A post in honour of the birth anniversary of my our Mother- No finer Floridian ever lived. She was born in High Springs, Florida on January 3, 1916.
Florida Timeline
8000 BC - First Native American settlement, near Sarasota
1000 AD - there are nine distinct tribes
1500 - estimated population of the state was 375,000- 150,000 speak Timuca
April 2, 1513 - Ponce de Leon lands somewhere between Melbourne and Jacksonville. In time the indigenous population will be reduced to near zero, from disease and warfare.
1521 - first colony, from Spain, near St. Augustine
1579 - The cultivation of oranges, introduced from Spain begins. By 1835 millions of oranges were being shipped north and to Europe, for the next hundred years oranges, cattle and timber were the major sources of cash
1624 - First African American born in Florida, in St. Augustine
1763 to 1765- England Owns west Florida panhandle area
Based on research my research as well as by others in the family and history, I conjecture my maternal ancestors first entered Florida, coming from. Georgia where they arrived around 1650, about 1800
1808 - importation of slaves into USA is banned, a very large trade in slaves smuggled in from Cuba begins
1821 - USA acquired Florida from Spain.
1822 - Tallahassee is chosen as the territory capital, being half way between the then major population centers of St. Augustine and Pensacola
1835 Second Seminole War begins, by 1842 most Seminoles were shipped west but some escaped into the Everglades.
The make up of the Seminoles was largely not Native originally to Florida but a mixture of escaped slaves and Creeks from Georgia and South Carolina.
March 3, 1845 - Florida becomes a state, slavery legal.
1859 - by the end of the third Seminole War the around four hundred survivors retreat to the Everglades
Population of Florida 1861. - 154,494 - 92,741 Free, 61,75 enslaved
January 10, 1861 Florida suceeds from The Union. Per capita, Florida sent The most men into war, 15000. It was then the least populated southern state.
In January 2019, in consultation with Max u, it was decided every January there would be a post about a book in tribute to our Mother. Our mother was born in a very small town in northern Florida, High Springs on January 3, 1920
An ancestor started the first public library in the central Florida era in 1820.. I speculate our ancestors probably entered Florida about 1790.A knowledge of history indicates our prior maternal ancestors came to the USA from the UK in the 1600s,possibly in part as bound servants. Somehow they wound up in South Georgia. After the American Revolution people from that area began to enter then Spanish Florida, which the USA acquired on February 22, 1819 from Spain.
The colonies of East Florida and West Florida remained loyal to the British during the war for American independence, but by the Treaty of Paris in 1783 they returned to Spanish control. After 1783, Americans immigrants moved into West Florida.
In 1810 American settlers in West Florida rebelled, declaring independence from Spain. President James Madison and Congress used the incident to claim the region, knowing full well that the Spanish government was seriously weakened by Napoleon’s invasion of Spain. The United States asserted that the portion of West Florida from the Mississippi to the Perdido rivers was part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Negotiations over Florida began in earnest with the mission of Don Luis de Onís to Washington in 1815 to meet Secretary of State James Monroe. The issue was not resolved until Monroe was president and John Quincy Adams his Secretary of State. Although U.S. Spanish relations were strained over suspicions of American support for the independence struggles of Spanish-American colonies, the situation became critical when General Andrew Jackson seized the Spanish forts at Pensacola and St. Marks in his 1818 authorized raid against Seminoles and escaped slaves who were viewed as a threat to Georgia. Jackson executed two British citizens on charges of inciting the Indians and runaways. Monroe’s government seriously considered denouncing Jackson’s actions, but Adams defended the Jackson citing the necessity to restrain the Indians and escaped slaves since the Spanish failed to do so. Adams also sensed that Jackson’s Seminole campaign was popular with Americans and it strengthened his diplomatic hand with Spain.
Adams used the Jackson’s military action to present Spain with a demand to either control the inhabitants of East Florida or cede it to the United States. Minister Onís and Secretary Adams reached an agreement whereby Spain ceded East Florida to the United States and renounced all claim to West Florida. Spain received no compensation, but the United States agreed to assume liability for $5 million in damage done by American citizens who rebelled against Spain. Under the Onís-Adams Treaty of 1819 (also called the Transcontinental Treaty and ratified in 1821) the United States and Spain defined the western limits of the Louisiana Purchase and Spain surrendered its claim.s to the Pacific Northwest. In return, the United States recognized Spanish sovereignty over Texas.
This post is a continuous tradition began in January of 2019 when, in consultation with Max u, it was decided every January there would be a post in her honor
Today's book is a detailed military history of the Yamasee War, the drawn-out conflict between South Carolina colonists and a number of southeastern Native American groups including the Yamasees, Creeks, and Catawbas in the years 1715–1728. The focus is on the geography and physical tactics of the war, including troop movements, battle locations, and settlements..
Ivers takes the reader immediately into the war; his first chapter describes the cross-country ride made by two South Carolina Indian traders to warn Charles Town of the arising conflict. The chapter sets the tone for Ivers’s study. After three background chapters that provide the colonial and Native American contexts leading up to the war, the remainder of Ivers’s seventeen chapters take the reader through the conflict month by month, and sometimes even day by day. Drawing on the South Carolina Commons House Journals and a variety of other colonially produced documents, Ivers teases out South Carolina and Native American tactical responses during the ongoing conflict.
Ivers’s attention to location is a great strength of his work. Using wills, journals, acts of the South Carolina assembly, and over fifty maps, as well as his own personal reconnaissance, Ivers reconstructs the exact locations of forts, plantations, towns (both South Carolinian and Native American), and battles whose locations have been obscured over time. Ivers transparently explains how he determined each location in his text and in detailed end-notes. Along with a number of useful maps, Ivers describes all locations in relation to current-day landmarks such as highways and cities, so that readers can trace the movements of the war on a map of present-day South Carolina.
Ivers aims to produce a “detailed narrative and an analysis of military operations” and, within his method, to “avoid showing favoritism or allegiance” to any group involved in the war (pp. vii, viii). On the first, Ivers is entirely successful, but on the second, elements of organization and habits of [End Page 147] phrasing work to align his writing with South Carolina’s perspective on the conflict. Ivers relies on a documentary record that was principally produced by South Carolina colonists; his chapters’ contents reflect his sources. In other small ways, Ivers positions his narrative in the South Carolinian stance. For example, the chapters are dated according to colonial time markers, such as chapter 5, “Easter Weekend.” Phrasing that includes the term warrior to refer to all Native American men and describing Native American motivations as a lust for war mirror the colonists’ opinion of their Native American opponents (p. 39). Nevertheless, Ivers mitigates this slant elsewhere in the text; for example, when listing the South Carolina traders killed in the first wave of the war, he notes each trader’s alleged or confirmed abuses, such as beating, killing, or cheating Native Americans.
Ivers offers a wealth of detail regarding South Carolina’s military operations during the Yamasee War, from the Commons House’s efforts to supply the war to methods of fort construction. For students and readers unfamiliar with the particulars of eighteenth-century warfare, details such as the precise methods of loading a flintlock musket may be particularly helpful. For scholars of this period of South Carolina history, Ivers’s careful reconstruction of the locations of the war will be
Florida was the property of Spain in this period. Ingenious Americans retreated into Florida. Troops from South Carolina followed them. Tribal groups fought each other, captive women and children were sold into slavery and opposing warriors were tortured to death as were captured South Carolinians. No mercy was shown on either side. The various tribal groups tried to present a unified front but never really achieved this. Indians, Ivers uses this term, wanted trade goods, rifles, and alcohol.
The Spanish tried to coop Indians as allies to protect their claim to Florida. Some Creeks did settle in North Florida.
This Torrent of Indians: War on the Southern Frontiers by Larry Ivers gave me further insights into the tumultuous and dangerous lives of our ancestors.
Larry E. Ivers, a retired attorney, served in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper with the 11th Airborne Division, as an instructor in the Army Ranger School. He is the author of three books on Early American history
Mel Ulm
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