Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Greatest Deposit of Not Developed Deposits of Gold in the World


MINING
The gold reserves increase in CotuĂ­
Jairon Severino - 2/23/2007 10:06: 00 p.m.

SANTO DOMINGO. - Old Town Dominican Corporation (PVDC) informed that through an intense program of explorations and perforations during the last year it identified five million additional ounces of gold, elevating the total of proven and probable reserves to 18,1 million ounces altogether.

According to a report of the mining company, the finding locates to Old Town between gold the greater not developed deposits of the world, whereas it affirms that the updated costs of construction of the project are now considered between US$2,100 and 2.300 million, which would locate it between the greatest foreign investments in the history of Dominican Republic. The miner informed that she recently received the approval of his Study of Impacto Ambiental (EIA) on the part of the Secretariat of of Environment.


According to she explained, in the 2007 plans include to finish to basic engineering and the beginning of the engineering of details, along with the solution of pending subjects and the obtaining of additional permissions.

Being based on the present mining plan, Old Town could produce between 575, 000 and 600.000 ounces of gold to the year, to an effective cost of US$285.00 to US$295.00 the ounce. The company hopes that the mine lasts 20 years. Along with the gold production, the design of the project incorporates plans to recover zinc, receives and silver.

A recent visit from a Real Estate Developer from Puerto Plata to discuss the Kingsly real estate spoke of one of the worlds greatest deposit of gold, that would bring a great deal of cash flow into the Dominican Republic was recently discovered in the D.R. I comfirmed his report.

Sunday, March 4, 2007

La UE Dona 362 Millones de Euros

The UE donates 362 million euros
Carlos Arturo Guisarre - 3/2/2007 11:00: 00 p.m.

SANTO DOMINGO. - The European Union disbursed in 2006 an amount superior to 362 million euros to make its projects of cooperation in Dominican Republic, informed the Bulletin into the Delegation into the European Commission.

The international organism reported economic aid in the education areas, social responsibility, state reform, deprived sector, environment, natural infrastructure, resources, budgetary support and social development. “With a new vision of the cooperation with the Dominican Republic, the European Commission will canalize bottoms to the national budget directly to contribute to reach the Objectives of Development of the Millenium”, mentions the bulletin.

In educative matter the European Commission affirmed that it cooperated with more than 65 million euros to the country, in the lines of education technical-professional and sectorial support. In subjects of social development the bulletin presented/displayed a contribution that exceeded the 45 million euros in the sectors environmental cleaning of marginalized districts, attendance to nonGovernmental Organizations (ONG), among others.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

The Kingsly Property In the Dominican Republic.





The Kingsley Property is located on the crossroads of Santiago, Domincan Republic's 2nd largest City - Puerto Plata - and Sosua - Cabarette- on the Affluent North Coast of the Country
which is protected from hurricanes the high mountain ranges that divide the North Coast from the Capital of Santo Domingo.

Jardines Deportivos - Commercial Property.


The mountain Isabel De Torres in Puerto Plata



The Statue of Christ that faces the one on Pico Corvado in Rio De Janeiro waits for you on top.
{"Don't forget your jacket and be prepared to spend the day exploring the park."}



The easiest way to get to the top of the mountain is by Teleferico.
Judy and I prefer to make the climb by dirtbike and it can take the whole day either way.
The Park and Restaurant is well worth the climb and the scenery along the way is absolutely breathtaking!



Isabel De Torres , The biggest Landmark Mountains in Puerto Plata.


View of Puerto Plata from the top of the mountain.

Another view of the North Coast with Isabel De Torres in the backround.


Wednesday, February 28, 2007

A day in the Domincan Republic.


On about my 2nd or 3rd trip to the Dominican Republic, I had already made up my mind to sell my construction business in West Palm Beach, Florida.
‘Style Right Developers’, a multi-million dollar project I had be working on for years, would be sold and I would head out to Santo Domingo.

So I set out to own property and set up a business in this exotic place.
Very different than anything I had known in the United States, I started my quest while I was staying in a Hotel Cervantes, just blocks from the famous Malecon in Santo Domingo.
One day as I was leaving my hotel, I saw an important looking man in full military dress, complete with an entourage walking past me on his way to a meeting hall inside the hotel.
I asked the shoe-shine boys and taxi drivers parked outside of the hotel as to who this man was and why he traveled with an entourage. The taxi cab driver replied; "Oh, that's Captain Collado, and he is in charge of the security detail of Presidente,..he is an important man inside the government with a lot of connections."

So I thought to myself; “Hum, this is the kind of person I need to meet if I am to get ahead in this country.” So I waited outside between the parking lot from were he had emerged and the sidewalk leading to the hotel and waited several hours while I continued to ask about the man and learn all I could about him. Finally when he emerged from the hotel, I was determined to intercept him, so I stuck my hand out and said; “Pardon me, my name is Raul Fernandez, and I am a business man from the U.S. and I would like very much to meet you."

Surprised and a little taken a back with my forwardness, he finally smiled, put his hand out, and said, “ I am Capitan Collado.”
We got into a conversation about the military and I told him that I had gone to a military school in the U.S. and that I admired the career of the military. Well, one topic led to another and we found ourselves talking about the business world. He mentioned that he admired businessmen, “but had very little time to become one", so I invited him to lunch and after lunch he gave me a card with about 5 different contact numbers for him.

A week or so later, I called him and set up another lunch date. While having lunch in the restaurant, the Captain asked me what type of business I was conducting in the Dominican Republic, so I looked around and saw a finance company sign next to the restaurant, and I said; “ I'm in the Finance Business." Captain Collado then mentioned how convenient that was for him as he had just received a new car from the U.S. and needed money to pay the import tariff on it and that maybe he could give me his business.

So on a napkin over lunch we worked out the details of the loan, a $2,500 loan with a comfortable 24% down from the customary 60% for these type loans and that proved to be the start not only of a long relationship, but of my new finance company.
I had recently sold the assets of my construction company in the U.S. and had some money to placed ads in the paper and soon the phone started ringing, and before I knew it, I ended up going into the Real Estate business which served as a jumping point for my other ventures.

A friendship began with the captain and I often went to his house for dinner and he treated me as part of the family. He also prepared an I.D. with his signature requesting any authorities that I came across for any reason, to treat me with the utmost respect. Any appointments that I had that were difficult, I would ask him to go with me and he would walk straight in into any situation and resolve the issue before I could say Santo Domingo.

The Captain and I had a very mutually rewarding relationship for many years until the government was replaced by a new democratic elected government.

A short time later my father suffered a stroke and I returned to the Unites States. I have since developed new relationships in the Dominican Republic, however, the memory of this relationship will stay forever etched in my mind as one of the most rewarding and spontaneous friendships I had ever made while in the Dominican Republic.

Clara in the Dominican Republic with her son Raul evaluating building projects.


On the balcony of a townhouse overlooking the bungalows.


Clara meeting with the sales manager.


Overlooking the entire project.

The Beach with the project "Hacienda Village" in the background.


Across the Commercial Site, watching me work



Wife Judy watching me survey the site.

Encouraged for New Projects by the quality of building in Puerto Plata



Serving in the capacity of a consultant to Hacienda Elizabeth in the marketing and sales area, mostly to gather experience for my own project.



I set up a web page, and did consulting work for the Austria base company



The project sold out , rapidly mostly to European investor who would use it a few weeks/months and have a property manager, rent out the remaining time to pay for the unit.



A Resort was build around this community, with pools restaurants, shopping and a clinic


Other Projects



Waterworld : Puerto Plata



New Resort



A recent meeting from a visitor from Puerto Plata brought out into the conversation that the owner(s) of Atlantis in the Bahamas are building a similar resort in Puerto PLata , a marina was built that was quickly rented out, because lack of berth, a second marina was started .
The Part of the project called Dolphin World is already open to the public , just west of Puerto Plata. Water World has been estimated to have a cost of approximate cost of $100 US million dollars.

Puerto Plata Dolphin World - New Project







A Claim for the Descendants of the Kingsly Clan was prepared



Here a team of surveyors are seeting the corners for what is planned to be a Strip Center
with a 2nd story for proffesional offices, the clearing permit has been obtained and the land cleared and ready for construccion.



These 16 Acres of land is overlooking the Ocean on high ground, here is bering cleared to put in the roads for the development. This land belonged to Zephaniah Kingsly and had gone here to unclaimed , the Sugar Company had a de facto owenership that thanks to the research and legal work done, it now reverted back to the descendants of Zephaniah Kingsly .



This piece of land is in Puerto Plate on the main Road from Pto Plata to Sosua
This project can accomodate single family homes , or some other commercial project.

Working To Establish Kingsly Family Tree





Raul while doing Research at the Tribunal with Helpers



Raul while at the Real Estate Tribunal in Puerto Plata doing research on the Kingsly



Rogelio Kingsly accepting title to his land from Raul Fernandez
Some of the descendants of Zephaniah Kingsly that I met were poor and could not afford to pay an attorney, surveyor, court costs, to prove a 'Determination of Heirs' .

I promised them that I would put the team together necessary to do the job. Thanks to my efforts In 5 short years Rogelio was able to sell a small portion of his holdings and build a modern house, and his whole life changed because of him being able to have his title, free and clear to themuch coveted land in Puerto Plata in the north coast of the Dominican Republic.



Maximo Kingsly, Land Surveyor Francisco, Juana Kingsly ,Raul Fernandez
Maximo on the far right now R.I.P. was an encyclopedia of knowledge, he could relate stories
of Zephaniah Kingsly that were passed down from generations.


Juana Kingsly accepting a Real Estate Title to her land from Raul Fernandez



Lucille Kingsly accepting title to her land from Raul Fernandez

Anna Kingsley: A Free Woman

In the early years of the nineteenth century, the population of Spanish Florida was small but diverse. Americans and Europeans came seeking wealth by obtaining land and establishing plantations; furthermore, the forced labor of enslaved Africans secured that wealth. Those Africans who were freed by their owners or who purchased their own freedom became farmers, tradesmen, or black militiamen who helped protect the colony. On the frontier, away from the settlements and plantations, the Seminole Indians and the Black Seminoles kept an uneasy vigil on the encroaching development of Florida.

Anna was the African wife of plantation owner Zephaniah Kingsley. At an early age, she survived the Middle Passage and dehumanizing slave markets to become the property of Kingsley. After manumission by her husband, Anna became a landowner and slaveholder. She raised her four children while managing a plantation that utilized African slave labor. She survived brutal changes in race policies and social attitudes brought by successive governments in Florida, but survival demanded difficult, often dangerous, choices.

Anna Kingsley was a woman of courage and determination. She is an example of the active role that people of color played in shaping their own destinies and our country’s history in an era of slavery, oppression, and prejudice. She left, however, no personal descriptions of her life. She was not a famous or powerful person who figured prominently in accounts of that era. Today we must find Anna in the official documents of her time and in the historic structures that she inhabited. There her story may be discovered.

Anna Kingsley: A Free Woman
On the first day of March 1811, in the Spanish province of East Florida, white plantation owner Zephaniah Kingsley put his signature on a document that forever changed the life of a young African woman. The document was a manumission paper which ensured her legal freedom. The young woman, a native of Senegal whom Kingsley had purchased in a slave market in Havana, Cuba, was his eighteen-year-old wife and the mother of his three children. That paper not only marked the beginning of the young woman’s freedom in the New World, it was also the beginning of the written record of a remarkable life. Her name was Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley.
A free woman, Anna Kingsley petitioned the Spanish government for land, and land grant records show that in 1813 she was granted title to five acres on the St. Johns River. The property was located across the river from her husband’s plantation, Laurel Grove, south of today’s Jacksonville. Anna purchased goods and livestock to begin a business, and she purchased slaves. She became one of a significant number of free people of African descent in East Florida. They included farmers, craftsmen, and members of a black militia. Some of these people, like Anna, owned slaves. Although slavery was supported, Spanish race policies encouraged manumission and self-purchase and slavery was not necessarily considered a permanent condition. The free black population held certain rights and privileges, and they had opportunities to take an active part in the economic development of the colony. Anna Kingsley was determined to be an independent businesswoman, selling goods and poultry to neighboring settlers.

Her blossoming business lasted only months. During an effort to wrest East Florida from the Spanish, armed American forces entered the province. Together, with a number of rebellious Floridians, they looted and occupied the homesteads of planters and settlers to obtain supplies and set up bases. If these insurgents succeeded and an American system replaced the comparatively liberal Spanish policies, what would become of the freed people and their rights? When the Americans approached, Anna herself lit the fire that consumed her house and property. Then she escaped with her children and slaves on a Spanish gunboat. The insurrection later ended in failure and, as it turned out, Anna’s loss was not total. Although a Spanish commandant reported of Anna’s property “the flames devoured grain and other things to the value $1,500,” the governor rewarded her loyalty with a land grant of 350 acres.

Laurel Grove was also destroyed as a result of the conflict. In 1814 Zephaniah and Anna Kingsley, along with their children and slaves, moved to Fort George Island, a sea island near the mouth of the St. Johns River. On this thousand-acre island with palm-fringed beaches, birds of every description, and ancient Indian mounds of oyster shell, they restored an abandoned plantation. In a fine, comfortable house with views of the tidal marsh and ocean beyond, Anna spent the next twenty-three years of her life.

During the years at Fort George, Zephaniah Kingsley’s Florida landholdings increased to include extensive timberland and orange groves, and four major plantations producing sea island cotton, rice, and provisions. He also owned ships that he captained on trading voyages. Kingsley had managers at his various properties to whom he entrusted his business operations when he was away. At the Fort George plantation, Anna took this responsibility and, Kingsley later declared, “could carry on all the affairs of the plantation in my absence as well as I could myself.” These “affairs” included overseeing the lives of about sixty men, women, and children who lived on Fort George Island in slavery. The labor of the Kingsley slaves provided the wealth of the Kingsley family.

Conditions for all of Florida’s people of color, free and enslaved, changed drastically when Florida became a territory of the United States in 1821. An influential planter, Zephaniah Kingsley was appointed to the 1823 territorial legislative council. He tried to persuade lawmakers to adopt policies similar to those of the Spanish, providing for liberal manumission and rights for the free black population. He published his opinions in A Treatise on the Patriarchal, or Co­operative System of Society As It Exists in Some Governments, and Colonies in America, and in the United States, Under the Name of Slavery, with Its Necessity and Advantages in 1828. But Kingsley’s arguments did not convince Florida legislators.
Anna Kingsley: A Free Woman Kathy Tilford OAH Magazine of History Page 5 of 10

Legislative councils used fear of slave rebellion to justify policies that were increasingly oppressive. Legislation of the 1820s and 1830s reflects racial discrimination that blurred the distinction between freeman and slave until there was virtually no difference.

The cession agreement between the U.S. and Spain was supposed to protect the status of free people of color living in Florida in 1821, but the Kingsleys had reason to be concerned. Parish records reveal that a fourth child was born to Zephaniah and Anna in 1824. Their new son was subject to the harsh enactments that Zephaniah Kingsley called “a system of terror.” Even Anna and her older son and two daughters were not necessarily secure as racism increased. Anna decided to leave Florida and go to Haiti. Slave revolution had made Haiti the first independent black republic of the New World, the “Island of Liberty” as Kingsley called it. Anna and her sons intended to start a plantation on the northern coast of the island. Their work force would consist of more than fifty of their former Florida slaves, freed to work as indentured servants to comply with Haitian law which prohibited slavery. In 1837 Anna Kingsley left Florida and sailed to “Mayorasgo De Koka,” her new home in Haiti.

Zephaniah Kingsley described Mayorasgo De Koka as “heavily timbered with mahogany all round; well watered; flowers so beautiful; fruits in abundance, so delicious that you could not refrain from stopping to eat...” Roads and bridges were built and the Kingsley’s planned a school for the community, but they did not live happily ever after in their tropical colony. In 1843, in his seventy-eighth year, Zephaniah Kingsley died.

With an estate worth a fortune at stake, some of Zephaniah Kingsley’s white relatives contested his will and sought to deny Anna and his children their inheritance. After much dispute, courts upheld the rights of the black heirs, but the family suffered another loss. Anna’s older son George was returning to Florida in 1846 to defend land interests, when the ship in which he was traveling was lost at sea. Her younger son, John Maxwell Kingsley, took over management of Mayorasgo De Koka and Anna Kingsley, for unknown reasons, returned to Florida. She could not return to Fort George Island; that plantation had been sold years before. She settled near her daughters who had married and stayed in Florida. Once more Anna lived on the St. Johns River, this time in a young town called Jacksonville.

When the Civil War divided the country, Anna and her daughters’ families supported the Union. With Florida’s secession and hostility from Confederates intensifying, Anna had to leave her home again. In 1862, she traveled with relatives to New York. They returned to Florida later that year, but, to be safe, lived in Union-occupied Fernandina until the end of the conflict. In 1865 Anna Kingsley returned to the St. Johns River for the final time.

Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley died in 1870. No intimate letters, diaries, or other personal reflections on her life are known to exist. No portrait or photograph of any kind remains of her. Even her grave is unmarked. Her story, however, endures. In the legal petitions and official correspondence, probate and property records, the details of her life emerge. And on Fort George Island, near the mouth of the St. Johns River, the house where she lived for twenty-three years still stands.

Lesson Procedures
To enhance this lesson plan, teachers may borrow a slide program of Kingsley Plantation. To request slides or to arrange a field trip, contact the National Park Service, Kingsley Plantation, 11676 Palmetto Ave.,

Jacksonville, Florida, 32226.
1. Students should read the Anna Kingsley article and receive copies of the two included documents.
2. Have students use maps to trace Anna’s life and travels.
3. Ask students to draw a time line from 1775 to
1875. On one side of the time line students should identify important events of Anna’s life and when they occurred and on the other side students should note the dates and major events of American and (with some research) Florida history. Discuss with your students events in Anna’s life that were influenced by political or social issues.
4. The two documents represent the first and one of the last official records of Anna’s life. Ask students to list information about Anna using only the two documents. What additional information can be inferred from the documents? Ask students to list official documents (not diaries or personal correspondence) that might be used to collect information about themselves. What, for example, does a drivers license reveal? Report card?
5. Field study at Kingsley Plantation or the classroom slide program (described above) provides an important context in which to study Anna Kingsley. The site includes the original plantation house, kitchen house, barn, and extensive remains of twenty-three slave cabins. By studying these structures and the natural setting (plus further reading) students can do projects that relate the physical site to aspects of Anna’s life. A project might compare and contrast living conditions of enslaved women and slaveholding women such as Anna; or explore the responsibilities (and implications) of a woman managing a large, remote plantation.

Document A: Manumission Paper

In the name of Almighty God, Amen: Let it be known that I, Zephaniah Kingsley, resident and citizen of the St. Johns River region of this province hereby state: That I have as my slave a black woman named Anna, about 18 years old, who is the same native African woman that I purchased in Havana...

I recognize [her children] as my own; this circumstance, and as well considering the good qualities of the already referred to black woman, and the truth and fidelity with which she has served me, impels me to give her freedom graciously and without other interest, the same accorded to the aforementioned three mulatto children whose names and ages are for the record: George, three years and nine months old; Martha, twenty months old; and Mary, a month old.. .1 remove my rights of property, possession, utility, dominion, and all other royal and personal deeds which I have possessed over these four slaves. And I cede, renounce and transfer [my rights] to each of them so that from today forward, they can negotiate, sign contracts, buy, sell, appear legally in court, give depositions, testimonials, powers of attorney, codicils, and do any and all things which they can do as free people who are of free will without any burden...

Excerpted from document in Escrituras, Reel 172,
Bundle 378, 17A-B, 18A-B, of the East Florida Papers,
Library of Congress (microfilm copy at P. K. Yonge
Library of Florida History, University of Florida).
Document is in Spanish; this version was translated
by Caleb Finnegan.

Document B: Will
http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/women/tilford.htm 1/31/2006
Anna Kingsley: A Free Woman Kathy Tilford OAH Magazine of History Page 9 of 10

Know all men by these presents, that I Anna M. Kingsley of the County of Duval and State of Florida being of sound mind and memory but feeble in strength, do hereby, and by these presents constitute and appoint my daughter Martha B. Baxter my true and lawful attorney in fact and trustee.. .And I have and hereby place in her hand the full and undisturbed possession of the following amount of money and property, viz: three thousand dollars in cash and four Negro slaves viz: Polly a woman aged about 17 years, Joe a boy about 14, Elizabeth a girl about 12, and Julia a girl about 9 years. Also all my right title and interest in and to a certain claim I have as one of the Legatees of and under the will of Zephaniah Kingsley late of East Florida in which he the said Kingsley bequeaths and devises to me, one twelfth part of an amount or sum of money that shall be allowed his heirs by the government of the United States for losses sustained by him during the War of 1812 and 1813 by the operations of the American Army, the principal having been allowed, the interest money is now pending before the Congress of the U.S... .Given under my hand and seal this 24th day of April, one thousand eight hundred and sixty. —Anna M. Kingsley

Excerpt from trust/will of Anna Kingsley. Typescript of complete document in NPS files at Kingsley Plantation (made from Duval County probate file 1210-D).

Selected Sources
Child, L. Maria. “Letter XXIII.” In Letters from New York. New York: Charles S. Francis and Company, 1845.
East Florida Papers Manuscript Collection, Library of
Congress. On microfilm at the P. K. Yonge Library of
Florida History, University of Florida, Gainesville.

Kingsley, Zephaniah. A Treatise on the Patriarchal or Cooperative System of Society as It Exists in Some Governments, and Colonies in America, and in the United States, Under the Name of Slavery, with Its Necessity and Advantages. 4 eds. N.p., 1828, 1829, 1833, 1834; 2nd ed. reprint, Freeport, NY: Books for zlibraries Press, 1971.

Landers, Jane. “Free and Slave.” In The New History of Florida, edited by Michael Gannon. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996.

Schafer, Daniel L. Anna Kingsley. St. Augustine, FL:
St. Augustine Historical Society, 1994.

Spanish Land Grants in Florida. Vol.4, Confirmed Claims K-R. Tallahassee, FL: State Library Board, 1941.

Kathy Tilford is a Park Ranger with the National Park Service at Kingsley Plantation in the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, Jacksonville, Florida. She would like to thank Daniel L. Schafer, biographer of Anna Kingsley, for his assistance in this lesson plan.

Why the Kingsly Slaves wanted to stay in Florida?

Why had they wanted to stay in Florida?

Well, the local court was also curious. So a hearing was held before their departure, and their answers are on record. As it turns out, they were being trained as masons, wainwrights, carpenters, blacksmiths, shipwrights, cobblers, cooks, wheelwrights, mechanics. Skilled people have clout, you see, even slaves.

Mistreat a farm worker and no one cares. Mistreat a master mechanic and every other slaveowner around will charge you with cruelty in court, hoping to win the person for himself. Craftsmen could demand time to work on their own, to run their own businesses (paying their owner a share), or save up to buy their own freedom.

Slavery was horrible, but it was less horrible if you had a marketable skill. The Hernandez group had been used as raw laborers. They had no hope of betterment in Florida. The Kingsley group had spent eighteen months in vocational school. As Nelson Mandela said about six months ago in a speech to youth leaders in South Africa, “Education is the key. Education is one of the most important weapons that you can have.”

Exile

Annas personal life was not as rewarding as her business life. On the plus side, her daughters married very well indeed. Martha married Oran Baxter, a wealthy ship builder of Scottish descent like her father. Mary married John Sammis, an influential politician and sawmill owner of English stock. Anna’s grandchildren were born with fair complexions and they and their descendants all assimilated into “white” Florida society.

On the minus side, race relations plunged in the 1820s and 30s. Historians call the early 1800’s wave of complexion-based segregation and consequent interracial hate the “Denmark Vesey” wave, to distinguish it from the similar “Nathaniel Bacon” wave a century earlier, or from the horrific “Jim Crow” wave a century later. Intermarriage was outlawed and free African-Americans were persecuted-even rich ones.

For years the Kingsleys’ wealth and political power shielded the interracial couple from laws against miscegenation and against free Black property. But by 1836, the authorities were closing in and it was clear that the Kingsleys could not remain. They fled to self-imposed exile in Haiti. In four years, Anna carved a successful plantation out of the Haitian jungle. Their son George died in a shipping accident. Zephaniah died on the job with his ship in New York in 1843.

Twenty years later, President Lincoln appointed John Sammis, Anna’s son-in-law, as Federal tax collector for Florida. U.S. race relations improved after the war, and Anna moved back to Jacksonville. She was 77 years old when she died peacefully at Epping Forest, surrounded by her children and grandchildren. Fourteen years later, her “white” grandson Eggbert Sammis was elected as one of Florida’s post-Reconstruction state senators.

Today

My wife and I interpret living history at Florida’s Stephen Foster State Park. An African-American friend of ours, named Mavynee Betsch, also does living history, but at the Kingsley Plantation on Fort George Island. The place still exists. It is operated as a historic site by the National Park Service. Mavynee portrays a recently freed slave.

She teaches code songs like “Follow the Drinking Gourd.” And she tells African folktales to visitor’s kids. But she grabs everyone’s attention by telling audiences that she, in real life, is a direct descendant of Anna Kingsley.

When we first saw her, I could not resist running up after her show and asking, “You say you are Anna Kingsley’s descendant. But I happen to know that the Baxters and Sammises all assimilated into ‘white’ society. And, excuse me for mentioning it ma’am, but you are medium brown. How can this be?”

Now folks, if you ever talk to a re-enactor, you will soon discover that each of us has his own narrow pet subject, which he has studied to death. Ask about it and you will open the floodgates to more explanation than you ever wanted to know. For example, now and then after a performance, visitors ask me about the history of the banjo. When they do, I can see Mary Lee, out the corner of my eye, frantically waving, “Dont ask! Don’t ask!”

Well, Mavynee’s hobby turned out to be genealogy. I had no sooner gotten those words out of my mouth, when she replied, “I’m glad you asked that!” and whipped out a huge photo album, flopped it onto a table, and opened it to reveal family snapshots going back over a century.

It seems that Anna Kingsley’s “white” grandson, post-Reconstruction Florida state senator Eggbert Sammis, had a daughter. She was named Mary, after her grandmother. When she grew up, Mary Sammis fell in love with a Black bandleader and they ran off up north and got married. Eventually they returned to Jacksonville. Their son, in turn, grew up to become wealthy as founder and C.E.O. of the first life insurance company in Florida -- Afro-American Life of Jacksonville. And that man was Mavynee’s grandfather.

And so, we end this twisty tale of real history with the following observation: the only descendant of that teenager from Senegal who can still be found at the old plantation two centuries later, is an African-American re-enactor, whose link to Anna Kingsley is through her “white” great-grandmother.

Readers interested in details of Anna Ndiaye jai Kingsley, about JosĂ© Hernandez, or about the many other colorful characters of that time and place should read Frank W. Sweet, The Invasion of Spanish Florida: Paths Not Taken, Part 4 (Palm Coast FL: Backintyme, 2000). It is one of a series of well-footnoted booklets on the history of the U.S. “race” notion. The entire series is available online at www.backintyme.com/books2.htm or from Amazon.com. They are also sold at numerous historical site and museum gift shops in Florida, or can be borrowed from libraries.
-- END --

Biographical Data

Frank W. Sweet holds a master’s in Civil War studies from American Military University in Manassas, Virginia, and is now working on his Ph.D. in history at the University of Florida in Gainesville. A nineteenth century living history interpreter, he is the author of numerous booklets currently sold at museum and state park gift shops throughout Florida. His two areas of interest are Civil War military

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

The Guerrero Refugees

The British are an odd race. Whatever they do is mandatory, and they make everyone else join in. Whatever they do not do is forbidden, and they stop everyone else from doing it either.

When Britain outlawed the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, the Royal Navy began chasing peaceful law-abiding slave traders, seizing their cargoes and selling them for prize money.

In December 1827, the Spanish brig “Guerrero,” carrying 400 Africans to Cuba was chased across the Gulf Stream by a British frigate enforcing the slave trade ban.

She ran aground near Key West. As the Guerrero broke up, about half of the unfortunate Africans were taken in chains to Cuba by other Spanish ships. The rest were rescued from the reef by Key West wreckers.

Eighty-nine survivors became the responsibility of the local U.S. Treasury Department representative, William Pinkney. Federal law said that rescued Africans were to be housed until transportation could be arranged back to Africa. But Pinkney had no budget for room and board, and it could take months for the feds to arrange a ship. What was he to do with them? He could not just let them starve. So, he assigned the Africans to local planters who used their labor until their ship arrived.

For fifty-three of the refugees, everything went without a hitch. They were assigned to Don JosĂ© Mariano Hernandez. His Malacompra sugar plantation was on what is now highway AlA between Flagler Beach and Marineland, Florida. The fifty-three Africans worked for Hernandez for eighteen months. Then, in August 1829, the U.S. Navy schooner “Washington’s Barge” sailed into St. Augustine with orders to take the Africans home. Hernandez turned them over to the Navy, and that was apparently that.

But for the other thirty-six Africans, things got more complicated. They had been loaned to Anna Kingsley. When the Naval officers came for them, they refused to go. They pleaded with Anna to stay. She explained that they were being taken home, but they merely wailed and clutched her skirts. So she ordered her foremen to “explain it” to them. The booted, mounted overseers cracked their whips and sternly ordered the thirty-six Africans to collect their belongings and their rug-rats, and get themselves aboard the Africa-bound vessel.

The refugees promptly bolted for the woods!

Most were easy to catch. They would creep up to the big house at night, pleading with Anna to be allowed to stay. It took a month to round up the last one. U.S.S. Washington’s Barge sailed for Ghana with all the Africans aboard, on September 30, 1829.

The Richest Woman in Florida


By Frank W. Sweet

She was a teenage princess. Educated by the finest private tutors, fluent in several languages. Her great-uncle had been royalty, her parents were wealthy aristocrats. Her name was Anta Majigeen Ndiaye and she was born in the Wolof nation, a place that is today part of Senegal. Her folks were slave traders. Anta had been trained in the techniques of the slave trade since childhood.

Now folks, real history has so many twists and turns that it makes your brain itch. The following story of slavery and race is utterly unpredictable because it is utterly true.

Making a profit from selling slaves is no different than in any other retail business. Profit depends on your adding value to your product, so that you can sell it for more than you paid. Remember this. We shall come back to it later.

Africans from the interior had been kidnapped for thousands of years. Newly captured slaves were marched north across the Sahara, or shipped down the Nile. They were then sold around the Mediterranean to ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans as well as to medieval Europeans and Muslims.

But slave trading boomed during the age of European expansion. African consumers wanted European products-textiles, liquor, machinery. Europeans wanted African slaves to colonize the New World. And so, trading colonies were founded along Africa’s coastline. Coastal African states began raiding the inland states, kidnapping slaves for sale to the Europeans. They grew rich on the slave trade.

The only defense against the raids was to have a strong army, with guns and cavalry. But European firearms and horses also had to be bought with slaves. And so the vicious cycle spiraled downward. By 1806, the African interior was virtually depopulated. The slave raiders were reduced to preying upon each other.

Middle Passage

The horsemen from Kajoor appeared in Anta’s village at dawn. They torched the houses, shot the defenders, and rounded up the survivors. The very old and the very young were slaughtered. Young Anta saw her family killed. She was shackled by the neck to nine other teenagers. They, plus a dozen similar coffles, were then marched across country to the great slave-trading depot at GorĂ©e on the coast.

Captain Gisolfo, Portuguese master of the Danish ship “The Sally,” loaded Anta and two hundred others into the cargo hold. Their passage was a fortunate one. Manacled below decks, only 60 or so perished of dehydration, their corpses dragged out and thrown to the sharks. Upon arriving in Havana, Anta was cleaned up, fed, watered, and her naked body oiled for the auction block.

Zephaniah Kingsley owned his own ship. He had been born in Liverpool of Scottish ancestry and raised in Connecticut. After graduation, he had started a one-vessel shipping business out of Charleston. He carried molasses from the Caribbean to New England, carried rum from there to GorĂ©e, and brought slaves from Africa back to the Caribbean, thus following a triangular route. By 1806 Kingsley had moved his base of operations to Doctor’s Inlet on the St. Johns River near St. Augustine, Florida. Kingsley spoke Wolof and had often bought slaves from Anta’s folks. Kingsley raced to Havana, anchored his ship, went into town, and bought Anta in the highest bid of that day’s auction.

When Kingsley’s ship, “The Esther” sailed for Florida on October 10, her outbound manifest listed four barrels of molasses and three female slaves. When the Esther docked in St. Augustine, she cleared customs with four barrels of molasses, only two female slaves, and an elegantly dressed dark brown teenager, whom Zephaniah introduced as his new wife, Anna Kingsley.

Building a Business

While her husband continued his triangular voyages, Mrs. Kingsley raised their family. They had three children: Mary, Martha, and George-swarthy, dark, Mediterranean-looking youngsters, as you can well imagine. She also built her own business.

Within a decade, Anna Kingsley became the wealthiest woman in Florida by creating a slave-trading empire that stretched along northeast Florida’s waterways from Green Cove Springs to the mouth of the St. Johns, over a hundred miles downriver at Mayport on the Atlantic coast.
She owned several large plantations. Her most luxurious was in Jacksonville. While their kids attended college in England, she furnished the mansion with the finest European crystal chandeliers, furniture, tableware, and with masterpieces of European painting and sculpture. The building still stands in Jacksonville. It is called Epping Forrest, and you can take tours through it.

Annas most profitable plantation was on Fort George Island, across the river from Mayport. It was her main training center. She would buy unskilled Florida-born teenagers or newly arrived Africans, and send them to Fort George. Each new unskilled recruit was issued clothing and shoes. They were assigned quarters-two-room concrete houses with fireplaces. Each apprentice was then delivered to a master craftsman for two-to-three years. At the end of their training, the newly skilled craftsmen were then sold at enormous profit, many being smuggled across the U.S. border into Georgia. As we said at

Papers concerning the will of Zephaniah Kingsley, 1844, 1846.

State Archives of Florida Online Catalog

The Online Catalog allows searching and browsing of information about the State Archives of Florida’s holdings of over 40,000 cubic feet of state and local government records and historical manuscripts. The catalog provides descriptions of over 2,700 collections and lists the contents of containers and folders in many of those collections.

Petitions contesting the will of slave-trader and planter Zephaniah Kingsley of Fort George Island, Florida, were made after his death in 1843 by many of his collateral relatives, who doubted the legality of the terms of his will. Kingsley was notorious for many reasons, most notably for his marriage to an African princess, Anna Madgigene Jai, and to other lesser wives. In his will, Kingsley sought to provide for his wives and for his mixed issue, and in so doing, brought on bitter complaints from his relatives when his will was probated in Jacksonville. They believed it was against public policy to leave one’s property to progeny of miscegenation. Ultimately, Kingsley’s will was upheld, but the estate was considerably depleted in the meantime by poor administration.

The terms of his will prove that the nonconformist Kingsley was embittered by the racial discrimination practiced in this society and sought, by this document, to ensure the freedom and financial well-being of the children he had by his various colored wives. He had in 1835 sent his wife and children to Haiti, fearing for their safety in the Florida territory. In the will, he recommended to his executors that slave families not be separated without their consent, that his slaves be given the privilege of buying their freedom atone half their value, and that they be given

ample opportunity to go to Haiti if they could not remain free in Florida. He enjoined his “natural and colored children” to keep a legally executed will at all times in order to direct the disposal of their goods in the event of death, “until they remove themselves and properties to some land of liberty and equal rights, where the conditions of society are governed by some law less absurd than that of color.”

Executors of the will were Kingsley B. Gibbs, George Kingsley, and Benjamin A. Putnam. Among the petitioners to the will was Anna McNeill Whistler, mother of the artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler and subject of his famous portrait. The executors were inept and uninterested in fulfilling the terms of the will; as a consequence, Kingsley’s wives and children were slow to receive their shares of the estate. Anna Jai Kingsley persisted in her demands to secure her share and those of her children, returning around 1846 to Duval County from Haiti in order to eliminate the tremendous problem of distance. In 1847, she finally received $2,000.00 from Gibbs and Putnam under order of the Duval County probate court.

Summary: The collection contains two documents concerning the contesting of Zephaniah Kingsley’s will. Included is the petition to the will made by Martha McNeill and others to Judge Farquhar Bethune, filed November 30, 1844. The other document is the executors’ response (Benjamin A. Putnam and Kingsley B. Gibbs) to the petition of Anna M. J. Kingsley, widow of Zephaniah Kingsley. The response is dated September 5, 1846.

Kingsly Plantation

The Kingsley Plantation, administered by the National Park Service, is located on Fort George Island and includes the plantation house, a kitchen house, a barn, and the ruins of 25 of the original slave cabins.

The history of the island spans more than 1 000 years beginning with the Timucuan Indians. The structures at the site, however, date to the plantation era of the island. The Kingsley Plantation was named for one of several plantation owners, Zephaniah Kingsley, who operated the property from 1 813-1 839.

Kingsley operated under a “task” system, which allowed slaves to work at a craft or tend their own gardens once the specified task for the day was completed. Proceeds from the sale ofproduce or craft items were usually kept by the slaves.

Purchased as a slave, Kingsley’s wife, Anna Madgigine Jai, was freed in 1 8 1 1 . She was active in plantation management and became a successful business woman owning her own property. As an American territory, Florida passed laws that discriminated against free blacks and placed harsh restrictions on African slaves. This prompted Kingsley to move his family, impacted by these laws, to Haiti, now the Dominican Republic, where descendants of Anna and Zephaniah live today.

Kingsley Plantation is at the northern ti~ ofFt. George Island at the Ft. George inlet east of
Jacksonville off Florida AlA. Open daily 9.00 a.m. - 500p.m. For more information write or
call: Superintendent, Kingsley Plantation, 11676 Palmetto Avenue, Jacksonville, FL, 32226.
(904) 2513537.

Second Spanish Period

The outbreak of the WAR of 1812 between the United States and Enabled

THE SECOND SPANISH INTERLUDE
VICENTE MANUEL de ZESPEDES
The Treaty of Paris in 1783 returned Florida to Spanish rule, much to the chagrin of Southern planters who would have rather the peninsular remain under English control than the collapsing Spanish system. Yet, for the next forty years the Spanish remained in Florida, probably in part to the capable leadership of one VICENTE MANUEL de ZESPEDES
BIOGRAPHY OF VICENTE MANUEL DE ZESPEDES

Zespedes was a soldier of fifty years service, most of them in the West Indies. He realized the grave problems facing him in rebuilding a Spanish stronghold on Florida and preventing an invasion of settlers from the North.

He tried to assure the remaining English and American settlers in Florida that if they stayed in Spanish Florida, they would be welcomed as equal citizens. His promises had little impact as most of the 1,500 people in East Florida began to depart, the majority settling in the British Caribbean. In 1763, the Spanish deserted Florida when the British took over and the opposite seemed the likely outcome.

Zespedes knew Florida needed more people, regardless of nationality, in order to survive. He offered large land grants, a ten year tax free occupancy, and a cash bonus to any family who would come to start a farm. He even offered to pay each pioneer 1.5 cents a day for feed supplies. Despite these generous offers, it was necessary by 1786 to drop the restrictions on non-Catholic settlers. Equally significant, the Spanish Government agreed to allow the migration of slave holders into Florida for the first time.

Did the changes in policy work? Few perspective colonists crossed the Georgia border to join Spanish Florida and Zespedes was still handicapped by Spanish trade policy which stated that Florida could not trade goods with the United States. The economy would have to depend upon selling rice and oranges to European markets.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Kingsly Plantation , Florida


Zephaniah Kingsley, 1775- 1852

In the early years of the 19th century came to spanish Florida.Some like Zepahanih Kinglsy, sought to make their fortunes by obtaining land for establishing their plantations.

Others were forced to come to Florida to work on those plantations, their labor enriching the men who owed them.

Some of the enslaved would later become free landowners, struggling to kfeep their footing in a dangerous time of shifting alliances and politics.


All of these people played a part in the history of the Kingsly Plantation.


Kingsly Plantation symbolizes a time and a place inm history. Nore than that, Kingsly Plantation represents people, free and snslaved. ordinary and extraordinary, and their efforts to survive in a changing land.
The stories of these people, often heroic, and their contributions to history can be exlored at the Kingsly Plantation.




The Kingsly Timeline


Sunday, February 25, 2007

THE PANTON, LESLIE and COMPANY


THE PANTON, LESLIE and COMPANY

While Spanish Florida had few farmers and planters, many English fur traders remained in Florida reluctant to desert the profits found in the forests of West Florida. Since the Spanish had little to offer the Creek Indians in this area, Spanish officials realized that English traders had the loyalty of the Indian tribes and provided some economic benefits to Pensacola.
Zespedes wished to maintain good relations with the increasing number of Creeks fleeing Alabama Territory as American settlers moved westward. He realized the Indians would provide a buffer zone between St. Augustine and the American settlements.


In order to develop a strong alliance with the Creeks, the Spanish allowed a Charleston merchant WILLIAM PANTON and his business partner JOHN LESLIE to establish a fur trade business in West Florida. The PANTON, LESLIE, AND COMPANY developed a lucrative fur trading empire with offices at Pensacola and Apalachicola. The picture shows company headquarters in Pensacola, based upon a 1900 drawing by E, D. Chandler. The firm sold the Indians every conceivable product, excepting rifles which were disallowed by Spanish law. In East Florida, the Spanish selected the FORBES AND COMPANY to handle the fur trade.

ALEXANDER McGILLIVRAY


William Panton's success was helped by his friendship to an unusual Creek chief, named ALEXANDER McGILLIVRAY, the half-breed son of a Scotch merchant and a Creek French squaw. Despite a fancy Charleston education, McGillivray chose to live with the Creeks and emerged as their elected leader.
McGillivray operated a prosperous cotton plantation and trained Creek couriers to write messages in Latin and Greek so white settlers couldn't decipher them. McGillivray traveled to New York and tried to convince President George Washington to protect Indian farming rights in the West.

McGillivray's pledge of friendship with the Spanish in 1784 encouraged other Creek chiefs to seek Spanish support. The Creek leader became an important customer of Panton and visited Pensacola so frequently, Panton invited McGillivray into the local Masonic Lodge. In the game of diplomacy both the Creeks and the Spanish shared the desire to prevent American expansion into the region.

THE ANGRY FRONTIERDespite Indian friends, the Spanish faced continual armed conflict along its Northern borders, particularly in West Florida. When France ceded the region to Spain in 1763, the French did not accurately define the boundaries. England had recognized Spain's claim that 30 degrees, 38 minutes North latitude was the border; later accepted 30 degrees as the border. American frontiersmen accepted none of these early agreements.

To the frontiersmen, this empty wilderness belonged to those daring enough to homestead the frontier. Years of Spanish rule, they noted, had resulted in few settlements. Spain's talks with Washington's administration had resulted in no binding assurances that armed Indians would use Spanish Florida as a refuge.

By 1784, relations between Spain and the United States had deteriorated toward armed conflict. After serious incidents between the Spanish and American merchants on the Mississippi River, Spain closed the port of New Orleans to American vessels. This cut off water access to the Gulf for American frontiersmen and endangered Pensacola with invasion from the North.

Ano added cause of serious confrontation was the policy the Spanish had to give asylum to runaway slaves from Georgia and South Carolina. Southern planters joined the frontiersmen in the desire to drive the Spanish out of Florida. In 1790 the Federalists in Congress, trying to stop the escalation of conflict, sent American surveyor Andrew Ellicott to survey a boundary with the Spanish. Unfortunately, the Creeks prevented this intrusion into Indian hunting grounds and the survey was halted.

In 1795, Spanish leaders met with American diplomat Thomas Pinckney and agreed to make the "Mississippi River the western border of the United States" excepting New Orleans. This Treaty of San Lorenzo assured American vessels access through New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico and temporarily muffled the Warhawk demands to seize Spanish Florida.. The United States told Spain they would try to control settlement in the Western territories of Georgia and South Carolina. The Treaty delayed confrontation, but did not satisfy the Southern frontiersmen.

THE ANGRY FRONTIER

Despite Indian friends, the Spanish faced continual armed conflict along its Northern borders, particularly in West Florida. When France ceded the region to Spain in 1763, the French did not accurately define the boundaries. England had recognized Spain’s claim that 30 degrees, 38 minutes North latitude was the border; later accepted 30 degrees as the border. American frontiersmen accepted none of these early agreements.

To the frontiersmen, this empty wilderness belonged to those daring enough to homestead the frontier. Years of Spanish rule, they noted, had resulted in few settlements. Spain’s talks with Washington’s administration had resulted in no binding assurances that armed Indians would use Spanish Florida as a refuge.

By 1784, relations between Spain and the United States had deteriorated toward armed conflict. After serious incidents between the Spanish and American merchants on the Mississippi River, Spain closed the port of New Orleans to American vessels. This cut off water access to the Gulf for American frontiersmen and endangered Pensacola with invasion from the North.

Ano added cause of serious confrontation was the policy the Spanish had to give asylum to runaway slaves from Georgia and South Carolina. Southern planters joined the frontiersmen in the desire to drive the Spanish out of Florida. In 1790 the Federalists in Congress, trying to stop the escalation of conflict, sent American surveyor Andrew Ellicott to survey a boundary with the Spanish. Unfortunately, the Creeks prevented this intrusion into Indian hunting grounds and the survey was halted.

In 1795, Spanish leaders met with American diplomat Thomas Pinckney and agreed to make the “Mississippi River the western border of the United States” excepting New Orleans. This Treaty of San Lorenzo assured American vessels access through New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico and temporarily muffled the Warhawk demands to seize Spanish Florida.. The United States told Spain they would try to control settlement in the Western territories of Georgia and South Carolina. The Treaty delayed confrontation, but did not satisfy the Southern frontiersmen.

WILLIAM BOWLES


The Spanish Florida-United States border problem was further complicated by the presence of colorful opportunists who profited from the region's lack of political control.
None was more troublesome than WILLIAM AUGUSTUS BOWLES, a former British naval officer. While visiting Florida during the American Revolution, he lost his rank due to insubordination, insulted his commander, and threw his uniform into into the Gulf. Bowles escaped into the forests of West Florida, where he was adopted by the Creeks. In 1781, he gained a pardon when he led some Creeks to the rescue of Pensacola, then under seize by a Spanish fleet.

Bowles accepted a job as an Indian agent, but was considered an unreliable and ruthless individualist. When the Spanish regained Florida in 1783, Bowles was told to leave, but instead elected to wage a personal war against the Penton and Leslie Company and its monopoly of the fur trade in West Florida. Gaining the support of the Nassau firm of Bonamy & Miller, Bowles tried to get the English to support him in an attempt to overthrow the Spanish in Florida.

Authorities in London rejected Bowles' plans and the Spanish sought the help of Alexander McGillivray. Within weeks McGillivray's men captured Bowles and brought him to the Spanish in Pensacola. The Spanish tried to convince the daring Englishman to join the Spanish navy, but when Bowles refused them, he was sent to a prison in the distant Spanish Philippines.

Several years later, Bowles was reassigned to Madrid, but escaped enroute off the coast of British West Africa. Bowles was treated as a wayward hero in London, but he elected to return to Florida in 1791 to renew his personal war against Spain. By now, his Creek friends had deserted him and Bowles was recaptured and sentenced to Morro Castle prison in Havana, Cuba.

Struck down by the plague and on his death bed in prison, Bowles was visited by the Governor of Cuba who wanted to see the celebrity prisoner. Bowles informed his guard, "I am sunk low indeed, but low enough to greet a Spaniard." The death of Bowles, however, did not lessen the conflict along the borderlands. Bowles was merely a symptom of Spain's lack of control of its frontier.

Spain Last Stand


Spain's attempts to improve its colonial system in La Florida proved futile due to the increasing involvement of the United States with the War in Europe between Napoleon and the monarchs of Europe, including England and Spain. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson obtained the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon who commandeered New Orleans from Spain when he occupied Madrid. Now Florida was even separated from Texas and the rest of the Spanish New World.

Spain was reluctant to sell Florida to the United States, but Warhawk Southerners, angry over Creek refuge in Florida, runaway slaves, and Spain's lack of Florida development, began to act without Federal authority. In 1810 a band of frontiersmen crossed the Mississippi and seized the town of Baton Rouge, calling it "the Republic of West Florida."

In January 18ll, Brigadier General Mathews , former Governor of Georgia, and St. Johns planter Colonel John McIntosh organized "the Patriots", a group of American settlers who wanted a "Republic of East Florida." With the promise of 200 acres of Florida land as an incentive, dozens of Georgia farmers joined McIntoch on an attack on St. Augustine. They destroyed Spanish plantations and left only after a British fleet intervened.

Florida was becoming a political liability to Spain. Panton and McGillivray had died. The Spanish government owed the Panton and Company some $200,000 for services and the construction of now empty warehouses and wharves. Pirates and adventurers were making South Florida their headquarters. Georgia planters were organizing slave raids into Florida.

The outbreak of the War of 1812 between the United States and England, placed Spain, an ally of England, in a perilous position. England utilized Florida ports for supplies, particular naval products. Spain further angered Southern leaders by allowing the British to construct a fort at Prospect Bluff on the Apalachicola River.


The Creek destruction of Fort Mims, an outpost in Alabama gave General Andrew Jackson the reason in invade Florida in pursuit of both the escaping Creeks and the British fur traders who sold weapons to the Creeks. The United States Government did not authorize Jackson's invasion. His superior Secretary of War John C. Calhoun wanted to remove Jackson, but ironically Secretary of State John Quincy Adams defended Jackson's response.


Jackson entered Pensacola and placed Spanish officials in their own dungeons. He scared the British fleet out of the port. Only the British movement on New Orleans prevented Jackson from taking command of Florida.


Since the War of 1812 ended English protection of the coast of Spanish Florida, the town of Fernandina was seized in June of 1817 by Gregor McGregor, a colorful adventurer who was just a shade north of being a pirate. American troops from Georgia had to enter Amelia Island to oust McGregor's band from starting a piracy center. Later that year Jackson returned to Florida to capture Indian agents and punish them, an embarrassment to Spanish leaders.

Spain last Days

Officials in the James Monroe administration realized that unless Florida was obtained, the Southern frontier would remain an unsettled mess. John Quincy Adams sought out the Spanish Foreign minister de Onis with the offer to trade ownership of Florida for the claim by the United States that a section of Texas was part of the Louisiana Purchase. Spain rejected such a humiliating proposal as well as Adams' additional acceptance that the United States would pay all war damages caused by Jackson's Florida invasions and Indian attacks on Americans.

Two years passed before Spain was willing to send negotiator General Francisco Vives to New York to end Spain's two hundred forty year Florida rule. Vives became reluctant when he discovered that Northerners did not share Southerners desire to invade Florida. He backed away from a full commitment. It was not until 1821 that the Spanish Crown recognized there was no alternative to yielding Florida. They could not stop an American invasion, not with Spain's Latin American colonies in collapse.

In 1821, the Spanish yielded Florida to the United States. It meant the end of Spanish rule in North America along the Atlantic Ocean.

The Bulow Plantation and Zephaniah Kingsly


If Americans would not migrate into Spanish Florida, Englishman would. One of the families Zespedes recruited was the Bulows whose BULOW PLANTATION, forty miles south of St. Augustine at Ormond Beach, successfully grew sugar cane and cotton. Despite the success of the Bulow family, plantation development did not attract Spanish planters who found Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Mexico better investments,


http ://www.floridahistory. org/floridians/secspan.htm


On St. George Island, the Spanish attracted a unique colonist in Scotsman ZEPHANIAH KINGLEY, who established in 1817 a sugar plantation which still stands today. Upon his death, his wife, daughter of a West African ruler, managed the massive plantation.


THE PANTON, LESLIE and COMPANY

While Spanish Florida had few farmers and planters, many English fur traders remained in Florida reluctant to desert the profits found in the forests of West Florida. Since the Spanish had little to offer the Creek Indians in this area, Spanish officials realized that English traders had the loyalty of the Indian tribes and provided some economic benefits to Pensacola.

Zespedes wished to maintain good relations with the increasing number of Creeks fleeing Alabama Territory as American settlers moved westward. He realized the Indians would provide a buffer zone between St. Augustine and the American settlements.

In order to develop a strong alliance with the Creeks, the Spanish allowed a Charleston merchant WILLIAM PANTON and his business partner JOHN LESLIE to establish a fur trade business in West Florida. The PANTON, LESLIE, AND COMPANY developed a lucrative fur trading empire with offices at Pensacola and Apalachicola.


The picture shows company headquarters in Pensacola, based upon a 1900 drawing by E, D. Chandler. The firm sold the Indians every conceivable product, excepting rifles which were disallowed by Spanish law. In East Florida, the Spanish selected the FORBES AND COIVIIPANY to handle the fur trade.

William Panton’s success was helped by his friendship to an unusual Creek chief, named ALEXANDER McGILLIVRAY, the half-breed son of a Scotch merchant and a Creek French squaw. Despite a fancy Charleston education, McGillivray chose to live with the Creeks and emerged as their elected leader. McGillivray operated a prosperous cotton plantation and trained Creek couriers to write messages in Latin and Greek so white settlers couldn’t decipher them. McGillivray traveled to New York and tried to convince President George Washington to protect Indian farming rights in the West.

McGillivray’s pledge of friendship with the Spanish in 1784 encouraged other Creek chiefs to seek Spanish support. The Creek leader became an important customer of Panton and visited Pensacola so frequently, Panton invited McGillivray into the local Masonic Lodge. In the game of diplomacy both
ALEXANDER McGILLIVRAY
hap ://www. floridahi story. org/floridians/secspan. htm
1/31/2006
SECOND SPANISH PERIOD Page 3 of 5
the Creeks and the Spanish shared the desire to prevent American expansion into the region.
THE ANGRY FRONTIER

Despite Indian friends, the Spanish faced continual armed conflict along its Northern borders, particularly in West Florida. When France ceded the region to Spain in 1763, the French did not accurately define the boundaries. England had recognized Spain’s claim that 30 degrees, 38 minutes North latitude was the border; later accepted 30 degrees as the border. American frontiersmen accepted none of these early agreements.

To the frontiersmen, this empty wilderness belonged to those daring enough to homestead the frontier. Years of Spanish rule, they noted, had resulted in few settlements. Spain’s talks with Washington’s administration had resulted in no binding assurances that armed Indians would use Spanish Florida as a refuge.

By 1784, relations between Spain and the United States had deteriorated toward armed conflict. After serious incidents between the Spanish and American merchants on the Mississippi River, Spain closed the port of New Orleans to American vessels. This cut off water access to the Gulf for American frontiersmen and endangered Pensacola with invasion from the North.

Ano added cause of serious confrontation was the policy the Spanish had to give asylum to runaway slaves from Georgia and South Carolina. Southern planters joined the frontiersmen in the desire to drive the Spanish out of Florida. In 1790 the Federalists in Congress, trying to stop the escalation of conflict, sent American surveyor Andrew Ellicott to survey a boundary with the Spanish. Unfortunately, the Creeks prevented this intrusion into Indian hunting grounds and the survey was halted.

In 1795, Spanish leaders met with American diplomat Thomas Pinckney and agreed to make the “Mississippi River the western border of the United States” excepting New Orleans. This Treaty of San Lorenzo assured American vessels access through New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico and temporarily muffled the Warhawk demands to seize Spanish Florida.. The United States told Spain they would try to control settlement in the Western territories of Georgia and South Carolina. The Treaty delayed confrontation, but did not satisfy the Southern frontiersmen.


WILLIAM BOWLES

The Spanish Florida-United States border problem was further complicated by the presence of colorful opportunists who profited from the region’s lack of political control. None was more troublesome than WILLIAM AUGUSTUS BOWLES, a former British naval officer. While visiting Florida during the American Revolution, he lost his rank due to insubordination, insulted his commander, and threw his uniform into into the Gulf Bowles escaped into the forests of West Florida, where he was adopted by the Creeks. In 1781, he gained a pardon when he led some Creeks to the rescue of Pensacola, then under seize by a Spanish fleet.
hap ://www. floridahi story. org/floridians/secspan. htm
1/31/2006
SECOND SPANISH PERIOD Page 4 of 5



Bowles accepted ajob as an Indian agent, but was considered an unreliable and ruthless individualist. When the Spanish regained Florida in 1783, Bowles was told to leave, but instead elected to wage a personal war against the Penton and Leslie Company and its monopoly of the fur trade in West Florida. Gaining the support of the Nassau firm of Bonamy & Miller, Bowles tried to get the English to support him in an attempt to overthrow the Spanish in Florida.

Authorities in London rejected Bowles’ plans and the Spanish sought the help of Alexander McGillivray. Within weeks McGillivray’s men captured Bowles and brought him to the Spanish in Pensacola. The Spanish tried to convince the daring Englishman to join the Spanish navy, but when Bowles refused them, he was sent to a prison in the distant Spanish Philippines.

Several years later, Bowles was reassigned to Madrid, but escaped enroute off the coast of British West Africa. Bowles was treated as a wayward hero in London, but he elected to return to Florida in 1791 to renew his personal war against Spain. By now, his Creek friends had deserted him and Bowles was recaptured and sentenced to Morro Castle prison in Havana, Cuba.

Struck down by the plague and on his death bed in prison, Bowles was visited by the Governor of Cuba who wanted to see the celebrity prisoner. Bowles informed his guard, “Jam sunk/ow indeed, but/ow enough to greet a Spaniard “The death of Bowles, however, did not lessen the conflict along the borderlands. Bowles was merely a symptom of Spain’s lack of control of its frontier.


SPAIN’S LAST STAND

Spain’s attempts to improve its colonial system in La Florida proved futile due to the increasing involvement of the United States with the
War in Europe between Napoleon and the monarchs of Europe, including England and Spain. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson obtained the
Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon who commandeered New Orleans from Spain when he occupied Madrid. Now Florida was even
separated from Texas and the rest of the Spanish New World.

Spain was reluctant to sell Florida to the United States, but Warhawk Southerners, angry over Creek refuge in Florida, runaway slaves, and Spain’s lack of Florida development, began to act without Federal authority. In 1810 a band of frontiersmen crossed the Mississippi and seized the town of Baton Rouge, calling it “the Republic of West Florida.”

In January 1811, Brigadier General Mathews , former Governor of Georgia, and St. Johns planter Colonel John McIntosh organized “the
Patriots”, a group of American settlers who wanted a “Republic of East Florida.” With the promise of 200 acres of Florida land as an
incentive, dozens of Georgia farmers joined Mclntoch on an attack on St. Augustine. They destroyed Spanish plantations and left only after a
British fleet intervened.

Florida was becoming a political liability to Spain. Panton and McGillivray had died. The Spanish government owed the Panton and
Company some $200,000 for services and the construction of now empty warehouses and wharves. Pirates and adventurers were making
South Florida their headquarters. Georgia planters were organizing slave raids into Florida.
hap ://www.floridahistory. org/floridians/secspan.htm 1/31/2006
SECOND SPANISH PERIOD Page 5 of 5
The outbreak of the War of 1812 between the United States and England, placed Spain, an ally of England, in a perilous position. England utilized Florida ports for supplies, particular naval products. Spain further angered Southern leaders by allowing the British to construct a fort at Prospect Bluff on the Apalachicola River.

The Creek destruction of Fort Mims, an outpost in Alabama gave General Andrew Jackson the reason in invade Florida in pursuit of both the escaping Creeks and the British fur traders who sold weapons to the Creeks. The United States Government did not authorize Jackson’s invasion. His superior Secretary of War John C. Calhoun wanted to remove Jackson, but ironically Secretary of State John Quincy Adams defended Jackson’s response.

Jackson entered Pensacola and placed Spanish officials in their own dungeons. He scared the British fleet out of the port. Only the British movement on New Orleans i revented Jackson from taking command of Florida.

ince the War of 1812 ended English protection of the coast of Spanish Florida, the town of Fernandina was ized in June of 1817 by Gregor McGregor, a colorful adventurer who was just a shade north of being a irate. American troops from Georgia had to enter Amelia Island to oust McGregor’s band from starting a
• cy center. Later that year Jackson returned to Florida to capture Indian agents and punish them, an to Spanish leaders.


LAST DAYS OF SPAIN

Officials in the James Monroe administration realized that unless Florida was obtained, the Southern frontier would remain an unsettled mess. John Quincy Adams sought out the Spanish Foreign minister de Onis with he offer to trade ownership of Florida for the claim by the United States that a section of Texas was part of the Louisiana Purchase. Spain rejected such a humiliating proposal as well as Adams’ additional acceptance that the United States would pay all war damages caused by Jackson’s Florida invasions and Indian attacks on Americans.

Two years passed before Spain was willing to send negotiator General Francisco Vives to New York to end Spain’s two hundred forty year Florida rule. Vives became reluctant when he discovered that Northerners did not share Southerners desire to invade Florida. He backed away from a full commitment. It was not until 1821 that the Spanish Crown recognized there was no alternative to yielding Florida. They could not stop an American invasion, not with Spain’s Latin American colonies in collapse.

In 1821, the Spanish yielded Florida to the United States. It meant the end of Spanish rule in North America along the Atlantic Ocean.


hap ://www. floridahi story. org/floridians/secspan. htm