[1] It was the third cotton exchange founded in the United States, following those in New York and New Orleans.

[2] Following the initial success of the exchanges seen in New York and New Orleans, the cotton brokers in Mobile saw the need to protect their local market and to coordinate the rules and regulations for the sale, purchase and handling of cotton.

With Thomas K. Irwin as chairman, they founded their exchange on St. Michael Street in December 1871.

[1] During the first half of the 1870s the exchange covered fifty-one counties in Alabama and twenty in Mississippi.

That building burned in 1917, with the firm relocating to another St. Francis Street address facing Bienville Square.