Phillip A. Foote
| Born: | April 14, 1793, Fauquier County, Virginia |
| Died: | June 9, 1831, Huntsville, Alabama |
| Residence: | 206 Gates Avenue SE | - Phillip A. Foote was in possession of the house from 1819 until 1825. |
Notes:
• Fisk shows (west side of square) the business named "Taylor & Foote" operational as a General Store from August 18, 1817 until Oct. 30, 1819. - Fisk
• "Taylor & Foote were wiped out in the terrible reverses of 1819" - Fisk
• To give context, Jones describes the economic Panic of 1819. While Thos. McCrary avoided the peril, this is what he said about the local impact (including a reference to Philip Foote): "Huntsvillians were not exempt. Far from it. The national prosperity of the previous decade was built in large part on the international demand for the cotton that the southern states were producing and exporting. Wealthy speculators in Huntsville, such as LeRoy and Willis Pope, John Taylor and Philip Foote, had borrowed large sums, some up to about $100,000, to buy a cotton crop that they hoped to resell at handsome profit. New York cotton prices dropped from 34 cents a pound before the depression to 11 cents at the extremity; it's probable that the lowest price was under a dime a pound in Huntsville. Some involved in Huntsville's cotton market, in ordinary mercantile business as well, were forced to sell their inventories at huge reductions to save their necks, but most managed to stay afloat. Ordinary farmers, most working new land on which they still owed much of the purchase price to the government, were hard hit, with no hope of paying their debts. The Republican of Huntsville carried many notices of sheriff's sales "of farm land and town lots." Settlers in the Huntsville district, which covered all the Alabama portion of the Tennessee Valley, relinquished more than 400,000 acres to the federal government because of inability to pay." - Jones
• Taylor says Philip was a well known merchant in Huntsville before Alabama was a State. But then says he has "little information (about him), and I believe there are no representatives of his name now in the county." - Taylor
• Phillip's sister married John M. Taylor. Taylor & Foote was the name of the mercantile business owned by the two men. - Mohler
• Married Matilda Brown December 24, 1816 in Madison, AL - GENi
• Son of Sarah Alexander and William Foote - GENi
• Father of:
Matilda Ann Foote, 1817 -
John Phillip Alexander Foote, 1822 - 1870
William Henry Foote, 1824 -
Charles Henry Foote, 1826 - 1857
Mary Elizabeth Foote, 1831 - - Ancestry.com
Related Links:
• AAUW - Glimpses Into Antebellum Homes of Historic Huntsville, Alabama, Ninth Edition, by American Association of University Women, Huntsville Branch, Huntsville, Alabama, 1999, page 40. (Shows his home)
• Ancestry.com - Paged owned by briangfoote1 and can be viewed only with an Ancestry.com paid subscription. (Originally found at http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/18754977/person/707289358.)
• Fisk - Civilization Comes to the Big Spring: Huntsville, Alabama 1823, by Sarah Huff Fisk, 1997, pages 37, 97, 98.
• GENi - Page managed by Dallyn Leinani Duggan
• Jones - The Wondrous McCrarys, Alabama Pioneers: Same Family, Same Farm, 200 Years, by Joseph M. Jones, 2012.
• Mohler - Entry by Shirley Tucker Mohler for The Huntsville Historical Review Volume 32, No. 1, Winter-Spring 2007, page 33. Information focuses on John M. Taylor, Foote's business partner and brother-in-law.
• Taylor - A History of Madison County and Incidentally of North Alabama 1732-1940, by Judge Thomas Jones Taylor, Edited with an Introduction by W. Stanley Hoole and Addie S. Hoole, 1976.
The Following Pages Link to this Page:
• 206 Gates Avenue SE
• Mohler