The History of Florida (31 page)

Rowland, Dunbar, and A. G. Sanders, eds.
Mississippi
Provincial
Archives:
French
Dominion,
1701–1743.
3 vols. Jackson: Press of the Mississippi Department of Archives and

History, 1927–29.

Spain. Archivo General de Indias. Testimony of Autos, no. 5, México 633, 1709.

Weddle, Robert S.
The
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1682–1762.
College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991.

9

British Rule in the Floridas

Robin F. A. Fabel and Daniel L. Schafer

In February 1763, representatives of Spain, France, and Great Britain signed

a peace treaty to end the Seven Years’ War (cal ed the French and Indian

War in North America). In the massive reshuffling of overseas territories

that fol owed Britain’s victories in the Caribbean, India, and North America,

Florida was acquired from Spain in exchange for Cuba, captured by British

troops in 1762. From France, Britain gained Canada, along with territory

adjoining Florida to the west and extending to the Mississippi River, with

the exception of the city of New Orleans and the Isle of Orleans, which went

proof

to Spain. French claims to land west of the Mississippi were also ceded to

Spain.

Britain divided the newly acquired Florida and Gulf Coast territories

into two provinces separated by the Apalachicola River. The land east of the

Apalachicola River and south of the St. Marys River became the province of

East Florida, with St. Augustine as its capital. West Florida extended west-

ward from the Apalachicola to the Mississippi River and incorporated the

Panhandle region of today’s state of Florida, much of Alabama and Missis-

sippi, and a portion of Louisiana. After a northward border adjustment in

1764, West Florida stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the juncture of the

Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers, and from there eastward to the Apalachicola.

This border extension incorporated the rich farmland on the east bank of

the Mississippi in the Natchez region.

On July 20, 1763, Captain John Hedges and four companies of the British

First Regiment, later known as the “Royal Scots,” arrived at St. Augustine.

After observing ceremonies in honor of the Spanish king and queen, Cap-

tain Hedges raised the flag of Great Britain—the Union Jack—over the Cas-

tillo de San Marcos, the imposing coquina stone fortification alongside the

· 144 ·

Map of British West Florida, showing the 1763 and 1764 boundaries and the few towns

that existed at the time. Courtesy of the Mississippi Department of Archives and His-

tory, http://mdah.state.ms.us/.

proof

British East Florida,

1763, by Thomas

Jefferys. London: W.

Nicoll, 1769. Courtesy

of University of South

Florida Libraries,

Special and Digital

Collections, http://

digital.lib.usf.edu/

civ/?doi=U15-0025.

146 · Robin F. A. Fabel and Daniel L. Schafer

Pensacola ca. 1763, drawn by an anonymous British cartographer depicting the “Indian

Town” adjacent to Spanish Fort San Miguel. Approximately 120 Yamasee and Apalachee

inhabited the town in 1763; they were transported to Vera Cruz, Mexico, when the Brit-

ish took control of West Florida. Courtesy of Professor John Worth, University of West

proof

Florida, http://www.uwf.edu/jworth/colonialfrontiers.htm.

Matanzas River at the northeast corner of the city. For the next two decades,

the Castillo would be known as Castle, or Fort, St. Mark.

Ten days after the British flag was raised, Major Francis Ogilvie of the

Ninth Regiment assumed command. Soldiers who arrived with Hedges

were given the choice of joining the Ninth Regiment or mustering out of the

army to become civilian residents of St. Augustine. Major Ogilvie and Span-

ish Governor Melchoir Feliú maintained peaceful relations until transports

carried away the last of the 3,500 Spanish residents on January 21, 1764. Only

three Spanish families remained under British rule.

At Pensacola, the designated seat of government for British West Florida,

British troops under Lieutenant Colonel Augustine Prevost arrived on Au-

gust 5, 1763. One month later, 800 Spanish subjects departed Pensacola for

Havana and Veracruz, leaving behind approximately 350 French residents

of Mobile and another ninety French families settled on farms nearby. Colo-

nel Prevost complained about the miserable conditions of the fort and the

absence of cultivated fields in the surrounding countryside.

Prevost and Ogilvie recognized the necessity of establishing peaceful

British Rule in the Floridas · 147

relations with the Native Americans of their respective provinces. The com-

bined populations of the Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek nations of West

Florida totaled nearly 28,000, whereas the total European population of

West Florida as late as 1765 was only 2,315. In East Florida, Major Ogilvie

traveled to the Creek vil ages in the Alachua region west of St. Augustine

with gifts for Chief Cowkeeper and his brother, the Long Warrior. Several

years before, Chief Cowkeeper and 130 families had left Oconee in Georgia

and settled in the rich farming and grazing lands near today’s city of Gaines-

ville. Land there had been vacant since the former inhabitants, the Timucua

Indians, had been decimated to the point of extinction by epidemic dis-

eases. The Creek under Cowkeeper were in the process of establishing a

separate identity as the Seminole.

proof

Mico-chlucco. King of

the Muscogulges or

Cricks called the Long

Warrior. Portrait by

the famed naturalist

William Bartram, who

visited the Seminole vil-

lages in Alachua during

his second explora-

tion of East Florida in

1774. Long Warrior

was not “King of the

Muscogulges”; rather,

he was the war leader

for the Creek under

Chief Cowkeeper who

migrated from Oconee

in Georgia to Alachua

in north Florida. Im-

age courtesy of the

American Philosophical

Society, Philadelphia.

148 · Robin F. A. Fabel and Daniel L. Schafer

The former Spanish Governor’s House on the plaza in St. Augustine served the British

governors of East Florida from 1763 to 1784. This watercolor sketch, of British origin, is

dated November 1764.

The first governor of East Florida, Colonel James Grant, arrived at St.

Augustine in August 1764. A native of Scotland, Grant was shocked by the

miniscule size of the provincial capital. Passengers who debarked at a wharf

on the Matanzas River and walked westward on the city’s sand-filled streets

crossed only four intersecting streets before reaching the barricade and re-

doubts at the edge of town. The distance from the town’s barrier wall on the

proof

north to the southern barricade was less than one mile. The 300 dwellings

within the walled town were less than fifty years old. Fires, wood rot, ter-

mites, and the English siege of 1702 had destroyed most traces of the six-

teenth- and seventeenth-century city. The dwellings standing in 1763 were

mostly one-story, made of quarried coquina stone, tabby or wood.

In typical Spanish colonial fashion, St. Augustine centered on a plaza

surrounded by important public buildings. Streets radiated north and south

bounded by stores and residences. The dominant structures were the Gov-

ernor’s House at the west end of the plaza and Fort St. Mark. The governor

distributed town lots and houses among British officials, merchants, and

settlers.

When Captain George Johnstone of the Royal Navy, the first governor of

British West Florida, arrived at Pensacola in October 1764, he found an im-

pressive natural harbor but only 112 dilapidated and abandoned dwellings.

Elias Durnford, the provincial surveyor, drew up a plan for a new Pensacola

that allocated town lots to incoming settlers without charge, but it was 1768

before two hundred houses were standing. Members of the Royal Coun-

cil for each province were appointed by King George III and were cal ed

into session soon after the arrival of their respective governors. Despite