USA > Florida > Historical sketches of colonial Florida > Part 4
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12
His monument has perished; his bones, per- haps, have been the sport of the unpitying waves; generations have unconsciously tram- pled on his dust; but, in "the Pantheon of history," his name and his fame are as fresh as when on these shores he drew his last breath and heaved his last sigh.
75
COLONIAL FLORIDA.
A letter* from his confidential friend Ourry inspires the suspicion that a romantic passion, nourished by exile and inaction, contributed to his early death. He was devoted to a Miss Willing of Philadelphia, and supposed to be her affianced. A Mr. Francis, a wealthy Londoner, wooed and won the lady whilst the soldier was winning laurels on the western frontier. But for vandal hands his tomb would be a shrine where disappointed love could make its votive offerings.
General Frederick Haldimand was the suc- cessor of General Bouquet in the command of the southern district. He, too, was a Swiss, and a native of the Canton of Berne. He had
*J'ai lu mon cher ami, et relu avec attention votre triste lettre du premier, et suis sensiblement touché de votre état. Je vois que votre esprit agité, comme la mer apres une rude secousse de tremblement de terre, n'a pas encore repris son assiette. Je n'avois que trop bien prévu l'effet funeste; plût à Dieu que je l'eusse aussi bien pu prevenir ! . .. Je suis attendri du recit tonchant que vous me faites de votre situation douloureuse, et je vous conjure par ce que vous tenez du plus cher et de plus sacré, de ne vous pas laisser aller à la merci d'une passion qui vous mene, et qui vous privera bientôt, si vous n'y prenez garde, des moyens qui vous restent encore pour la dompter (Kingsford Hist. of Can., Vol. V., p. 110).
76
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF
held important commands in Canada before he came to Florida. In 1773 he was appointed governor of New York. In the same year, dur- ing General Gage's absence in England, he was commander-in-chief of the colonies. He was, from 1778 to 1784, governor-general of Canada. To the qualities of a distinguished soldier, he added ability for civil affairs and thestatesman- like qualities which great crises sometimes re- quire in a military commander, as appears from Lord Dartmouth's correspondence with him during Gage's absence .*
There is an interesting coincidence in the lives of Bouquet and Haldimand. Drawn to each other, doubtless, by the tie of nativity and pro-
* I trust the designs of those who have apparently from self-interested motives endeavored to spread an alarm, and create fresh disturbances in consequence of the importa- tion of tea by the East India company will prove abortive. . In the present state of uncertainty with regard to .
what may be the issue of this disagreeable business, I can- not say more to you ; and, indeed, the sentiments you have expressed in your former dispatches in respect to the pro- priety or impropriety of employing a military force in case of civil commotion are so just, and your conduct in that delicate situation so temperate and prudent, as to render any particular instructions from me on that head unneces- sary. Dartmouth to Haldimand-Canadian Archives, Series B., Vol. 35, p. 64.
1
77
COLONIAL FLORIDA.
fession, similarity of disposition, interests and fortunes, a life-long friendship was the natural consequence. They were associates in land investments. Bouquet bequeathed his entire estate to his native brother-in-arms, including the valuable collection before referred to. More fortunate than the former, the latter lived to be made a Knight of the Bath, and to die in his native town of Yverdun .*
*Kingsford's Hist. of Can., Vol. 4, p. 318.
78
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF
CHAPTER IX.
Governor Elliott-Social and Military Life in Pensacola- Gentlemen-Women-Fiddles-George Street - King's Wharf on November 14, 1768.
THERE existsevidence in the Canadian archives that, in July, 1767, Mr. Elliot was appointed to succeed Governor Johnstone, but careful search has failed to discover any official act upon which to rest the conclusion that he ever came to the province.
In a note dated eighteenth of October, 1768, at Pensacola, General Haldimand tells Gov- ernor Brown that "assistance will be given to land Governor Elliot's baggage, and put the garden in order," in answer, evidently, to a re- quest of Governor Brown, made in expectation of the new governor's early arrival. But these preparations were manifestly made in vain, for in a letter written at Pensacola, in January, 1769, by the general to Mr. John Bradley of
1
79
COLONIAL FLORIDA.
-
New Orleans, he says : "I hope that these mat- ters will be settled on the arrival of Governor Elliot, daily expected." And numerous papers in the Canadian archives, as well as documents in the American state papers, show that from the eighteenth of December, 1766, up to the ap- pointment of Governor Peter Chester, in 1772, Brown was the acting governor of the province. The evidence is therefore conclusive that though Elliot was appointed, he either died or resigned without ever having gone to the province.
The coming of officers and others from the military posts of the province to headquarters, as well as thefrequent courts-martial held there, especially numerous and exciting in 1766-7, enlivened military life at Pensacola.
Of the social life of the town during John- stone's and Brown's administrations, we have but little information. If, however, the opinion of an official high in rank is to be accepted as evidence, gentlemen were not numerous up to 1767, as will be seen from an extract from a letter of his to a friend: "A ship lately arrived from London, has brought over the chief justice and the attorney-general of the province, and
80 . HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF
other gentlemen, who are very much wanted." · But who are and who are not gentlemen? Let the moralist, the sectarian, partisan, votary of sport or fashion, dude, friend, enemy, the preju- diced, the just, the harsh, and the charitable successively sit in judgment upon the same man ; what a very chameleon in character will he not appear, as he is reviewed by each of his judges ? Of this variety of judgments, an occurrence, at Pensacola during this period, is illustrative.
Major Farmer of the Thirty-fourth regiment of infantry, stationed at Fort Charlotte,* was by the Johnstone party accused of embezzlement and fraud. But a court-martial which sat at Pensacola honorably acquitted him, and upon a review of the record the finding of the court was approved by the King.
Another letter, in 1770, gives the following un- inviting picture of the civil as well as the social condition of the place: "Pensacola has been justly famed for vexatious law-suits. It is con- trived, indeed, that if a poor man owes but five pounds, and has not got so much ready money,
* Formerly Fort Condé at Mobile.
-
1
81
COLONIAL FLORIDA.
. or if he disputes some dollars of imposition that may be in the account, or if he is guilty of shak- ing his fist at any rascal that has abused him, he is sure to be prosecuted, and the costs of every suit are about seven pounds sterling. .
. I have known this province for a little more than four years, yet I could name to you a set of men who may brag of one governor resigned, one horse-whipped and one whom they led by the nose and supported while it suited their purpose, and then betrayed him. What the next turn of affairs will be, God knows."
Perhaps, however, the writer owed a shop- keeper who sued him; or he had been fined for offering violence to some other importunate creditor; and as to the costs of litigation, it is likely, that in this year of grace some luckless litigant, in the modern Pensacola, can be found who would heave a sympathetic sigh on reading the complaint which comes to us from a suitor in its early days.
Besides, the reference to the treatment received by three governors, in a letter written in 1770, is rather puzzling, for though three governors had been appointed for West Florida up to that
82
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF
time, but two, Johnstone and Brown, adminis- tered its government. Johnstone resigned and, therefore, Brown must have been the man, if any, who was horsewhipped and led by the nose. As "led by the nose," however, is a metaphor, "horsewhipped " may, perhaps, be regarded as a figure of speech likewise.
Strange though it be, yet so it is, in the mass of Pensacola correspondence, from 1763 to 1770, we find mention made of military officers of every grade, governors, secretaries, surveyors, judges, male Indians, ships, boats, bricks, lum- ber, shingles, wine, swords, muskets, cheese, cannon and fiddles, but of a woman or any of her belongings, never, with only two exceptions.
One comes to us like an attractive mirage on the far-off horizon of this Sahara of masculinity and soulless things in the person of Mrs. Hugh Wallace of Philadelphia, a friend of General Haldimand, in respect to whom, in a letter to her husband, he says: "I beg my best respects may be acceptable to Mrs. Wallace." The other is a nameless moral wreck, of whom the writer of a letter exclaims: "I wish I could make the mother of my children my wife!"' forcing upon
83
COLONIAL FLORIDA.
the imagination the shadow of a wronged wife, with one's heart touched by the probable sor- rows of a blighted life.
But, though excluded from men's letters, we do not need their correspondence to inform us that wives, mothers, sisters and nurses formed no inconsiderable part of the population of Pen- sacola in those early days, for we know it as certainly, fully, and confidently as we know the town must have been blessed with air, light, food, and all the other vivifying conditions of human existence.
It has been intimated that fiddles were the subject of correspondence, and thuswise. It appears that General Haldimand was the owner of two fiddles. Whether fiddling was one of his accomplishments does not appear. But as own- ership of one fiddle ordinarily creates the pre- sumption that the owner is a performer in some one of the three degrees of good, bad or indiffer- ent, the ownership of two would seem to be conclusive of the fact.
However that may be, it seems that Governor Thomas Penn of Pennsylvania had knowledge of the instruments, and, presumably, knowing
1
84
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF
their merits, coveted them to such a degree that the general induced him to pay $360 for them. As the bargain was made by letter, after the general and the fiddles had been in Pensacola for several years, we may infer that their dulcet tones must have made a deep and ineffaceable impression upon the governor, which no other fiddles could remove. By a vessel sailing from Pensacola to Philadelphia, the general sent a box containing the two fiddles to Mr. Joseph Shipping of that place, agent of Governor Penn, and also a letter to Hugh Ross, his own agent, whom he tells (evidently with the chuckle of a trader who has made a good bargain) of the $360 he is to collect from Shipping, closing the letter with the exclamation, "I wish I had more fiddles to sell !"
Correspondence in 1767 shows courtesies ex- changed between Pensacola and Philadelphia. A Pensacolian sends a sea turtle, and the Phila- delphian returns a cheese.
The town was accused of being hot and inhos- pitable. But the letter of complaint tells what a specific wine is for the prevention of all climatic diseases and the other ills of life. One
85
COLONIAL FLORIDA.
gentleman, to be sure of a supply of the panacea, orders a pipe of old Madeira.
On November 14, 1768, we are walking down the east side of George street from the gardens to the Bay. After passing two blocks we find ourselves on the Public Square and in front of a large building. Going in and out of that build- ing are many people, the most of them soldiers and Indians, and somewhere in or about it we find a Mr. Arthur Neil. Upon inquiry we are informed the building is the king's store-house, and Mr. Neil its keeper. Leaving the store, a short walk brings us to the shore and after- wards to the king's wharf, which we see covered with troops, some of them getting into boats, whilst others, already embarked, are going to a ship lying at anchor. That ship is the Pensa- cola bound for Charleston, South Carolina. The troops are the Thirty-first regiment, lately stationed at Mobile, whence they have just ar- rived, after an overland march, for the purpose of embarking in the Pensacola. Whether they shall remain at Charleston in winter quarters will, according to a letter of General Haldi-
86
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF
mand to Colonel Chisolm, "depend upon the conduct of the Bostonians."*
* Can. Archives, B. 14, pp. 31, 37, 41.
.......
87
COLONIAL FLORIDA.
-
CHAPTER X.
Governor Peter Chester-Fort George'of the British and St. Michael of the Spanish-Tartar Point-Red Cliff.
PETER CHESTER, having been commissioned governor of West Florida in 1772, came to Pen- sacola, the capital of the province, and entered upon the administration of the office. He was recognized and deferred to by General Haldi- mand as a man of capacity and experience, a reputation which was not impaired by his nine years' rule in Florida.
The first days of his administration were marked by a determination to reform the public service, and to supersede the old star fort by more stable and efficient defenses for the town and harbor, and the spirit which animated him was at once communicated to the military com- mander of the province.
Early in his administration, after much dis- cussion by engineers of several plans for the de-
88
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF
fense of the town, a fort was built, under orders from General Gage, on Gage Hill, and named Fort George for his majesty George III .*
In the centre of the fortress was the council chamber of the province and the repository of its archives, where the office duties of the gov- ernor and the military commander were per- formed, where audience was given to Indian chiefs and delegations, and where really centered the government of West Florida, according to its English boundaries. ..
In that chamber on one occasion could have been seen a man in the prime of life, partly in Indian dress, in earnest conversation with Gov- ernor Chester and William Panton, the million- aire and merchant prince of the Floridas. By the evident admixture of white and Indian blood in his veins, his skin had lost several shades of the hue, his hair the peculiar stiffness, and his cheek bones somewhat of the prominence of those of his aboriginal ancestry. He was tall and slender ; his eyes, black and piercing, beamed
* Mr. Fairbanks, in his . History of Florida,' calls the fort St. Michael; but that was, in fact, a name bestowed upon it after 1783, when Florida became a Spanish colony.
89
COLONIAL FLORIDA. -
with the light that belongs to those of the cul- . tured; the Indians said his high forehead was arched like a horse-shoe; the fingers which hold the pen with which he is writing, during a pause in the conversation, are long and slender; he speaks and then reads what he has written; all is in the purest English, to which he is capable of giving point by an apt classical quotation. On a future occasion he will enter that chamber with the commission of a British colonel. A few years later he will hold a like commission from the King of Spain. A few years later still will find him a brigadier-general of the United States. That man is Alexander McGillivray, of whom much is to be written.
In that chamber three men were once seated at a table, attended by two secretaries busily writing, one in English, the other in Spanish. One of the three is Governor Chester, another is General John Campbell, a distinguished English officer whom fortune has just deserted. The third, a young-looking Spaniard, too young for his insignia of a Spanish general, is Don Ber- nardo de Galvez, the governor and military com- mander of Louisiana. Those three men are
1
90
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF
closing a drama and writing the last paragraph of a chapter of history. The two papers the secretaries are writing, when signed, will sepa- rate, one going to London, the other to Madrid, to meet again at Versailles. At Versailles they will be copied substantially into the duplicates of the treaty of 1783 between Spain and Great Britain, and constitute its V Article.
A pigeon-hole on the side of that chamber once contained an order from Lord Dartmouth, dated January, 1774, to the commander-in-chief of West Florida, to forward a regiment from Pen- sacola to revolutionary Boston to quell the tea- riots. This book is debtor to many documents which once rested in other pigeon-holes of the chamber.
Fort George was a quadrangle with bastions at each corner. There were within the fort a powder magazine and barracks for the garrison, besides the chamber above mentioned. The woods north of it, for an eighth of a mile, and within a curve bending around it to the bay, were felled, in order to give play toits guns land- ward, whilst they could bear upon an enemy in the bay by firing over the town. By a system
-
91
COLONIAL FLORIDA.
of signals, intercommunication was kept up with Tartar Point and thence with Red Cliff.
Tartar Point, now the site of the Navy Yard, where a battery and barracks were erected by the British, is the only existing name in this part of West Florida which carries one's thoughts back to the days of British rule. The name of the point under the second Spanish dominion, which lasted about forty years, was Punta de la Asta Bandera-the Point of the Flag- staff. It seems strange that an English name which had been superseded for that period by a Spanish designation, should after that lapse of time be restored.
The locality of Red Cliff was for a time a puz- zle. Such a name for a locality at once induced a search for a suggestive aspect. No red bluff, however, not too far eastward to serve as the site of a work for the defense of the town or harbor, could be found, and yet, no bluff west- ward of the former could be observed to suit the designation. But at length, a letter in the Canadian archives fixed Barrancas as the local- ity by stating that there was at about the dis- tance of a half to a quarter of a mile from Red
92
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF
-
Cliff a powder magazine, built by the Spaniards, capable of holding 500 barrels of powder, which was then being used as the powder depôt of the province, evidently the relic of old San Carlos, destroyed by the French in 1719, and stood on the site of the present Fort Redoubt.
The defenses of Red Cliff consisted of two bat- teries, "one on the top and the other at the foot of the hill." There were quarters for the officers and barracks for the soldiers in one building, so constructed as to be proof against musket balls and available as an ample defense against an Indian attack .*
* Canadian Archives-Rept. of T. Sowers, Capt. Engineers Series B., Vol. XVII., page 302.
93
COLONIAL FLORIDA.
CHAPTER XI.
Representative Government.
WHEN the governments of West and East Florida were established, as before related, their governors were, severally, vested with authority, their councils consenting and the condition of the provinces being favorable, to call for the election of general assemblies by the people.
In 1773, Governor Chester concluded that the time had arrived when it would be expedient for him to exercise this power. He, accordingly, issued writs authorizing an election, fixing the time it was to be held, the voting precincts, the qualifications of voters, and the number and qualifications of assemblymen to be chosen, as well as the day of the sitting of the general assembly at Pensacola.
But the writs, unhappily, fixed the terms of assemblymen at three years; a provision which proved fatal, not only to this first at-
-
94
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF
tempt, but likewise to all future efforts to establish representative government in West Florida. The election was held throughout the province, and the members of a full general assembly elected. But whilst the people went to the polls with alacrity, and hailed with pleasure the advent of popular government, they were opposed to the long tenure fixed by Governor Chester; and so determined was that opposition that they resolved that it should not receive the implied sanction of their votes. They accordingly cast ballots which declared that they were subject to thecondition that the representative should hold for one year only. To that condition the governor refused to con- sent. The people, on the other hand, were equally unyielding in their opposition. Efforts were made, but in vain, to induce a concession by one side or the other; consequently, during the following years of English dominion, as be- fore, the province knew no other civil govern- ment than that of the governor and his council.
It is difficult to understand the motives which prompted the people to so stubborn an opposi- tion. The tenure of three years might, indeed,
3
95
COLONIAL FLORIDA.
seem long to voters who had probably lived in colonies, where it was a third or two-thirds less. But still, if there was any value to a people in representative government, surely an assembly holding for three years was better than none; especially as it would have so concentrated the influence and power of the community as to en- able it at some auspicious conjuncture to re- move the one popular objection to the system.
On the other hand, we can better appreciate the conduct of Governor Chester. An English- man with the Tory conservatism of that day, he would, naturally, fear the effect of short terms and frequent elections, aside from econom- ical considerations. All the northern colonies were in a state of ferment bordering on revolu- tion, and that consideration, doubtless, intensi- fied his opposition to anything that savored of opposition to the wishes of the king or his representatives. Indeed, from his stand-point, to yield to the popular wishes in array against his own will and judgment, was to leaven the province with a pestilent political heresy which was seeking to substitute the power of the people for the authority of the crown.
!
96
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF
Governor Chester seems to have possessed superior talents for government, the best evidence of which is found in the prosperity of the colony during his administration, the harmony that existed between him and the military, and the high respect and deference he received from General Haldimand.
Such a man, conscious of his rectitude and good intentions towards the province, evinced . by his readiness to afford it the privilege of representative government, somewhat at the expense of his own authority, would naturally feel that the condition attached to the ballots, and adhered to with much insistance, manifested such a want of confidence in him as to justify his distrust of the people.
But what Governor Chester's zealous en- deavors could not accomplish in West Florida, the reluctant efforts of Governor Tonyn achieved - in the eastern province. In 1780, the latter, against his own wishes, and solely at the sug- gestion of others, called for the election of a general assembly. Thecall having been promptly obeyed, the first popular representative body in Florida met at St. Augustine in January, 1781 .*
*Fairbank's Florida, p. 232.
97
COLONIAL FLORIDA.
CHAPTER XII.
Growth of Pensacola-Panton, Leslie & Co .- A King and the Beaver-Governor Chester's Palace and Chariot- The White House of the British, and Casa Blanca of the Spanish-General Gage-Commerce-Earthquake.
THERE is evidence of great improvement in the town within a few years from Governor Chester's advent; a progress which was acceler- ated as the revolution in the Northern Colonies advanced. That great movement, ever widen- ing its area, extended at last from the Gulf to Canada, leaving no repose or peace for those who, living within it, were resolute to remain loyal to their king.
Some entered the royal military service; mul- titudes left America, and others, to nurse their loyalty in quietude, removed to Florida. Though most of that emigration went to East Florida, yet West Florida, and especially Pen- sacola, received a large share. St. Augustine,
!
98
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF
however, was the tory paradise of the revolu- tionary era. She can, without question, supple- ment the glory of her antiquity with the boast of having once seen her streets lighted up by the blazing effigies of John Adams and John Hancock .*
The most important commercial acquisition of Pensacola by that tory immigration was William Panton, the senior of the firm of Pan- ton, Leslie & Co., a Scotch house of great wealth and extensive commercial relations. They had an establishment in London, with branches in the West India Islands. During the English dominion in Florida they established themselves in St. Augustine ; later, during Gov- ernor Chester's administration, at Pensacola, and afterwards, at Mobile. Other merchants also came to Pensacola about the same time, attracted principally by the heavy disburse- ments of the government. But these expendi- tures were not the attraction to the Scotchmen. Their object was to grasp the Indian trade of West Florida. A building which they erected
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.