Florida:

U.S. Territory and State

1821-1861

Part Three

St. Marks Lighthouse c.1893

The St. Marks Lighthouse

Something very beneficial to both of the port towns on the St. Marks River was the construction of the St. Marks lighthouse. Winslow Lewis, the “lighthouse builder” for the United States government, began construction of the lighthouse on an island near the Spanish Hole in 1829. Unfortunately for posterity, the limestone blocks used in the towers construction were taken from the ruins of the old fort in St. Marks as it was gradually dismantled for new construction projects. The government rejected the first lighthouse, as it was not built well enough, and in 1831 Calvin Kowlton reconstructed it. But unfortunately it was built to close to the sea and erosion soon took effect. Some said the candle powered light of the lighthouse was inadequate, but it did make it much easier for navigators to find the narrow St. Marks channel.

Daniel Ladd

The two towns on the St. Marks River were thriving in the early 1830s. In 1833, the young Daniel Ladd, nephew of the Hamlins, came to Magnolia and began an apprenticeship at his uncle’s commission house. It is not known how much cotton came from which town, but in that same year, 9,600 bales were shipped out via the St. Marks River, and in 1834, the number jumped to 18,000. By this time, Magnolia and St. Marks were connected to Tallahassee by old wagon roads, as well as roads traveling eastward towards Jefferson County and heading west into the interior and the Sopchoppy River on the western side of present-day Wakulla County. Rather than taking that road, which was a two day adventure, the few people living near the Sopchoppy and Ochlocknee Rivers could take a ferry to St. Marks or Magnolia, in order to visit one of the general stores.

The Tallahassee-to-St. Marks Railroad

Magnolia experienced some good times, but that would soon come to an end when Richard Keith Call and the Tallahassee Railroad Company partnered with the town of St. Marks and charted a railroad from Tallahassee to there in 1834, bypassing Magnolia. Richard Keith Call, veteran, attorney, planter, and politician, had an interest in the early village of St. Marks, and wrote a letter to the General Land Office years earlier in favor of the little town. Call wrote that he wished to officially lay out the town of St. Marks, and that a makeshift town was already developing into a promising export/import village. The General Land Office responded by informing Call that a town could not be officially laid out without the authority of Congress. Nevertheless, he ordered the Surveyor General of Florida, Robert Butler, to survey the town with Call’s help, and in 1833 the Florida Legislature chartered the town of St. Marks.[1]  It was around this time that the town of St. Marks moved from the muddy land around the old fort to where it is currently located.

Tallahassee-area planters had a problem with transporting their crops to St. Marks for export, so in the early months of 1831, a group of men held a meeting at the Planters Hotel in Tallahassee to discuss the possibility of constructing a railroad from Tallahassee to St. Marks. A couple charters were drafted to start a railroad company, in which Call had no part in at the time. On February 10, 1834, the Florida Legislative Council chartered the third attempt to create the Tallahassee Rail Road Company. The company was headed by seven board members, who then elected Call as their president.

In December of 1834, the Tallahassee Rail Road Company petitioned Congress for a land grant, specifically a grant of right-of-way six hundred feet wide, through public lands from Tallahassee to St. Marks. They also requested one hundred acres in the town St. Marks to construct a terminus and other facilities pertaining to the importing and exporting business. They did not receive exactly what they asked for, but in 1835 Congress granted the Tallahassee Rail Road Company a sixty foot wide right-of-way and ten acres for them to build their terminus. A huge victory for St. Marks over Magnolia, and one that would ensure St. Mark’s permanent existence. Under the direction of the Gray brothers, John D. and William, notable rail road builders, construction began in January of 1835. For the payment of $107,000, the Gray brothers were to cut the right-of-way, construct the rail road, build the terminus in St. Marks, and provide two passenger cars as well as twenty freight cars.[2]

The vast majority of the labor was provided by enslaved African-Americans, who felled the trees and laid the track. Five-by-nine inch wooden rails were laid on eight-by-ten inch crossties. Strips of iron, two and a half inches wide and a half an inch thick, were laid on top of the rails. This daunting task was completed by November of 1837. The Tallahassee to St. Mark’s railroad was one of the first railways to open in Florida, second only to the St. Joseph Railroad which opened in 1836. Even though the railroad was complete, the Tallahassee Rail Road Company and Richard Keith Call was not happy with it at first. Within the first month of the railroad’s operation, the Tallahassee Rail Road Company sued the Gray brothers for $50,000 in damages. They were charged with building the very worst railroad in the United States, but the charges were dropped a few months later. While Call was president of the rail road company, the train ran on horse or mule power and long caravans of wagons delivered their freight at Tallahassee for the long haul by rail to St. Marks.[3] In December of 1837, the Tallahassee Rail Road Company purchased a steam engine, but it broke down soon after. Call wrote that “we have taken the Locomotives off our Road, and intended on never to use them again. We find horse power superior.”[4]

Old Magnolia cemetery

            A month after the completion of the railroad, the US government moved the US customhouse from Magnolia to St. Marks, another victory for St. Marks, and another defeat for Magnolia. When the customhouse moved, the cotton industry followed. By 1841, Magnolia was hanging on by a thread, until a yellow fever epidemic hit the town, and put the final nail in Magnolia’s coffin. The Hamlin brothers continued their operations in Magnolia until 1842, when they moved to the new town of Port Leon, about three and a half miles south of St. Marks on the eastern river bank. Today, all that remains of the extinct town on the banks of the St. Marks River are a few headstones from the old Magnolia cemetery.

A New Railroad Town on the St. Marks – Port Leon

In 1838, many of the residents of the failing town of Magnolia helped establish a new town called Port Leon to rival St. Marks. Located about eight miles downriver from Magnolia, this new town was considerably closer to the Spanish Hole, making it much more accessible to large, ocean-going vessels. In the abandoned town of Magnolia “good houses were sold for a song, some to be carried to St. Marks, some scattered in the country and some to Tallahassee.”[5] Richard Keith Call and the Tallahassee Railroad Company took an interest to Port Leon, and decided to make the new town the trading center of Middle Florida and Southern Georgia by extending their railroad across the river to the new town by building a bridge across the St. Marks River, which effectively shut off trade to Magnolia.[6]

Railroad bridge to Port Leon

Port Leon was officially established in 1838, and the town began to advertise lots for sale. An advertisement in the Pensacola Gazette, dated December 21, 1839, stated, “On Monday, January 13, 1840, will be offered for sale, at auction, a part of the lots in Port Leon. This town is situated on Apalachie Bay, about three miles by the river below St. Marks. It is most handsomely located in the most elevated site on the bay, and with the exception of the ground near the bay, is beyond the influence of the highest tides…Port Leon being the nearest shipping point to the Suwanee and its tributaries and all the adjacent country as far east as the Sente Fe…of the country lying north, east, and west of Tallahassee, which is entirely dependent on this port for an outlet, it is unnecessary to say anything in commendation as it is known to be the latest and most productive body of good land in Florida, and already occupied by a wealthy and enterprising population.”

Some visitors to Port Leon claimed that this was not true, that the town was in a low lying area. Some also felt that the citizens of Port Leon were nasty, mean folk and the town was in need of both a church and a jail. A traveler to Port Leon wrote, “The people – Oh My! ...Law and Justice are not in their vocabularies. I was asked to drink about 500 times and when I refused they would turn around and look as though they were shot. One man told me that I was the only person in Port Leon but what would (not) drink and that he had heard of Temperance folk and he wanted to see how they looked, so he begged the liberty of starring me in the face for one half of an hour.”[7]

The Hamlins, along with their nephew Daniel Ladd, now in his twenties, moved to Port Leon in 1840, and opened a commission house, and with a partner, opened a general store called Hamlin & Snell. Another businessman to move to Port Leon was James Ormond, who had just returned from service in the Second Seminole War, and his partner William McNaught, whom had a business at St. Marks before it closed. Ormond wrote in his memoir, “…about the end of that year (1839) at old St. Marks, I fell in with a Mr. William McNaught, who had been in a commission business but a few months before, lost his partner,…and was much in need of another, so he and I struck up a trade to go into business together at Port Leon, then just being built.”[8] Nathaniel Hamlin became the town’s Postmaster in 1842. Ladd became a cotton trader after he bought a lot in Port Leon for $210. Turing their backs on St. Marks, Call and the Tallahassee Railroad Company shut down their terminus there, and moved it across the river to Port Leon. St. Marks protested the closer, of course. A hotel was built shortly after the town was founded called the Port Leon City Hotel and the town became a successful port, but Port Leon never did become the residential/resort town that Richard Keith Call and the railroad company envisioned, however.

A yellow fever epidemic struck Port Leon in 1841, which took many lives, but the town continued on. By the mid-1840s, Port Leon was a prosperous port town, and because of this the U.S. Customs House, first in Magnolia, then in St. Marks, was moved to there. Even though the Tallahassee-St. Marks was a primitive mule-drawn railroad, the shipping business was booming in Port Leon. The town received a brief economic boost when the U.S. Army built Fort Stansbury near present-day Woodville, during the Second Seminole War. In Port Leon, Daniel Ladd began to make a good name for himself as a merchant and business leader, and in February of 1840, Territorial Governor Robert R. Reid appointed Ladd to be the auctioneer of Leon County (present-day Wakulla County was still part of Leon County at this time). At 26 years old, Daniel Ladd was doing well for himself in Port Leon, and as the town prospered, so did he. Ladd had established a general store and a commission house in the port town, and with that prospered for the next two years. He even purchased an eighty acre farm in soon-to-be Wakulla County, becoming one of the county’s largest land owners.

           

The Creation of Wakulla County

     

    On March 11, 1843, the twenty-first session of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Florida approved “An act to organize the County of Wakulla.” Section 1 of the act stated “that the district of country included within the following boundaries, to wit: - Beginning at the Gulf, thence north on the range line between range two and three, until it intersects the north boundary of section twenty-four, township two, range two, south and east: thence due west on that line, until it strikes that Oklockonee River; thence down the river, until it strikes the Gulf; and thence, along the line of the Gulf, to the point of commencement (including islands), shall constitute a county, to be called Wakulla.” Section 9 of the act states that three elected commissioners were to find a suitable place for a county seat, but, as Section 10 states, in the meantime, Port Leon will house the public offices. Unbeknownst to the Legislative Council, or anybody else for that matter, Port Leon’s time was ticking away.

Sources used:

Doherty, H. S. (1961). Richard Kieth Call: Southern Unionist. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.

Kilgore, J. (19--). Old St. Marks in Florida: An Historical Work.

Shofner, J. H. (1978). Daniel Ladd: Merchant Prince of Frontier Florida. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida.

Roberts, R. (2005). From Boom to Bust: Ghost Towns of Selected Florida Gulf Coast Communites. Tallahassee: Florida State University, Master Thesis.

Strickland, Alice. (1963, January). James Ormond Merchant and Soldier. Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol.XLI, No.3, pp. 209-222.

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[1] Doherty, p.87

[2] Ibid. p.89

[3] Kilgore, p.24

[4] Doherty, p.89

[5] Shofner, p.15

[6] Roberts, p.26

[7] Ibid, p.26-27

[8] Strickland, p.217

Florida:

U.S. Territory and State

1821-1861

Part Two

George Washington Sully painting of Fort St. Marks prior to the town moving upriver to its current location. Courtesy of the Archives and West Florida History Center, University of West Florida. 

Americans move into present-day Wakulla County

When Florida changed hands from Spain to the United States, many families, primarily from the Carolinas, Virginia, and Georgia moved to present-day Wakulla County, settling along rivers, streams, and coastal areas. In the early days of American settlement in what would become Wakulla County, there were barely any roads. Most were old Indians paths that were nearly impassible with  horse and wagons. They were winding and twisting, covering many more miles than a person actually needed to travel to get where they were going. This was because the road builders who cut the trail only cut smaller trees, so the road winded around large ones.

There were no bridges so the roads had to go around wetlands, and people had to cross rivers and streams at their shallowest places. A person would have to have a high wheeled cart to use the roads, because the road cutters often did not cut the trees low enough, and wagons would hit the stumps, sending the occupants flying forward onto the ground. The roads were usually only wide enough to accommodate a wagon going one way, so when two wagons were coming towards each other, which probably did not happen often, one of them had to go up into the woods to let the other pass, which could be difficult depending on where they were. During long times of heavy rain, many of the roads were made impassible. The bad road situation lasted for a long time, as Freeman Ashmore reminisced, “I can recall, when I was growing up on Dad’s turpentine still at Smith Creek, that there were times when we could not travel to Sopchoppy, Tallahassee, Quincy, or any other place for two or three months at a time.” 

Because of the transportation situation overland most people settled near rivers and streams. One such river was the Sopchoppy River. In a local Native American language, the word sokhe meant convulsing, or twisting, and the word chapke meant long, so from the native Sokhe Chapke, we get the English pronunciation of “Sopchoppy.” The land along the Sopchoppy River, as well as most of the land in Wakulla, was part of the Forbes Purchase and was owned by the Apalachicola Land Company. The land was cheap, and was sold at auction in both Apalachicola and Tallahassee. Many of the men who began to settle the area were farmers. As well as their families, these men brought with them their wagons, tools, livestock, and some of the wealthier settlers owned slaves. 

When these Wakulla County pioneers arrived in the present-day Sopchoppy area, they found the land basically untouched by human hands. They planned on planting cotton and tobacco, as well as other crops, and pitched tents to live in while they cleared their newly acquired land and built their houses out of trees they felled. It was not an easy life. Homes were made of logs and had no screens in the windows or doors. People kept mosquitos out of their houses by using smoke from outside campfires. The kitchen was separate from the main house, usually behind it, in those days, so as to prevent the entire home from burning in case a fire occurred while cooking. These were the days before fencing, and people’s cattle, goats, hogs, and chickens roamed freely.

St. Marks: An American Port Town

Because of the establishment of Tallahassee as Florida’s new capitol city in 1824, Americans began to move to the port town of old St. Marks, and established commercial trade businesses there to work with the many planters who were quickly moving into the area. Just like Mission San Luis relied on San Marcos de Apalache in the 17^th and 18^th centuries as a shipping port, Tallahassee would rely on St. Marks in the same capacity. By 1827, St. Marks had received present-day Wakulla County’s first U.S. Post Office. Leon County, which at the time encompassed the land that is present-day Wakulla County, was involved in the Middle Florida cotton boom, and planters from the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia, and a few from New England, migrated to the region and planted crops, and opened businesses.

In a short time, St. Marks was no longer big enough for all the warehouses needed to store all the cotton that came down the river before shipping, and an intense rivalry was started among merchants and new towns on the St. Marks River were established. Along the river, closer to Tallahassee, some merchants established the town of Rockhaven, near Natural Bridge in present-day Woodville, hoping to compete with St. Marks in shipping, but failed because the St. Marks River at that point is very rocky and shallow.

A businessman from New England, named Theophelus Hamlin, brought his sons to the south where they bought and sold lands for profit in Mississippi. When Florida finally changed hands from Spain to the United States, the Hamlin brothers saw an opportunity in the new territory. In order to find raw cotton for their mills, and markets for their goods, the Hamlins, much like other families at the time, set their sights on the Gulf coast of Florida. At least two of the Hamlin brothers, John and Nathanial, were in St. Marks by 1825 to help load cotton shipments and sell products brought over from their family store.[1] Theophelus Hamlin’s son-in-law, Joseph Ladd, also expanded his shipping interests into the Florida gulf coast, and by the 1820s, had also begun trading at St. Marks.[2]

It was the age of canals, and as soon as Florida became a US territory, people began flocking to river towns to make a living. Even though the St. Marks River was notorious for being shallow and full of debris, the people were not worried because the government would dig out and clean up the river. Congress appropriated thousands of dollars to make the St. Marks River more accessible to larger ships, but ships that drew more than seven feet of water still had a difficult time reaching St. Marks from the Gulf of Mexico. Many were forced to anchor at the old Spanish Hole and lighter their loads on to smaller vessels to proceed upriver. Plantation owners in the area, present-day Leon, Wakulla, Jefferson, Madison, Taylor, Hamilton, and Gadsden counties, as well as Thomas, Brooks, Lowndes, and Decatur counties in Georgia, looked at St. Marks for their passage to the sea for the day’s trade routes.[3] In 1825, 64 bales of cotton were shipped out the old fort town.

An 1829 article printed in the Florida Advocate mentioned St. Marks negatively when it published a writing from a recent visitor to the port town. The visitor wrote, “St. Marks is a dirty, swampy, little place, a few huts are scattered over it, half buried in mud – the inhabitants are pale and squalid – and as for the infantine part, they look like resurrection children.” The harsh writer also stated that the old stone fort itself was in ruinous condition, unfit to be garrisoned, and every family had at least six children. But he loved the seafood![4]

Room for One More on the St. Marks River- Magnolia

Layout of Magnolia on the of the St. Marks River

In 1827, unaware that the land west of the St. Marks River, part of the Forbes Purchase, was under legal dispute, the two Hamlin brothers, John and Nathaniel, purchased land on both sides of the St. Marks River from the US government, and decided to lay out a new town called Magnolia on the western bank of the river. The water lots were reserved for wharves and warehouses, and the rest of the town was built up along Broad Street, which ran west from the St. Marks River to the town square. We are not sure why the Hamlins chose a site so far up the winding St. Marks River, or why it became so successful. Perhaps it was because it was a shorter journey from Tallahassee to Magnolia than it was from Tallahassee to St. Marks. Cotton traders may have also believed Magnolia was less likely to be attacked by the Creeks and Seminoles, who were becoming more aggressive as the Second Seminole War (1835-1842) was approaching.

 Magnolia also had a mineral spring nearby, and the people had plans to build a health resort. Lots began to go on sale in Magnolia, and by July people were moving in and clearing their newly purchased land. The Hamlins, along with Benjamin Byrd, opened up stores, and within a few years, others did as well. Other businessmen, as well as the Hamlin family, owned and operated shipping warehouses on the river, and some even owned their own ships. By 1828, a post office was established in the up and coming frontier town. The Magnolia Advertiser, edited by Augustus Steele, was printing a weekly paper in Magnolia, and the Hamlin brothers were advertising their remaining lots they had for sale. The add stated, “The first improvements in this town were made one year since, it now contains 200 inhabitants, 40 houses occupied as dwellings, Stores and Warehouses, besides other out houses, many others are building, 9 respectable mercantile establishments are in full operation, two Public Houses of Entertainment, a Weekly Newspaper, it has weekly mail from Tallahassee; a good spring, Well and River water for family’s use; the situation high, dry, and healthy – as the past season has established beyond a doubt. It has extensive country trade with the interior of this territory and the State of Georgia: 2 regular Packet vessels running monthly to New Orleans, it also carries on a regular trade with New York and other northern cities…It is accessible to vessels drawing 8½ feet of water.”[5] The years 1828 through 1832 were Magnolia’s boom years, and families, such as the Hamlins, were doing very well. Unfortunately for the Hamlins, the youngest brother, Weld Hamlin, died of yellow fever in 1829. His tombstone in Magnolia is the oldest known American grave in the county.

Magnolia, c.1842

While the town of Magnolia was getting started, St. Marks was growing as people began erecting new buildings and facilities. This was the beginning of a heated rivalry between Magnolia and St. Marks. St. Marks would eventually outlast the new town, but Magnolia had its day, and “Magnolians were pleased when the annual report of postal receipts for 1830 showed $213.36 for Magnolia and $19.92 for St. Marks. In January of 1829, Magnolia residents petitioned Congress to become a port of Customs for ships traveling to and from the northern mills along the eastern seaboard and into Apalachicola Bay. Forty townspeople signed the petition. Tallahassee resisted Magnolia as a Custom port, because of the inability of vessels drawing more than six feet of water to clear the channel, and suggested that St. Marks ought to have it. Nevertheless, the Hamlins and their neighbors were elated when the United States Treasury Department located the Custom House at Magnolia in 1830.”[6] This was a victory over St. Marks, but it would be short-lived.

Sources Used:

Roberts, R. (2005). From Boom to Bust: Ghost Towns of Selected Florida Gulf Coast Communites. Tallahassee: Florida State University, Master Thesis.

Shofner, J. H. (1978). Daniel Ladd: Merchant Prince of Frontier Florida. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida.

---

[1] Roberts, R. p.8

[2] Shofner, p.4

[3] Ibid. p.7

[4] Roberts, p.15

[5] Ibid. p.9

[6] Shofner,P.10

Florida:

U.S. Territory and State

1821-1861

Part One

Depiction of Fort St. Marks not long after the U.S. acquired Florida 

The U.S. Acquisition of Florida

Although Jackson’s invasion of Florida, and the taking of Fort San Marcos and Pensacola, ultimately led to the U.S. acquisition of the Floridas, there were international repercussions to his actions. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams had started negotiations with Spanish Minister to the United Sates Luis de Onis for the purchase of Florida, before the First Seminole War. Spain protested the invasion and seizure of the forts in West Florida and suspended the negotiations. Spain did not have the means to retaliate against the United States, or regain West Florida by force, so Adams let the Spanish official protest, and then he issued a letter blaming the British, the Creeks, the Seminoles, and the Spanish for the war. In the letter, Adams also apologized for the 1818 seizure of West Florida, stating that it was not United States policy to seize Spanish territory, and offered to give Spain back Fort San Marcos and Pensacola, which they did in 1819.

Secretary of State John Quincy Adams

Spain accepted the apology and eventually resumed negotiations with Secretary of State Adams for the sale of Florida. Defending Jackson’s actions as necessary for American security, and sensing that this strengthened his diplomatic standing, Adams demanded Spain either control its inhabitants, or cede Florida to the United States. An agreement was then reached, whereby Spain ceded East Florida to the United States and renounced any and all claim to West Florida, this became known as the Adams-Onis Treaty. The United States took formal control of Florida on July 17, 1821, after Governor Jose Callava finally transferred command. However, an effective government was slow to follow. General Andrew Jackson was appointed military governor of the Territory of Florida in March of 1821 by President Monroe, but did not arrive to the capital at Pensacola until July.

Second U.S. Military Occupation of Fort St. Marks

Now that Florida was a United States territory, settlers, mostly from the Carolinas, Virginia,  and Georgia, and a few from Europe, slowly began to trickle southward and settled in Florida, including present-day Wakulla County. Most people purchased land around rivers and creeks, such as the St. Marks River in the eastern section, the Sopchoppy and Ochlocknee River area in the western section of the county, and Lost Creek in the center of present-day Wakulla County. American troops once again occupied Fort San Marcos, which they renamed Fort St. Marks. Unfortunately for the Americans destined to garrison the fort, conditions were the same as they were two years earlier, during the first American military occupation of St. Marks.

Once again, Brevet Major A.C.W. Fanning was named the fort’s commander. In a letter that he wrote to General Thomas Sidney Jessup, Fanning explained that, “On receiving this post from the Spanish, we find it destitute of every comfort and convenience with regard to quarters, stockhouses, and the platforms of this work are in a total state of decay and must be replaced by new. The service of the solider in this country is a continual course of fatigue, sickness and privation.” He continues to write that “the labors to be performed here immediately are barracks to be built for two companies, officers’ quarters, a hospital and a guard house, and if possible, a road to be opened direct to Fort Hawkins, (Macon, GA) on account of our communications. This last would be of great public utility in the settlement of this country…Our heavy timbers for building is procured three miles up the St. Marks River. It is first cut and carried by men through an extensive swamp and then floated down to the fort. But the severest labor is the sawing of the boards by hand, particularly for those who saw them for their own coffins.”[1]

Artist interpretation of Fort St. Marks, c.1822. Sketch done by the author.

In 1821, a physical description of Fort St. Marks was printed in a newspaper of the times. It stated that “the fort is situated at the point of junction of two small rivers, called the St. Marks or Apalache, and the Wakulla. It is composed of a large stone building, made bomb proof, 150 feet south, (from) where it forms a right angle and runs west 250 feet, till it joins the wall extending from the gorge of the bastion. In this bastion are some irregular stone buildings for officers’ quarters. The soldiers’ barracks are bomb proof, and some smaller buildings near. The works are more than one hundred years old, and the masonry is now consolidated into solid masses.”[2] The fort remained in the possession of the U.S. military until they abandoned it in 1825, leaving it in the hands of the Territorial government of Florida. A military cemetery was discovered in the 1960s, and it is believed that it dates back to the first American occupation of Fort St. Marks, 1818-1819. It is perhaps just one of the several European military cemeteries that most likely existed in the Fort St. Marks area, because the place has been occupied by Europeans for over two-hundred years.

Establishing a Government and a New Capital City

As the Provincial Governor of the Territory of Florida, Andrew Jackson established an effective governing structure within only a couple of weeks, working long, hot, nights. Jackson created two large administrative units, Escambia and St. Johns County, and was allowed to choose the office holders for those. As soon as the provisional government was functioning, Jackson resigned as governor on October 5, 1821, and returned to Nashville. William Pope Duval, a U.S. judge in Pensacola, succeeded Jackson as governor of the territory. In March 1822, Congress replaced the provisional structure of the government with a single territorial government, converting East Florida and West Florida into one Territory of Florida. Executive and legislative leadership would come from a governor, a secretary, and a legislative council, all appointed by the President of the United States. Federal courts were established in Pensacola and St. Augustine, their judges were also appointed by the President. Only the territorial delegate to Congress was elected.

First Territorial Governor William Pope Duval

The first Legislative Council of the Territory of Florida was called into session on June 10, 1822, in Pensacola. The ship carrying the delegates from St. Johns County left St. Augustine on May 30, expecting to arrive at Pensacola by June 10. They experienced a terrible storm, shipwrecked, and a council member was drowned. Traveling from St. Augustine to Pensacola, and vice versa, was a very long and hazardous trip. The councilmen arrived late to Pensacola on June 22. To make matters worse, a yellow fever epidemic hit Pensacola, killing the chairman of the council, Dr. James C. Bronaugh (whom Bronough Street in Tallahassee is named for). The session was then held a bit north of Pensacola, further away from the Gulf to avoid yellow fever. Despite all the negatives and setbacks, the First Legislative Council established the territory’s civil offices, courts, militia, and revenue measures. Also, two new counties were carved out of the enormous St. Johns and Escambia Counties, which were Duval and Jackson Counties.     

The United States Congress ordered that Florida’s annual legislative sessions alternate each year between Pensacola and St. Augustine, the territory’s most populated cities. Traveling to attend the Second Legislative Council in 1823 proved just as difficult for the delegates from Escambia County as it did for the delegates from St. Johns County the year before. During this session, held in St. Augustine, Governor Duval commissioned Dr. William H. Simmons and John Lee Williams to select a centralized site for a new capital, somewhere between the Ochlocknee and Suwannee rivers, midway between Pensacola and St. Augustine.

On September 26, 1823, Simmons left St. Augustine for Fort St. Marks on horseback, the only place in the area with a sizable white population, mostly military personnel. At a rate of about three miles an hour, Simmons navigated through the country, swimming across rivers and swamps, and spending nights in Indian camps who were friendly towards Americans. He reached St. Marks on October 10, but had to wait nearly two weeks for the arrival of Williams. Instead of spending his time at the fort, which was probably uncomfortable and boring, Simmons, along with the commander of Fort St. Marks, Captain McClintock, stayed at the plantation house of a Mr. Ellis located on the Ochlocknee River.

John Lee Williams departed from Pensacola by boat on September 30, but his voyage was delayed several times by unfavorable weather. Williams finally arrived at St. Marks on October 23, and was received by the acting commander of the fort, Lieutenant Hutten. After resting for a day, Williams explored the vicinity of Apalachee Bay. Along with the fort’s staff surgeon, Williams then traveled from St. Marks to the home of Mr. Ellis on the Ochlocknee River, where Simmons was waiting for him. 

The Cascades by Comte Francis de Castelnau

The two met on October 26, and with Mr. Ellis as a guide they set out towards the Seminole town of Tallahassee north of St. Marks.[3] Simmons and Williams selected Tallahassee as the perfect place for a capitol. After surveying the land that the Seminoles called Tallahassee, Williams wrote that, “a more beautiful country can scarcely be imagined, it is high, rolling, and well watered, the richness of the soil renders it so perfectly adapted to farming, that living must ultimately be cheap and abundant.” The location of the capitol building was to be northwest of a beautiful waterfall and stream that, “after running about a mile south, pitches about 20 or 30 feet into an immense chasm, in which it runs 60 or 70 rods to the base of a high hill which it enters.” This was called the Cascades, which today the area has been revitalized into Cascades Park. While surveying the land, they met Seminole chiefs Neamathla and Chefixico, who were not excited to see the Americans there, but did not resist them at this time.

On March 4, 1824, four months after Williams and Simmons selected Tallahassee to be the location of the capital of the Florida territory, Governor Duval issued a proclamation that Williams and Simmons had chosen a location, “about a mile southwest from the old deserted fields of Tallahassee, (and) about a half mile south of the Ochlocknee and Tallahassee trail, at the point where the old Spanish road is intersected by a small trail running southwardly.”[4] The U.S. Congress set aside a quarter section of land for government buildings, and reserved three more quarter sections to be sold, so that the territorial government could have the funds to build. Governor Duval left Pensacola for the new capital on June 21, 1824. In the meantime, settlers eager to start planting crops in the fertile soil did not waste any time moving into the Tallahassee area, including the present-day Wakulla County area as well.

By April 9, 1824, a group of settlers from North Carolina, lived in tents near the Cascades while their houses were being built. Judge Jonathan Robinson and Sharrod McCall brought their slaves to Tallahassee and begun clearing the land and building log cabins in time for the Third Legislative Council for the Territory of Florida. Later in the year, the Legislative Council met in the two-story log cabin, and formally named the new capitol “Tallahassee”.  The name “Tallahassee” is either taken from the Tallahassee Seminole’s word for “old fields” or one of their villages.[5] Section I from an 1824 law states, “Be it enacted by the Governor and legislative council of the Territory of Florida, that the site selected for the seat of government shall be laid off in a town, and that said town be known by the name of Tallahassee.”

Richard Keith Call

Richard Keith Call was elected territorial delegate to Congress and he actively promoted Tallahassee while in Washington D.C. His description of Tallahassee caused many well-to-do planters to move to the area. In 1824, the United States Congress elected to give $200,000 and a parcel of land to the Marquis de Lafayette, the famous French hero who helped General George Washington during the Revolutionary War. Because of Call’s description of Tallahassee, Lafayette chose land just north of town. He invited French farmers to his land to grow vineyards, olives, mulberry trees, and raise silkworms. His experiment failed and the land was sold off, but some of the French stayed. This area of Tallahassee is now called Frenchtown. One of Lafayette’s nephews was Prince Archille Joachim Murat; he came to Tallahassee during the first wave of settlement in 1824 and lived in a log cabin on Monroe Street.[6]

Section II of that 1824 law states that, “Be it further enacted, that the said town shall be laid off in conformity with a plan hereafter to be approved by the legislative council, signed by the President thereof, and deposited in the office of the Secretary of the Territory.” Governor DuVal appointed surveyors to plat the property surrounding the capital building. With Capitol Square at the town’s center, Tallahassee was laid out symmetrically with four other public squares. They were Washington Square, where the Leon County Courthouse sits; Wayne Square, where City Hall sits; Jackson Square, which was home of the now demolished Whitfield Building; and Green Square, now home to the Holland Building. The town was bounded by very wide streets. The north boundary was McCarty Street, now Park Avenue. The east was bounded by Meridian Street. The west boundary was Bolivard Street, now called Martin Luther King Boulevard. The south was bounded by Doyle Street, now Bloxham.[7]

The town was growing rather slowly through 1824, as there were only six private homes. But, in 1825, there was a population explosion and around one-hundred homes sprang up. Prince Archille Murat wrote, at the end of 1825, that, “a year ago, this was but a forest; now there are more than a hundred houses, two hundred inhabitants, and a newspaper…Is not this magic? In place of their log-houses, elegant houses made of boards and timberworks, painted all sorts of colors, are erected as if by enchantment in the very heart of the wood, which now assumes the name of city.”[8]

Several wealthy planters began to arrive in the Tallahassee area throughout 1825 and 1826. Francis Eppes, grandson of Thomas Jefferson, arrived from Virginia and purchased a little over a square mile of land and named his plantation L’Eau Noir, meaning “black water.” Another man of wealth that moved to Tallahassee was Benjamin Chaires. Chaires purchased over 7,000 acres and became Tallahassee’s first millionaire.[9] His city home was a beautiful house called the Columns. “The Columns is the two-story red brick structure with four giant white columns” in the front on the northeast corner of Park and Adams, which is now the James Madison Institute.[10] Richard Keith Call, who would later be twice appointed as governor of the Territory of Florida, moved to Tallahassee in 1825 and built his city home, the Grove, just north of what is now downtown Tallahassee, next to the governor’s mansion.



Sources used:

Dailey, R. C., Morrell, L. R., & Cockrell, W. (n.d.). The St. Marks Cemetery.

Kilgore, J. (19--). Old St. Marks in Florida: An Historical Work.

Groene, B. H. (1971). Ante-Bellum Tallahassee. Tallahassee: Rose Printing Company.

Morris, A. (1999). The Florida Handbook: 1999-2000. Tallahassee: The Peninsular Publishing Company.

Hare, J. (2002). Tallahassee: A Capitol History. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing.

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[1] Dailey, Morrell, and Cockrell, p.8-9

[2] Ibid, p.9

[3] Kilgore, John Old St. Marks in Florida, An Historical Work, p.23

[4] Groene, Ante-Bellum Tallahassee, p.16

[5] Morris, Allen. The Florida Handbook: 1999-2000, p.247

[6] Hare, Julianne; Tallahassee: A Capitol History, p.38

[7] Morris, p.248                                                                                                          

[8] Groene, p.23

[9] Hare, p.31

[10] Groene, p47