicholas Baudin, Sieur de Miragouane, on November 12, 1710. Baudin was from Rochefort, France, having come to Mobile in 1706 at the age of 20. He established a settlement on the northern end of the island known as Miragouane. The island eventually came to be called Mon Louis, in honor of his son Louis Alexandre Baudin known as mon Louis. By the 19th century, the island was populated by people originally from various countries of origin and Creoles, along with a mix of ethnic groups.Mon Louis Island Creole
Mon Louis Island was, until around 1950, home to a commonly spoken French-based creole language named Mon Louis Island Creole, which is significantly related to Louisiana Creole. When the British captured Mobile from the French in 1763, most white French colonists left for Louisiana or elsewhere in the French empire. But a version of French survived on Mon Louis Island among its mixed-race population, which was largely made up of free craftsmen and their families. The creole was first attested in the academic literature by Margaret M. Marshall of Southeastern Louisiana University in 1991, based on interviews conducted about a decade earlier, when she published research on the last two fluent speakers of Mon Louis Island Creole, sisters Christine Durette and Odessa Collins; their parents had been the last two monolingual speakers of the language. The sisters were the great-great-granddaughters of Maximilien Colin, a free Black man who founded the Creole settlement on the northeast side of the island circa 1820. Collins died in 1982, Durette in 1984.