Vine and Olive Colony

1819 French engraving entitled Construction of Aigleville, Capital of the State of Marengo, on the Banks of the Tombechbé, Directed by General Lefebvre-Desnouettes.

The Vine and Olive Colony was an effort by a group of French Bonapartists who, fearing for their lives after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Bourbon Restoration, attempted to establish an agricultural settlement growing wine grapes and olive trees in the Alabama wilderness. The area that they settled later became the counties of Marengo and Hale.[1]

  1. ^ Smith, Winston. Days of Exile: The Story of the Vine and Olive Colony in Alabama, page 9. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: W. B. Drake and Son, 1967.