Name/Title
Painting of Ferdinand SannonerEntry/Object ID
A.0019Description
Painting of Ferdinand SannonerArtwork Details
Medium
OilSubject
Ferdinand SannonerContext
Ferinand Sannoner was born in Livorno, a Tuscan city on the western coast of Italy, in 1793. He left Livorno for Paris to seek education at the Ecole Polytechnique, established in 1794 as a training school for military and civilian engineers.
He made his way to America in 1816. Surveyors were needed in the Territory of Alabama. The government had just acquired land from the Cherokee and Chickasaw and companies were buying up huge tracts of land. Sannoner settled in Huntsville by 1817 and quickly found work surveying the Tennessee River and the site that would become the City of Florence.
Sannoner settled in Florence in 1825, having received several building lots as partial compensation for surveying the city. His house stood on the corner of Tuscaloosa and Market St (now Wood Ave) where the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library is today.
Ferdinand married in 1818 and he and his wife had 7 children. Census records list Sannoner as a surveyor and enumerate that in 1830, he enslaved 3 people. (5 people in 1840, and 4 people in 1850.) It is unknown if the enslaved persons assisted him in his surveying or were hired out to other enslavers. Sannoner moved to Memphis, TN in 1857 and passed away two years later.