HOW MOBILE’S PELICAN GIRLS FINALLY GOT A HISTORICAL MARKER

Published May 2026

There are some stories you tell on a tour over and over, and one day you realize there is nowhere in the city where someone could go to learn that story without you. That is what kept bothering Bella Myers about the Pelican Girls.

Bella is one of our guides at Bienville Bites Food Tour. For years, as she shared beignets with visitors and walked them through the founding of Mobile, she would tell the story of the twenty-three young Frenchwomen who arrived here in 1704 and went on to launch the Petticoat Rebellion two years later. And almost every time she told it, even lifelong Mobilians would stop her mid-bite and ask why they had never heard this before.

“There was nowhere in Mobile that talked about these women,” Bella said. “I felt like that needed to change.”

Two Years of Research

Bella partnered with Dr. Allison Henry, a fellow amateur historian, and the two of them got to work. Getting an official Alabama historical marker installed is not a quick process. It requires documented research, primary sources where possible, careful sourcing of every claim, drafts of the marker text, approval from multiple boards, and a real argument for why the marker deserves to stand. The two of them worked at it for nearly two years.

They dug through colonial-era records. They tracked down descendants. They built a case strong enough to convince the state that what happened in Mobile in 1704 and 1706 deserves a permanent place on the city’s historical record. They argued over wording, fought for the right location, and refused to let it become a footnote.

The Unveiling at Fort Conde

In late 2025, a few months before this story made its way onto Alabama Public Radio, the marker was unveiled at Fort Conde in downtown Mobile. It stands there now, on the same ground where the colony was rebuilt after Bienville moved the settlement from 27 Mile Bluff in 1711. A handful of descendants of the original Pelican Girls came to the ceremony. Members of the Pelican Girls Secret Society, the women who march in Mardi Gras parades dressed in period clothing and speak in the voices of the original twenty-three, were there too.

At the ceremony, Bella asked the crowd to imagine those young women. Teenagers sent far from home, facing a life nobody had warned them about. Sick, hungry, and yet somehow finding the will to organize, to demand better, to live.

“And it is through their dedication, their perseverance, that Mobile truly is a city born in resilience,” she said.

A 13-Year-Old Descendant Helps Plan the Day

One of the most striking moments of the unveiling came from a 13-year-old named Addison Jones. She found out she was a direct descendant of the Pelican Girls by accident, snooping through her parents’ room and discovering an old photo labeled “direct descendant of the Pelican Girls.”

“And I was like, hey Mom, what is this?” Addison told Alabama Public Radio.

Her ancestor was Gabrielle Savary, one of the last of the original Pelican Girls to marry, who later became a merchant in New Orleans. Once Addison learned about her family’s connection, she got involved. She helped plan the marker unveiling as her Eagle Scout project, and she is now writing a children’s book about the Pelican Girls so younger kids in Mobile can grow up knowing the story she had to discover by accident.

“It is important to know your past and your history,” she said. “And it is not only boys who can do things.”

Why This Matters

For most of three centuries, Mobile’s founding story has been told as the story of two French brothers, D’Iberville and Bienville. Their names are everywhere: streets, statues, plazas, our company name. The twenty-three young women who actually held the colony together, who refused to die quietly when the promises ran out, were written into history as an asterisk if they were written in at all.

A bronze plaque at Fort Conde does not undo three hundred years of forgetting. But it makes it harder to forget going forward. The next school field trip that passes the marker, the next visitor who pauses to read it, the next descendant who finds out she carries the name of a teenager who crossed an ocean and refused to give up, all of that becomes possible because two women decided the absence was unacceptable.

That is what we are most proud of, here at Bienville Bites. The stories we tell on tour are not just things we read in a book somewhere. The people who tell them care enough to fight for the city’s record. Bella did. And the result is now part of downtown Mobile permanently.

Hear the Story from a Guide Who Lived It

If you want the full historical account of the Pelican Girls themselves, including the Petticoat Rebellion of 1706 and how their fight may have been one of the first organized women’s actions in early America, read our full deep dive on the Pelican Girls history.

Or come hear it on a tour, told on the same streets where it happened, by guides who care enough to fight for it. Our Downtown Mobile Food Tour is where Bella shared beignets and the Pelican Girls story with the reporter from Alabama Public Radio, and where you can hear it now.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is the Pelican Girls historical marker in Mobile?

The Pelican Girls historical marker stands at Fort Conde in downtown Mobile. It was unveiled in late 2025 as the culmination of nearly two years of research and advocacy by Bienville Bites tour guide Bella Myers and Dr. Allison Henry.

Who is the Pelican Girls Secret Society?

The Pelican Girls Secret Society is a Mobile group that honors the original twenty-three Pelican Girls by marching in Mardi Gras parades dressed in period clothing and speaking in the voices of the original women. Members were present at the unveiling of the historical marker at Fort Conde.

Are there living descendants of the Pelican Girls in Mobile today?

Yes. Descendants of the Pelican Girls still live in Mobile and the surrounding Gulf Coast more than 320 years after the original twenty-three arrived. Several descendants attended the unveiling of the Fort Conde marker, including 13-year-old Addison Jones, a direct descendant of original Pelican Girl Gabrielle Savary, who helped plan the unveiling as part of her Eagle Scout project.