What?’s in a name?
Are we Fontainebleau, Belle Fontaine, Graveline, St. Andrews, or the diaspora of Ocean Springs? I don?’t recall what label the US 10 exit signs use. The US 90 signs include Fontainebleau, St. Andrews, and maybe Pinehurst. The historical county report at

http://www.neighborhoodlink.com/osprings/standrews/history.html

traces the name Fontainebleau to the postmistress of the local post office and the name Belle Fontaine to the 1941 recollection of a local historian. However, a 1768 map from the archives of the Smithsonian identifies our area and an adjacent bay as Graveline. Looking around, there is no other significant geographic feature for our area. On topographic map there is a stream that runs between the Ocean Springs Airport area to the marsh west and south of St. Andrews. This may be the source the Belle Fontaine name, but it really exists now only as small patches of wet lands no longer deserving to identify our area.

Historically, that leaves the name Graveline for our area. But is it for us? Is it ?“Grave line?” or French pronounced as ?“Gravaleen??” What does Graveline connote anyway? Since the early maps of this area seem to be French, it probable that the name comes from France and it is the name of a city or village, like New Orleans is named after Orleans in France. Search of the Web found the official portal for the village of Graveline ( http://www.ville-gravelines.fr/Ville-Gravelines-2003%20Dossier/Ville-Gravelines-2003/index.html). Their official history is posted as a reply to this discussion. A web camera of the Graveline France beach looks something like our beach area.
http://www.ville-gravelines.fr/Ville-Gravelines-2003%20Dossier/Ville-Gravelines-2003/index.html

A Google search of the Web finds 19,900 links to the word Graveline, most of them on the first pages of the search seem to be related to a family surname. The Miss. DMR has a description of our local Graveline bay/bayou as follows:

?“The wetland boundary of this 2,339-acre preserve is Graveline Bay and Bayou. One exception is the exclusion of one major tributary. Graveline Bay and Bayou represents one of few relatively undisturbed estuarine bays and small tidal creeks in Mississippi. The area supports salt marsh, brackish marsh, and several oyster beds. The bay, marsh, adjoining upland forest, and undeveloped beach front near the mouth of Graveline Bayou are an important landing area for neotropical migrant birds. This coastal bay/marsh estuarine system receives only local freshwater runoff and consists largely of mid-level needle rush (Juncus roemerianus) dominated marsh along its entire length. Smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) occurs largely as narrow (1-3 m) bands along the creeks and bayous.?”

It?’s a description of an environmentally healthy place. Therefore, let?’s ask the supervisors to declare the official name for our area to be Graveline, end this confusion, and take this step forward in developing our area.


By Al Pettigrew

Hx of Graveline France Pt 1

Literal computer translation:

?“At the time of the Roman conquest, the Country of Morins of which
GRAVELINES formed part, was invaded by water and the tribes which
lived the rare emerged parts, like Bergues, Watten, Saint-Omer had
come from the remainder of Germanie. Water was withdrawn and of many
hamlets were formed: one of them whose name at that time unknown, is
located to us on the current site of the Huts, was to become
The city becomes the outer harbour of Saint-Omer. Fishing port in
herrings, wearing of transit for salt, the fruits and the wine,
Gravelines acquires a place of very first order and a great prosperity
the more so as the surrounding grounds are drained, thus allowing the
development of the culture and the breeding. The city seems to know
prosperity thanks to the trade and with fishing but it is very quickly
confronted with the torments of the History. Indeed very often
Gravelines is done devastated for military reasons politico.

In 1212, Philippe-Auguste, King de France, devastate the city to
punish the count of Flanders not to be combined with him counters the
English.

In 1302, under Philippe the Beautiful one, Oudard de Maubuisson takes
the city and again ransacks it, just as the English in 1383 after the
catch of Calais.

The war between Fran?§ois 1st and Charles Quint leads this last to
rebuild the four bastions of the place and to reinforce the Castle
because the city has an insufficient defense. The ovoid enclosure must
then consist of a thick palisaded ground lifting dominating the ditch
with doors and some towers built out of brick. The city starts to take
form and the hexagon is ready to await the enemy who can emerge
de.toutes.parts.

In 1558, it resists the attack of the marshal of Thermal baths, French
governor of Calais.

In turn French in 1644, Spanish in 1652, this city is definitively
yielded to us by the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659.

With the wire of time, the accesses are them also strengthened: with
the site of Small-Extremely and Large-Extremely-Philippe, is built, on
both sides of Aa., a double extremely intended to protect a lock,
regulating water of a new channel dug of 1635 to 1638 of the city to
the sea. The city preserves its strategic importance and, in 1680, at
the time of its passage to Gravelines, Louis XIV charges Vauban with
drawing up a new final plan whose implementation will spread out over
several decades. Appointed governor in 1706, Vauban will supplement
defense external of the city within its ''Pre Square'' by a whole of
half-moons, contrescarpes and glacis, like by a lock on Aa.


By Al Pettigrew

Hx of Graveline France Pt 2


Under Louis XV, a project of channel, designed by the king of Spain
Philippe IV, is carried out in the long term between 1736 and 1740.
Then of 1761 to 1852, four new dams create new polders. In 1871, one
rebuilds the lock Vauban, one creates a wet dock, one establishes
along Aa of the quays out of frame, one raises those of the dry
harbour and the Small-Extremely-Philippe. Thereafter of the startup of
the Vauban Basin, the movement of the port tends to develop. From 1897
only, one could operate dredgings with the material of the wearing of
Dunkirk and, since then, the trade took a great rise; to satisfy his
legitimate requirements, one increases the Basin and one built a wharf
in the Large-Extremely-Philippe; this work was completed in 1907.
Until 1938, fishing with cod constitutes one of the principal
activities of the sailors gravelinois, the fleet reaching to hundred
boats at the beginning of XIV?¨me century. The harbour trade and
maritime fishing had a rise until in the Sixties. Each year, in
February, the sailors embarked on board lougres, go?©lettes and later
dundees to go to fish, more than 6 months during, to broad of the
Icelandic coasts. To encourage them, the inhabitants greeted them at
the beginning and the return of these campaigns by a ritual. After
more than one century of life, this ritual, which rythmait fishing ''in
Iceland'', continues to live every year through the famous carnival.

Inshore fishing occupies a dominating place in the local economy. Rise
is broken by the First World War and the decline confirmed by the
Second. The community turns worms of other Horizons then, bequeathing
us a past whose each page revives today the ceaseless fight of the man
on the sea but also against itself. Following these economic crises
caused by Guerres Gravelines was to change its economic policy while turning to
industry and tourism. Thus in the Eighties, the CNPE was built
(Nuclear Center of Production of Electricity). Today, Gravelines is a
city where it is pleasant there to live and discover its corners
sympas, its environment, its infrastructures.?”


By Al Pettigrew

Why????

That's just sad--whether pronounced Grave-line or Graveleen.