The British Floridas. 1763-1784. Part 4

Initial Suggestions On Some Landowners

My research shows the problem of identifying particular individuals, but indicates possible starting off information on which further research is needed.

Dudley Ackland. Was he the soldier in the West Indies in 1769 and Colonel of the Shropshire Volunteers in the West Indies from 1779 to 1784?

Christopher Baldwin. Was he the plantation owner on Antigua and Dominica who settled on Clapham Common West Side where he built the Grange in 1762?

Robert Bremner. Was he the Scottish music publisher?

Thomas Bridges. Was he the English writer of parodies, drama and one novel born in Hull?

John Callander. Could he be the  Scottish antiquarian  whose book Terra Australis Cognita, or Voyages to the Southern Hemisphere during the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries published between 1776 and 1778 promoted colonisation?

Walter Thomas Chittick. Was he the doctor who lived in London, who subscribed to John O’Rouke’s A Treatise on the Art of War: Or, Rules for Conducting an Army in All the Various Operations of Regular Campaigns(1778), and George William Lemon’s English Etymology: Or, a Derivative Dictionary of the English Language (1783)?

Francis Rush Clerk. Was he the Inspector and  Supplier of the provision of wagons and horses during the American Rebellion, commenting in detail in 1776 and 1777 on the inadequacies of what had been supplied?

John Dunning. Was he the lawyer who was MP for Calne between 1768 and 1782 who died as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancashire?

William Faden. Was he the London based publisher of The Public Ledger and The North American Atlas in 1777 chronicling the American Rebellion’s  battles?

Neighbour Frith. Was he the London silk merchant who built Woolet Hall (now Loring Hall) in Bexley?

Pierce Galliard. Was he the barrister at law who lived in Bury Hall in Edmonton and Bradshaw Hall in Eyam in Derbyshire, who had extensive land interests in Derbyshire, Middlesex, Essex, and Burford  including mining interests in Edmonton and  Eyam, and was involved in a complex marriage settlement indenture involving a number of Earls?

Caleb John Garbrand and Nathaniel Hone. Could they be the painters? 

John Hincks. Could he be the Chester merchant and sugar maker, who in the late 1750s was a partner with Joseph Manesty, the Liverpool slave trader, and purchased coal from the Neston Collieries for his refinery?

Captain John Jervis. Could he be the Royal Navy officer who later became Viscount St. Vincent and whose sister married William Henry Ricketts (see above)?  

Baker John Littlehales. Could be the man who lived in Moulsey in Surrey?

William Mcbean. Could he be the man who left an estate in Jamaica when he died in 1780?

George Moore. Could he be the London merchant who shipped out convicts to Maryland in 1783 at the request of the Government?

Walter Radcliffe. Could he be the man painted by SirJohsua Reynolds, who  owned Warleigh House in Devon now owned by the National Trust?

John Gilpin Sawrey. Could he be the owner of Broughton Tower in Lancashire who died in 1773 living in Middlesex?

John Sinclair. Could he be Sir John Sinclair of the Board of Agriculture, who recorded in his memoirs that William Dunn of East Florida had written to request a ‘style of culture most adapted to a sandy soil’and who believed that James Macpherson took his Gaelic Poems of Oassian writings with him to West Florida to be Governor Johnson’s  surveyor-general?

Benjamin Stichall. Could he be the London based bookbinder, who was joint publisher of Mark Catesby’s 1754 The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands?

Florida Landowners And Emancipation Compensation

A few of the 24 people recorded on the Legacies of British Slave-Ownership database with Florida connections were involved there at the time of British rule:  Dr James Dallas, Thomas Dunnage , Sir Archibald Grant, the 3rd Bart. of Monymusk, and Harry and Thomas Hackshaw.

Sir Archibald Grant may be either the Scottish father or son. The father was expelled as an MP for fraud in 1732. He involved in mines in Derbyshire and Scotland. Either one or both of them  became involved in owning a plantation on Jamaica.

Thomas Dunnage was a London merchant, who invested with Francis Phillipe Fatio and John Francis Rivas in the New Castle plantation in 1770. It was renamed New Switzerland. Dunnage also purchased annuities from the owners of plantations on Nevis and Antigua. Fatio was a Swiss merchant who had settled in London about 1757. They spent £2,430 to buy 18 enslaved Africans to develop the estate and then a further £2,570 up to 1776. Rice and orange trees were grown. Pine was felled for naval and timber supplies. Fatio and his family moved to St. Augustine to manage the plantation. In 1774 he moved with his family to  New Switzerland River. It grew sweet and sour oranges, citrons and lemons. In 1778 partner Rivas purchased 5,000 acres next to New Switzerland.

Landowners And  The Enslaved After The Floridas Were Returned To Spain

Presumably written before the hand back to Spain 1784 saw the publication of Thomas Hutchins’s An historical narrative and topographical description of Louisiana, and West-Florida.

After the return of the Floridas to Spain the British and the loyalists were mainly relocated to other parts of the British Americas particularly the Bahamas. A few stayed under Spanish rule like Jesse  Fish.

 

It took sometime for the British evacuation to be completed. Prior to the transfer of the  slaves on the Ceciliton Plantation to Dominica in early 1785 a survey listed 78 belonging to the heirs of Lord Egmont, and 22 owned by  Stephen Egan. In the first few weeks of the year Egan sold lumber and naval stores for £708. 

The Egmont and Egan enslaved labourers arrived ill at Dominica .They were rented to other planters, primarily clearing land and planting coffee trees, and the Egmont enslaved were sold in September 1786 netting £3,648.

The transfer back to Spain of the Floridas took from 1783 to 1785 created severe problems. Tonyn had to deal with a mutiny of the local troops, who agreed to go to Nova Scotia, and combat the pillaging of plantations. He also had to negotiate with the now independent South of Carolina government over the return of property, mostly slaves, taken  to East Florida by the loyalists. One group owned by Colonel James Cassells went back to South Carolina by choice not wanting to go to  the Bahamas as he planned.

Although  Fort St. Augustine was handed over in July 1784, Governor Tonyn remained until November 1785.

In the end nearly 10,000 people left East Florida. departed. 3,247 including 2,200 slaves went to the Bahamas; over 3,000 including nearly 2,600 slaves to the United States, about 900 to Nova Scotia, and about 900 (mostly slaves) to Jamaica. Some went to England like Captain John Gaillard, Colonel Elias Ball, and the former customs officer John Morgridge. William Moss, resettled his enslaved labourers in the Bahamas. His correspondence was published in 1854.

Many of the original settlers from England also set off for the Bahamas like Francis Levitt, junior with his goods, 100 slaves, house frames and household silver. He had to leave a lot behind because the ship was too small. Unsuccessful in the  Bahamas he returned to London. Later he went to Georgia. Henry Laurens helped him set up set Sea Island cotton plantation.

For Jesse Fish because a large number of the estates reverted to the Spanish Crown. He lost most of his land holdings. He had accumulated large debts in St. Augustine and Cuba. He moved back to Britain in 1784 and lived at Aston Hall in Shropshire. This was the home of his wife Eleanor’s father George Austin. Austin had been to Carolina developing tobacco plantations and slave trading. He was partner with Henry Laurens, returning to England in 1762 after a disagreement. Fish continued to hold Santa Anastasia Island, forty houses and lots, and six other tracts of uncultivated land near St. Augustine. His buildings were described by observers as being in advanced stages of decay. In 1786-7 is known to have had 17 slaves working his plantation.

Fatio decided to become a Spanish citizen and  renamed New Switzerland as Nueve Suiza. He was appointed with John Leslie of Panton, Leslie & Co to judge disputes between the British who were leaving, including over taking their slaves with them. He bought their estates cheaply. He bought out his partners to become sole owner of the plantation, and auctioned off remaining common property including 50 slaves including sawyers, squarers, field labourers and a cooper, a cook, a house servant.

Moultrie  returned to Britain in 1784. Three of his brothers fought with the Americans in the Rebellion. He lived at Aston Hall in Shropshire which had been the home of his father-in-law George Austin who had developed tobacco plantations in Carolina and been involved in slave trading along with Henry Laurens. Moultrie is buried in Shifnal Church.

In 1790 an author named Zetes published An address to the Parliament and people of Great Britain, on the past and present state of affairs between Spain and Great Britain, respecting their American possessions published in 1790. He reviewed the history of treaties between the two countries, including the period of British control of the Floridas. He regarded the Spaniards as untrustworthy anticipating war’

Economic Effects On British Economy

 

We do not know how much British capital was invested bythose granted  land  in the Floridas, the scale of the imports and exports, the level of profits and losses, nor  what any profits were spent on back in Britain or in other Caribbean colonies.  It also seems likely that more was spent in East Florida by the Government than was covered by the taxes raised in the colony. This is probably partly due to the cost of defending the colony from the American rebels , including the stationing of troops.

Further Research

 

Further work on the British planters would make  for an interesting PhD thesis. As well as the British Privy Council (Colonial), the Houses of Commons Lords Papers and other documents providing information about the land grants and the administration of the Floridas, and the East Florida Claims Commission papers at The National Archives (T77) and related papers listed on the Commission page. There is a detailed listing of the TNA East Florida Colonial Office papers by David Swain (2014).There is  a wealth of information in US Congress papers. There are articles in journals such as the Florida State Historical Quarterly, Louisiana Historian, and Legal History. There are  contemporary books by authors like James Grant Forbes and later authors such as Walter Henry Sickert, S. Max Edelson, Robert R. Ree, and Charles Loch Mowat. There are also Florida History Online, Legacies of British Slave-ownership database, British History Online, The History of Parliament, the Hallowes Genealogy website and last year William Bruce Antliff’s  American Loyalists claims up on Global Heritage Press’s website. A few surviving wills like that of James Fortrey  of Ely at The National Archives may tell us something.

Select Bibliography

Kenneth H. Beeson. Fromajadas and Indigo: The Minorcan Colony in Florida. Arcadia Publishing. 2006

Christopher C. Booth. Robert Willan and His Kinsmen. Medical History. Vol. 25(2) April 1981. pp. 181–196

Pete Wilson Coldham. American Migrations, 1765-1799. Genealogical Publishing Company. 2011

Dictionary of Canadian Biography

David Dobson. Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 1607-1785. University of Georgia Press. 2004  

Carrita Doggett. Dr. Andrew Turnbull and The New Smyrna Colony of Florida. The Drew Press.1919 & Founders Publishing Co.1994  

S. Max  Edelson. The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America before Independence. Harvard University Press. 2017

S.Max Edelson. Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina.  Harvard University Press. 2011

The Elkton Hastings Historic Farmstead Survey, St. Johns County, Florida

Robin F. A. F tel. The Economy of  British West Florida 1763-1763. University of Alabama Press. 2002

James Grant Forbes. Sketches, Historical and Topographical, of the Floridas: More Particularly of East Florida. C.S. Van Winkle. 1821

Douglas Hamilton.  Scotland, The Caribbean and the Atlantic World, 1750-1820. Manchester University Press. 2010

David Hancock. Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735-1785. Cambridge University Press. 1997

Paul E. Hiffman. Florida’s Frontiers. Blackwell. 2001

Cecil Johnson. British West Florida 1763-1783. Yale University Press.1943 & Archan Books. 1971

Katharine A. Kellock. Stephen Collins, Philadelphia Merchant. Business Archives. No.  36. June 1972

Robert Stansbury Lambert. South Carolina Loyalists in the American Revolution. Journal of American History. Vol. 75(3). December 1988. p. 919–920

Bruce Lenman. Britain’s Colonial Wars 1688-1783. Routledge. 2001

Arlin C. Migliazzo. To Make this Land Our Own: Community, Identity, and Cultural Adaptation in Purrysburg Township, South Carolina, 1732-1865. University of South Carolina Press. 2007.

Charles Mowat. East Florida a a British Province 1763-1784. University of California Press. 1943

James W. Rabb. Spain, Britain and the American Revolution in Florida, 1763-1783. McFarland. 2008

Robert R. Rea. Military Deserters from British West Florida. Louisiana History. Vol. 9(2). Spring 1968

Marjorie Marjorie Rear. William Barker Member of The Right Worshipful Levant Company 1731-1825. A Life In Smyrna. www.levantineheritage.com/pdf/Biography-of-William-Barker-Levant-Company-Merchant-Marjorie-Rear.pdf

Patrick Riorden. Finding Freedom in Florida: Native Peoples, African Americans and Colonists, 1670-1816. The Florida Historical Quarterley. Vol. 75(1). Summer 1996

George C. Rogers. The East Florida Society  of London 1766-1767. The Florida Historical Quarterly. Vol 54(4). April 1976

Daniel L. Schafer. Plantation Development in British East Florida: A Case Study of the Earl of Egmont. Florida Historical Quarterly. Vol. 63(2). 1984

John C. Shields & Eric D. Lamore. New Essays on Phillis Wheatley. University of Tennessee Press. 2011

Walter Henry Sickert..Loyalists in East Floria 1774-1785. Florida State Historical Society. 1929

Wilbur H. Siebert. The Port of St. Augustine During the British Regime. Florida Historical Quarterly. Vol. 24. 1945

Wilbur H. Siebert. Slavery in East Florida. Florida Historical Quarterly. Vol. 10(3).1931

Erin Thursby. Florida Oranges.  A Colorful History. Arcadia Publications. 2019.

Spencer C Tucker. (ed.) American Revolution: The Definitive Encyclopaedia and Document Collection. ABC Clio. 2019

 

 

The British Floridas. 1763-1784. Part 3

Other People

Lemuel Bower was born in the New Jersey. He fought with the American rebels.

William Crowle had problems in his involvements with Thomas Woolridge and had to seek the help of William Stork. His land appears to have been undeveloped.

Sir James Esdaile  was a banker who later became Lord Mayor of London in 1777. The biographical sketch of him on the Old Upminster blog site mentions that around 1787 he became the owner of a share of the major Rose Hall Plantation in Jamaica, more detail of which is on the Legacies of British Slave-ownership database.

Edmund Jennings was an American in London. He supported the American rebels and knew the attorney John Adams. 

John Murray was a Scottish plantation owner at Wilmington. His sister Dorothy married another Scot John Forbes, the clergyman who owned land in East Florida. Forbes  was a loyalist during the American Rebellion.

James Mill  and Gilbert Ross were merchant partners in Ross & Mill of Fenchurch St. Ross was a member of the Committee of Merchants trading to Africa. Ross’s will was made in 1788. They were both members of the East Florida Society. It was a influential   lobby group in London, whose Secretary was Joshua Wilson.

Peter Parmier speculated rather than developed land in East Florida, and had correspondence from America in 1779. 

Of French Huguenot origin Frederick Pigou, and his father Frederick, would petition the House of Lords in 1788 against the Trade Regulation Bill which would regulate for a limited time the shipping and carrying enslaved Africans in British Vessels, and requesting compensation if it was passed. The father is probably the East India Company official who recommended in 1756 that Shanghai would be a good place to trade. He became a Director of the Company. He co-owned a gunpowder factory at Dartford. Dieing in 1792 there is a plaque to him in All Saints Church, Kingston. The younger Frederick had been a partner with Wiliam Neate a Quaker trading with Pennsylvanian Stephen Collins until 1769 then going into partnership with Benjamin Booth who worked for the firm. Their involvement in selling tea to the American colonies was badly damaged by the Boston Tea Party. His daughter married  Vice Admiral Robert Stuart Lambert who received £5,125 15s. 3d compensation for 275 enslaved on his plantation in Jamaica.

William Henry Ricketts had been born in Jamaica and owned a slave plantation there.  He travelled between Jamaica and England.  He made a claim to the East Florida Commission.

George Rolfe specialised in his enslaved workforce  cutting down trees and running a sawmill.

John Savage proposed to establish ship building using 200 people from Bermuda.

Thomas Shirley, another who had the Earl of Dartmouth as a patron. He became Governor of Bahamas in 1768 succeeding his father William who had previously been Governor of Massachusetts . Thomas was then Governor of Dominica from 1774 until 1778 when the French captured the island. He became Governor of the Leeward Islands in 1781. He was made Baronet of Oathall in 1786.He died in 1800.

Samuel Tooker later became a member of the Yorkshire Association with Christopher Wyvil between 1779 and 1785 both of whom are mentioned in the 1790 poem The Priest and the lawyer. He was also a Magistrate in the Wakefield area.

 Edward Wood, a London merchant, acquired a 10,000-acre tract in 1769 which he then  conveyed to the Second Earl of Egmont, who let the tract lay dormant for many years.

Lords Involved in East Florida

William Ponsonby, the Earl of Bessborough, owned the Bessborough estate in Roehampton. The house built in 1750 is now Parkstead part of Roehampton University. Charles Sloan Cadogan, the Earl of Cardogan, was the grandson of Sir Hans Sloane who inherited the Sloan estate in 1780. He lent £20,500 to four others to purchase an estate on Grenada and the enslaved working on it. He was Master of the Mint from 1769 to 1784.

George, Viscount Townshend from1764, was a soldier who fought at Culloden, and took command for the final capture of Quebec. He was MP for Norfolk from 1747 to 1764. He was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1767 until  1772. From 1763 until 1782 and then again for a short time in 1783 and 1784 he was in charge of the Ordnance. He died at Raynham Hall in Norfolk in 1807. His brothers included Charles of the Townshend’s Acts which helped provoke the American Rebellion. A James Townshend, probably his son was also granted acerage. There was also a Thomas Townshend with land in East Florida, who was probably George’s and Charles’s brother,  Member of Parliament for Whitchurch between 1754 and 1783, and Colonial Secretary between 1783 and 1789. He approved an attack on Spanish colonial Buenos Aires and Monte Video, which was halted because of the peace treaty that included returning the Floridas to Spain. He drew up the plan to export criminals to Botany Bay in Australia.

Other Lords were John Rawdon, Earl of Moira and possibly C(l)oworthy Upton, 1^st Baron Templeton from 1776. George Beresford,  Earl of Tyrone, was an Irish MP from 1757-1763, the latter year being when he became the Earl. Alexander Crauford may have become Baronet of Kilberny in 1781. Sackville Tufton, Earl of Thanet, was High Sherriff of Westmoreland from 1753 to 1786 when he died. His son-in law  Sir William Duncan, Baronet of Marylebone was a partner with Turnbull.

John Rawdon became the Earl of Moira in 1762. He was involved with Charles Bernard and other grantees in sending a ship from Ireland with 36 potential settlers, with tools for planting, carpentry and other ironmongery." Bernard located a 10,000-acre tract for Rawdon, purchased at least 10 slaves  and 200 cattle (from Georgia) and started the building of Rawdon Hall mansion house on the plantation. Bernard returned to Britain in 1767 and was replaced on the plantation by a man named Stanhope from New York.

William Beresford

William Beresford, the Earl of Tyrone used Charles Bernard in the late 1760s to establish his Beresford Plantation.

Also based in Britain Lord Egmont had active interests. He owned three plantations including Mount Royal and Amelia Island. In 1776 the latter was destroyed by American rebel troops from Georgia. His agent, the Irishman Stephen Egan whose sister was an Egmont tenant in Ireland, got his family and 100 enslaved men and women to safety in St. Augustine. He then set up the Cecilton Plantation on land that had been allocated to Edward Wood. It produced naval stores between 1776 and 1785.  Richard Brett conveyed 10,000 acres owned by Charles George Arden, Lord of Ireland, to his father John, Earl of Egmont.

Sir William Duncan, Baronet of Marylebone, a Scottish doctor to George III, was a partner with Turnbull  who tried to new up the New Symra colony on the 20,000 acres they both had. Duncan was also a Scots doctor. In 1763 Duncan married Sackville Tufton’s daughter. He died in 17774

An absentee Sir Richard Russell, Lord Buckworth, had 10,000-acres from 1767. He engaged Alexander Gray as his agent, and then John Ross, who used enslaved men and women on indigo and provisions cultivation, cattle grazing, and lumber and naval stores production. Russell died in October 1773, leaving the property to his widow, Mary Magdalene Russell.

Members Of Parliament As Land Owners In East Florida

Cadogan was also MP for Cambridge (1749-76) A search for ‘Florida’ on The History of Parliament website shows a number of MPs who had been, were or would be, who had been granted land. However, this is dependent on whether the Florida connection was detailed in the individual biographies of MPs. The Florida connection of Humphrey Mackworth Praed, who was an MP for Cornwall 1761-8 and 1772-4, is not mentioned in his biographical sketch. Nor were Charles Ogilvie, MP for West Looe 1774-5, James Coutts, MP for Edinburgh 1762-8; Humphrey Mackworth, the MP for Cardiff between 1766 and 1790; Lord William Campbell an MP between 1764 and 1766, Charles Townsend, MP for Saltash 1756-61 and Harwich 1761-7; and  Sir Robert Bernard,  for Huntingdonshire 1765-8 and sponsored by John Wilkes for Westminster 1770-4.

Edward Southwell was MP for Bridgwater 1761-3, and Gloucestershire 1763-76. He became Baron of Clifton in 1776. Related to the Earl of Egmont, he was under his patronage. His land was not developed. His involvement in Florida is not mentioned in his History of Parliament geography.

A later MP Duncan Davidson was a West Indies merchant with premises at 14 Fenchurch Buildings. He had inherited Tulloch Caste and estate from his elder brother and partner Henry Davidson Tulloch in 1781. Henry had lodged an appeal with the House of Lords, which was pending consideration in 1767. By 1793 Duncan’s merchant firm was known as Davidson and Graham. His son Henry became a partner. Duncan signed a petition to the House of Commons about the rivers in that part of Scotland in 1785; He was MP for Cromartyshire between 1790 and 1796, voting against slave trade abolition in 1796. He was an East India Company stockholder. He left his sons plantations in Grenada, Berbice, Jamaica and Suriname.  One of his grandsons was awarded compensation for the emancipated enslaved workers in Grenada.

John Murray, MP of Linlithgow Burghs (1754-1761 had  been educated at Glasgow University in 1742, becoming an advocate in 1748. He was the head of a family which owned estates in Ettrick and Yarrow. He was related to the Dukes of Hamilton and Douglas, and the Earls of Selkirk, Dundonald, and March, and to the leading freeholders of Selkirkshire. He did badly in had land speculation in East Florida and the island of St John  He and his family appear to have moved to Jamaica in 1785, where he died in 1800. The contestation over his will after his death is reported in The Scottish Jurist in 1830.

Mackworth owned the copper works on his estate of Gnoll in Neath in Wales. Campbell was the last British Governor of South Carolina and from 1766 to 1773 was Governor of Nova Scotia. Townsend was Paymaster General 1765-6, and Chancellor of the Exchequer 1766-7. He  was responsible for the Townsend Acts which levied taxes on exports to the North American colonies which helped to trigger the American rebellion.

In 1769 Bernard helped to found the Bill of Rights Society. Breaking with Wilkes he voted in 1771 for its dissolution of the Bill of Rights Society, and joined the  Constitutional Society, and broke with Wilkes.

George Onslow of Ember Court in Surrey inherited it in 1768 from his father Arthur  the Speaker  of the House of Commons. He had been MP for Rye (1754-1761) and Surrey (1761-1774). He was plantation owner on Jamaica between 1776 and 1804. He sold Ember Court in 1791. From 1776 to 1814 he was at Clandon Park near Guildford. In 1776 George was created Baron Cranley and inherited the title of  4th Baron Onslow. In 1801 he became  Earl of Onslow.  While the Privy Council (Colonial records) record him as George Onslow of Ember Court, Florida History OnLine says he was Bishop of Ossory.

Sir Edward Hawke was a Royal Navy officer who started off on the North American Station, then served on the West coast of Africa, and then on the Jamaica Station. From July 1739 he was a Commander on the North American Station escorting merchant ships in the Caribbean. He was Portsmouth’s MP from  December 1747 until 1776. Having been a successful commander in many naval battles he was First Lord of the Admiralty between 1766 and 1771. He was also made Baron Hawke of Towton in Yorkshire in 1766.

Naval And Army Officers

Like Sir Edward Hawke there were naval and army officers. Commodore Thomas Harrison was Envoy Extraordinary in Genoa from 1763 to 1776 and in command of the Mediterranean Squadron 1764-6.He had briefly been sent to the West Indies 1762-3. Samuel Barrington was a Naval Captain when his land was granted. Later he was appointed Commander in Chief in the West Indies in 1778 and captured St Lucia.

Miller Hill Hunt was a Captain in the 56^th Foot and Ann Hunt had 10,000 acres on which was grown  corn, rice and indigo. Their overseer was Donald Kennedy from Edinburgh. Tar, pitch, turpentine, and timber became the main activity during the American Rebellion. The Plantation continued to operate until 1784, using in the early 1780s, enslaved hired from Colonel Thomas Brown.

Alexander Montgomery may be either Colonel Alexander John  Montomery, a captain in the 43^rd Regiment of Foot, which served in America, and  He was MP for County Donegal from 1768 to 1800, or General Alexander Montgomery (c.1721—1785) an Irish MP.

Captain John Bagster was in the Royal Navy  (Royal Museums of Greenwich) He lost his lands in America fighting for the British and died in Jamaica in 1780.

Colonel James Robertson was born in Virginia in 1742 later moving to North Carolina. He became known as the Father of Tennessee. His correspondence is subject to an article in The American Historical Magazine of 1896.

Major Charles Lee rose to be a General and switched sides to support the American rebels in 1775. The Lee Papers in the Early American Imprint Collection show his  involvement in advocating the invasion of East Florida by the rebels.

Germans, Swiss and Minorcans

Several people were involved in encouraging Germans, Swiss and Minorcans to go to East Florida. Antoine Louis de Norac planned a colony of settlers from Switzerland.

John Augustus Ernst was a German living in London who with others wanted to settle Protestants from Germany and Switzerland.

It seems likely that John Christopher Haberkorn, was the  German printer in Gerrard-street, Soho, was one of several Germans on the Committee in 1765 seeking to help impoverished German refugees.

William Stork, the author, wanted to settle a group of Germans in East Florida.

The Scottish physician Dr. Andrew Turnbull, recruited 1,400 from the Mediterranean mainly from Minorca to set up the agricultural colony of  New Smyrna in 1768 in partnership with William Duncan (see above) and Sir Richard Temple. Detailed studies have been made about the colony and its failure due to political strife, inadequate financing, miserable living conditions and ruthless maltreatment by the overseers. The East Florida Governor allowed them to move to St. Augustine in 1777.  

The British Floridas. 1763-1784. Part 2

When Florida was ceded by Spain to Britain in 1763, the  Government divided it into two parts each with its own Governor and Council. 3,700, almost all, Spaniards emigrated  to Cuba and other Spanish possessions.  The British Government was keen to have the new colonies developed, and approved the granting of land parcels up to 20,000 acres. The Spaniards were allowed to sell their property to English subjects within a period of eighteen months. Because there were few buyers in July 1764, most of the houses, lots, and lands, amounting to almost 200 estates in and around St. Augustine, were conveyed to Jesse Fish who had worked at St. Augustine for many years.

Jesse Fish

Jesse Fish was born on Long Island in 1724 or 1726. He went to St. Augustine working for William Walton, a New York merchant, while the Spanish were in control. He travelled there on a ship captained by his uncle Abraham Kip. He was involved as agent for the Walton Company in supplying the town with flour and meat from New York.

Fish bought some of the properties for his own investment paying low prices for the city plots he intended to sell later. Substantial property in St. Augustine was purchased in the names of Jesse's uncle, Jacob Kip, William Walton, and a friend Enoch Barton, who had lived with Fish and his son as a youth. In addition to being a major land broker for the departed Spanish planters Fish sold those slaves they did not take with them. Jesse Fish sold a house in 1769 to a George Kemp, surgeon and a member of the British General Assembly in East Florida.

He bought Santa Anastasia Island of 10,000 acres and his slaves turned it into a plantation with a great house with orchards and orange groves. He developed the El Vergel plantation with a great house. Tens of thousands of barrels of sweet oranges and hundreds of barrels of orange juice were exported. In a letter dated August 10, 1830 and published in the Southern Agriculturist,  George J. F. Clarke, a planter whose family had owned a plantation on the Matanzas River from  1770, described the careful picking and handling of the oranges grown by Fish  and shipped safely to London, where they had found favour for their sweetness.

He was obviously a controversial person because  Fowler Walker. published in 1772 The case of Mr. John Gordon with respect to the title to certain lands in east Florida purchased of His Catholick Majesty's subjects by him and Mr. Jesse Fish for themselves and others His Britannick Majesty's subjects in conformity to the twentieth article of the last definitive treaty of peace.

The Land Grant Programme

Keen to encourage settlers and development, the Government launched a public relations campaign and a massive land grant program. Between 1764 and 1770, the Privy Council issued 227 orders for 2.856m acres in East Florida. Governor James Grant encouraged Scottish investment in East Florida. He had existing roads improved and new ones built. It is thought that only sixteen grants were settled by English grantees by the outbreak of the American Revolution. Several colonising experiments and some plantations were dismal failures. Land development should have been made a lot easier as a result of the publication in 1769 of the map of East Florida produced by William Gerard De Brahm, the British  Surveyor-General in the South, as told by Alex Johnson in his book The First Mapping of America: The General Survey. Born in Germany he trained as an engineer, and emigrated to America in the 1740s. Based in Georgia from 1751 he  was appointed surveyor general for the southern district of North America. He was also given lands in Georgia sone of which he sold. He went to St. Augustine in 1765 to serve as East Florida’s surveyor general of lands.

The later American rebel  Henry Laurens of South Carolina was agent for some of the investors. He  thought that the size of the grants was too large to be developable.

The situation was not helped by a severe frost on 3 January 1766 which destroyed tropical products other than the orange trees.

By 1771 it was estimated that there were 2,588 settlers of whom about 73 were planters. By 1772 East Florida was largely self-sufficient for food.

Matters were not helped by a clash between De Braham  and Governor Grant leading to  De Brahm having to go to London in 1771  to face charges of malpractice.  He was reinstated in 1774.

Mapping The Floridas

A further attempt to promote development was the publication in 1775 of Brahms deputy Bernard Romans A Concise Natural History of East and West Florida. Born in Holland Romans worked for the British as a civil engineer in North America from 1755 and then became deputy chief surveyor for the Southern Department in 1758. His book was designed to be an aid to navigators and shippers and to promote trade and settlement in the region. Most subscribers lived in the American colonies. There were few who were residents in the Floridas. Two of them were Jonathan Hampton and Charles Bernard. Romans included an attack on Phyllis Wheatley.

Those interested in taking up land grants may well have read Mark Catesby’s 1754 The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands; containing the Figures of Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents, Insects, and Plants... Together with their Descriptions in English and French.

The Privy Council (Colonial) Papers for 1766 record the names of those granted land. The programme was administered by the Governors. East Florida’s Governor James Grant granted some to Carolina planters,  like Henry Meyerhoffer. Several of them  like John Moultrie and Robert and Alexander Bissett transferred their slaves to their land. Moultrie had the Bella Vista estate on Matarrgas River. The Bissetts had the Mount Plenty estate with over 100 enslaved people.

The Work Of African Enslaved Labourers

The historian Jane Landers explains that the ‘seasoned hands and hundreds of African slaves imported by Richard Oswald, and other traders cleared and fenced land, planted crops, erected buildings, built dams and drains, and transformed vast stretches of inhospitable swamp and hammocks (well drained and higher lands scattered throughout the marshes) into profitable fields. Within a few years, slave labour enabled British Florida planters to develop large and flourishing plantations along the St Mary’s and St. John’s Rivers on which their slaves grew rice, cotton, indigo, oranges and sugar cane. Slaves also harvested timber from Florida’s thick forests, sawed timber, and prepared naval stores for export.’

The American Rebellion And Loyalists

Development was disrupted by the American Rebellion as East Florida was a military target for the rebels from Georgia who mounted an attack in 1776. Many American loyalists from Georgia and South Carolina began to  re-located to the Floridas . A Scots storekeeper Evan McLaurin arrived in  St. Augustine in August 1776, and Moses Whitley and his brother in law in 1777. McLaurin became a major in the East Florida Rangers. Over 50  South Carolinians signed  a memorial in late 1777 supporting  Governor for Tonyn’s defence of East Florida. Up to 600 men had arrived by 1778. Some like Colonel John Harrison of the South Carolina Rangers pre-planned sending David Drennan family and fourteen slaves to begin planting operations. Harrison arrived in 1782.

Colonel James Cassells  and the merchant Gabriel Capers became partners with 80 slaves farming rented land. Joshua Yallowley from Georgia  purchased the 1765 land grants of Paul Pigg (350 acres) and Edward Pickett (150 acres)  in 1773 and 1774. He farmed the land. He exported 600 gallons of orange juice annually. He went to New Providence in the Bahamas in 1784.

The Carolina  William Charles Wells set up the East Florida Gazette. At the end of the Rebellion many more came.  By mid-August 1782 over 4,200 loyalists with  7,200 slaves were planning to come. Because of the numbers involved it took time to arrange for the ships to bring them. Another  1,800 persons, mostly slaves, came in private vessels or overland. William Moss purchased 1,200 acres of the Beresford Plantation possibly the area owned by James Beresford, and Hontoon Island. Loyalists like Andrew Deveaux were involved in a raid on the Bahamas, which the Spanish had  captured from the English in 1782. The population from 3,000 in 1776 to n17,000 by 1784, the year the Floridas began to be handed back to Spain.

Key Developers of East Florida

Not all those with land grants appear to have developed their estates, while others did, like Robert Bissett, John Moultrie, Governor James Grant.

Robert Bissett

Robert Bissett went to East Florida in 1767 and became influential with involvements in many plantations as discussed last year by George Kotlik in Robert Bisset’s East Florida Holdings on the website of the Journal of the American Revolution. It also contains his article Five Women of British East Florida which includes  Sarah Warner, the wife of Jesse Smith. His podcast in July on Following William Bartram’s Footsteps in Florida can be heard on  www.allthingsliberty.com.

John Moultrie 

Born in 1729 in South Carolina John Moultrie was a Scot who qualified as a doctor at Edinburgh University in 1749. A successful indigo planter in Carolina,  he moved with many of his enslaved workers to East Florida in 1767. They grew indigo, corn, beans, potatoes and looked after orange trees on his plantation there.

Moultrie became Acting Governor when the Governor James Grant was sent back to England due to illness. He then became Deputy to the new Governor Patrick Tonyn (see Part 1). His brother James was Chief Justice for East Florida in 1765. His other three brothers Alexander, Thomas and William would fight with the American rebels and one became the first post rebellion Attorney General of South Carolina.

Governor James Grant

Governor Grant was General James Grant of Ballindalloch Castle. As explained in full on Florida History Online his plantation made a profit from indigo. Grant’s Villa plantation is said to have been a model plantation like a modern agricultural experiment station.  A relative also had a plantation.

Francis Levett

Tonyn’s brother-in-law Francis Levett was the Levant Company factor at Livorno in Italy. He went to East Florida in 1769 and developed his plantation. He was also  agent and manager for several absentee owners, including John Perceval, 2^nd Earl of Egmont’s 10,000 acres on which was grown indigo, corn, potatoes and peas, rice and grapes. His son-in-law Dr. David Yeats was Secretary of the Colony. Accused of purchasing slaves for Thomas Ashby, and adding them to his own work force, and being accused of theft by Rev. John Forbes, he went to Rhode Island while returning  in 1774 and having to  resigned his membership of the Royal Council.  As Governor Tonyn helped him make restitution. After the death son  Francis supplied turpentine during the American Rebellion.

Denys Rolle

Denys Rolle was already a wealthy landowner in England with rental income of £40,000 a year in the early 1760s. As well as receiving land grants in East Florida totalling 23,000 acres, he also took over  20,000 acres each from William Elliot and John Grayhurst, 10,000 from William Penrice, and 3,000 from James Cusack. He was brought over  200 hundred  indentured English labourers. As most fled to Charleston, Savannah, and St. Augustine, he replaced with enslaved Africans. His investment also included construction, agricultural tools and farm animals. It seems that he only developed 600 acres.  This did not deter him as in 1780, he purchased Jericho Plantation with its  enslaved African workforce, and further land in  1783. In 1784, Rolle joined the general exodus, ordering the evacuation of his enslaved workers to a 2,000-acre estate on Great Exuma in the Bahama Islands.

William Beresford, Earl Of Tyrone

Beresford Plantation was established by Charles Bernard in the late 1760s for William Beresford, the Earl of Tyrone. The plantation dwellings and most of the agricultural fields were located on the east shore of the body of water that is still called Lake Beresford. It appears that part of the land was owned by his relative James Beresford.

Publicising Opportunities

Even by late 1766 there was a shortage of settlers. The Gentleman’s Magazine of January 1767 contained an appeal for gentlemen to settle in East Florida. Active in land development in East Florida William Stork had his book East-Florida published. Addressed to  Charles Marquis of Rockingham, the First Lord of the Treasury, he argued for the importance of the colony for trade and commerce.

Some Of Those Granted Land

Those given land were recorded in the Privy Council (Colonial) Minutes. Each one can  be researched in order to see if there is any further detail about them. Using the Internet I have done so for some of them in East Florida. They included British based speculators, and those who went out to East Florida to live and develop their land. Dr Samuel Fontelle appears to have been a surgeon employed by the authorities. His correspondence with Major General Williamson about the hospital at Penscola in West Florida was published in 1776. There were Lord William Campbell, Francis Kinlock, and the merchant partners John Forbes and Charles Ogilvie. The latter  was a lobbyist for Carolina in London. The merchant George Udney had rice grown on his Carolina plantation. Samuel Touchet, who imported cotton from the West Indies, had been involved in 2 slave ships voyages in 1757 and 1761 involving 1,000 enslaved Africans, and tried to get a monopoly on the slave trade in Senegal. There  were the banking  brothers James and Thomas Coutts, Lt. Colonel David Wedderburn, whose land was later transferred to his brother Alexander, 1^st Earl of Rossyln,  Captain Thomas Lynn of the Royal Navy, and  Dr George Macauley, whose wife was Catherine authored the multi-volume The History of England.

John Murray was a Scottish plantation owner at Wilmington. His sister Dorothy married another Scot John Forbes, a clergyman who owned land in East Florida. Forbes  was a loyalist during the American Rebellion.

Pierce Galliard was a barrister at law who lived in Bury Hall in Edmonton and Bradshaw Hall in Eyam in Derbyshire. He had extensive land interests in Derbyshire, Middlesex, Essex, and Burford  including mining interests in Edmonton and  Eyam. He had been involved in a complex marriage settlement indenture involving a number of Earls.

Thomas Nixon

Thomas Nixon was a merchant in Lombard St who owned a storehouse in St. Augustine. In  three years including 1772 he sent building tools, farm implements, and other goods by one or more ships a year to St. Augustine.  In 1776 he offered the Lords of the Treasury several hundred of cattle to the St Mary's River for the troops in East Florida. He is recorded in Sundry Accounts of Expenses for the settlement in Florida from mid 1772 to mid November 1776. His activities included selling in 1773 indigo from the  Smyra colony. In February 1773 the House of Commons Journal recorded the approval of a payment to him on behalf of Margaret Cunningham, the widow of the Deputy Commissionary of Stores and Provisions in East Florida.

Nixon was Secretary of a meeting of East Florida landowners based in Britain who met with Lord Hawke and passed a number of resolutions about the treatment of East Florida British landholders by the Spanish.

Non-landowners

Many settlers went to East Florida to work as agents, managers and overseers, to look after the Look-Out Tower at St Augustine, and as pilots to help ships enter the harbour safely.

There were also soldiers who served in East Florida, like Robert Letheridge whose death was recorded in The United Service Journal of 1831. He was there from 1776 until posted to Jamaica in 1780 for 5 years. He rose to be an Aide-De-Camp. He served on St Vincent and Jamaica in the early1800s. He was made a Lt. General in 1813.

Lt. Co William Fawcett was born in Yorkshire. Between 1775 and 1780 he was in Germany  negotiating for c20.000 troops  for use in America. He rose to be a full General in 1796.

Having been a soldier in the campaign to defeat the French in Canada George Scott was appointed lieutenant-colonel in 1761. He took part in the successful  capture of Martinique and Grenada in 1762. His will indicates he had lands and property  in Grenada, Boston and Nova Scotia. He was appointed Governor of Grenada and then Dominica. He died as a result of a duel in November 1767.

Richard Oswald

Richard Oswald was a Scottish merchant and slave trader based in London. He and his associates bought Bance Island, a key African slave trading  station and gained control of other small islands off West Africa. He had estates in Georgia and Virginia and the West Indies.

His  role in developing East Florida is explained by David Hancock in his book Citizens of the World. Oswald was based in London.  In 1765 he set up the Mount Oswald settlement on the 20,000 acres he was granted.  At first he wanted to settle poor Germans, but then imported slaves from Carolina and 70 from Bance Island. His firm shipped c1,000 enslaved Africans to East Florida by 1771. By 1781 he had 300 slaves on his estate. An associate was  Michael Herries who also developed land in East Florida, as detailed in the Papers of Henry Laurens. Oswald advised the Government on trade regulations and the conduct of the war against the rebel Americans. Later he would the British commissioner negotiating the Peace of Paris in 1782.

Dr Robert Willan

Dr Robert Willan, was an English  Quaker living  who lived for several years in Philadelphia before returning to England. He later planned to go to South Carolina en route to his land holding in East Florida. He only got as far as Philadelphia where he became ill and died in 1770. His Philadelphia based executor tried to sell the Florida estate. It is not clear how much it was sold for and whether this was passed to his sons,  one of whom, also Robert, would later found the medical science of dermatology.

Thomas Woolridge

With  patronage from the Earl of Dartmouth With  patronage from the Earl of Dartmouth Thomas Woolridge had several grants including 5,000 acres in 1767, a plot in St, Augustine, and 4,000 acres of pine.He rented the pine to Robert Bissett.  He and his family arrived in St. Augustine in January 1767. he became a member of Royal Council as provost marshal.  He was fort adjutant and barrack master between 1769 and 1772, and from December 1771 Receiver General of Quit Rents. Governor Moultrie suspended him in July 1772 for leaving the province without obtaining official permission. He went to London but by 1777 was bankrupt. A lot is known about his involvements  in East Florida because of the Thomas Wooldridge Biography Project on the 100 Minories website. On his Boston 1772 blog J. L. Bell tells us that while in New York in 1775 Woolridge met the enslaved poetess Phyillis Wheatley and promoted her work back to Dartmouth in London.

Laurence Reed And Robert Edmonstone

The London merchant Lancelot Reed had a 5,000 acre tract of land called Rice Creek but did not develop it  He was an associate of the Earl of Egmont. Governor Tonyn regranted it in 1775 to Lt. Robert Edmonstone, one of the first British soldiers to arrive in St. Augustine. It is not clear whether he developed in. He owned other plots of land. On one of these he had vegetables grown to sell in the town market. He rented out at least one other plot, as his tenant Colin McKenzie wrote him a letter in July 1777 offering to buy the plot, which is in the University of Miami Libraries Digital Collections. He seems to have remained in East Florida until his death in November 1784.

Richard Neave

Richard Neave had interests in the West Indies and the Americas and served as Chairman of the Society of West Indian Merchants and the London Dock Company, and was a Director of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He purchased Dagnam Park in 1772 and replaced the original house with a new one. He was a director of the Bank of England for 48 years, Deputy Governor from 1781 and Governor and  from 1783 to 1785. He was made a baronet in 1795. His son received compensation on several plantations in the West Indies.