Product Code Database
East Florida () was a colony of Great Britain from 1763 to 1783 and a province of the Spanish Empire from 1783 to 1821. The British gained control over Spanish Florida in 1763 as part of the Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years' War. Deciding that the colony was too large to administer as a single unit, British officials divided Florida into two colonies separated by the Apalachicola River: the colony of East Florida, with its capital located in St. Augustine; and West Florida, with its capital located in Pensacola. East Florida was much larger and comprised the bulk of the former Spanish colony and most of the current Florida. It had also been the most populated region of Spanish Florida, but before control was transferred to Britain, most residents – including virtually everyone in St. Augustine – left the territory, with most migrating to Cuba.
Britain tried to attract settlers to the two Floridas without much success. The sparsely populated colonies were invited to send representatives to the Continental Congress but chose not to do so, and they remained loyal to Great Britain during the American Revolutionary War. However, as part of the 1783 treaty in which Britain officially recognized the independence of thirteen of its former colonies as the United States, it ceded both Floridas back to Spain, which maintained them as separate colonies while moving the boundary east to the Suwannee River.
By the early 1800s, Spain had proved uninterested in and incapable of organizing or defending either of the two Floridas much beyond the two small capital cities. American settlers moved into the territory without authorization, causing conflict with the Seminoles, a new Native American culture formed by indigenous refugees from the American Southeast. During the War of 1812, the American military invaded Florida, occupying West Florida while East Florida remained in Spanish hands. American settlers in East Florida further weakened Spanish control in 1812 when a group of Americans, mostly from Georgia, calling themselves the "Patriots", declared the short-lived Republic of East Florida at Amelia Island with semi-official support from the U.S. government.
Border disputes between the United States and Seminoles in Florida continued after the war. By 1817, much of Spanish West Florida had been occupied and annexed by the United States over Spanish objections, with the land eventually becoming portions of the states of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. After a decade of intensifying border disputes and American incursions, Spain ceded both Floridas to the U.S. in the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819. The U.S. officially took possession in 1821; in 1822, all of East Florida and the few remaining portions of West Florida were combined into a single Florida Territory with borders that closely approximated those of the current state of Florida.
The settlement of East Florida was heavily linked in London to the same interests that controlled Nova Scotia. The East Florida Society of London and the Nova Scotia Society of London had many overlapping members, and Council frequently followed their suggestions on the granting of lands to powerful merchant interests in London.
The apportionment of lands in the new colonies fell to the same group of English and Scottish entrepreneurs and merchant interests, led chiefly by the Scottish slave trader Richard Oswald and the British general James Grant, who would later become governor of East Florida. A list of the grantees in both Florida and Canada shows that the plums fell to a well-connected—and inter-connected—group. Lincoln's Inn barrister Levett Blackborne, grandson of Sir Richard Levett, a powerful merchant and Lord Mayor of London, came in for grants of in both locales, for instance. Other aristocrats, nobles, and merchants did the same.
The most powerful lubricant between the East Florida speculators and the Nova Scotia speculators was Col. Thomas Thoroton of Flintham, Nottinghamshire. Thoroton, the stepbrother of Levett Blackborne, had married an illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Rutland and often lived at Belvoir Castle, where he acted as principal agent to the Duke, who, along with his son, the Marquis of Granby, were heavily involved in overseas ventures. Thoroton frequently acted as the go-between for Richard Oswald and James Grant, particularly after those two gave up their Nova Scotia Grants to focus on East Florida, where a drumbeat of steady speculation (particularly from Andrew Turnbull and William Stork) had fanned the flames of interest in London. It was not until March 1781 that the Governor of East Florida, Patrick Tonyn, called elections for a provincial legislature. The Impact of Loyalists in British East Florida , p. 7
East Florida remained loyal to Great Britain during the American Revolution. The colony became a haven for Loyalist refugees and fugitive slaves fleeing to British lines from the Southern Colonies during the American War of Independence, and several military units were established by Loyalists in East Florida.
Spain participated indirectly in the war as an ally of France and captured Pensacola from the British in 1781. In the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the war, the British ceded both Floridas to Spain. The same treaty recognized the independence of the United States, directly to the north.
During the American Revolution, East Florida sided with the British and became a loyalist haven.Peters 1961, p. 123 With the end of the Revolution and the handing over of both Floridas to the Spanish, many loyalists were hesitant to leave. In the end, most of the loyalist and British residents, approximately 10,000 people, left with most of these going to the Bahamas or West Indies and some going to Nova Scotia and England. Another 4,000 people "melted away into the wilderness", with some going as far away as the Mississippi River.
A town named St. Johns Bluff or St. Johns Town was laid out in 1779 along the St. Johns River. The planned community was the first town to be established on the river. Most of those who fled to Florida settled at that town and St. Augustine. St. Johns Bluff became a port and had 300 houses in it by the spring of 1783. With the end of the British period, it was renamed as St. Vincent Ferrer before it was eventually abandoned. A settlement named Rollestown was established by Denys Rolle southeast of St. Augustine, on the east shore of the St. Johns River, south of Deep Creek.
St. Augustine, the capital of the colony, was much smaller and less advanced than the capitals of the other Thirteen Colonies.
Goods produced and exported in East Florida included sugar, timber, indigo, rice, naval stores, and barrel staves; most of these goods came from plantations along the St. Marys and St. Johns rivers that used slave labor.
Bernard Romans wrote the first account of Spanish fishing ranchos existing along Florida's southwest coast in 1770. When the British took control of Florida, they monitored the fisherman but let them continue their activities. Governor James Grant was ordered to stop the fisherman from operating but did not enforce that order. At one point the fishing boats were suspected of being a threat to British control, but a complete review in 1767-68 found they were harmless.
The Wells brothers also published two books: Nature and the Principles of Public Credit, by Samuel Gale, along with The Case of the Inhabitants of East Florida, written by John Wells himself. In 1783, another printer named David Zubly, who was a loyalist refugee from Savannah, Georgia, printed the first book in the colony, a copy of John Tobler's Almanack, at his home.
An American army under Andrew Jackson invaded East Florida during the First Seminole War. Jackson's forces captured San Marcos on 7 April 1818; as well as Fort Barrancas at West Florida's capital, Pensacola, on 24 May 1818.
James Monroe's secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, defined the American position on this issue. Adams accused Spain of breaking Pinckney's Treaty by failing to control the Seminoles. Faced with the prospect of losing control, Spain formally ceded all of its Florida territory to the U.S. under the Adams–Onís Treaty in 1819 (ratified in 1821), in exchange for the U.S. ceding its claims on Texas and the U.S. paying any claims its citizens might have against Spain, up to $5,000,000.
In 1822, the U.S. Congress organized the Florida Territory, merging East Florida and the portion of West Florida that had remained under Spanish control until 1821. In 1845, Florida was admitted as the 27th state of the United States.
St. Augustine was the largest port on the Atlantic Ocean south of Charleston. Ships would travel often to Charleston, South Carolina and Cap Français in Haiti where goods were traded and crews learned the latest news as well. East Florida became economically dependent on the United States after Spain started to align with France and declared war on the British in 1796; as a result British trade largely stopped. Charleston began to surpass Havana as St. Augustine's biggest trading partner while Savannah, Philadelphia and New York City had become trading partners with the city. East Florida exported oranges, lumber and cotton to the United States while fish, grain and foodstuffs were imported from the United States.
Spain was concerned about the Haitian Revolution, fearing that ideas of independence could be spread to their own colonies, including Florida, with Governor Quesada doing his best to follow the Spanish government's policy of prohibiting interactions with French possessions, "...forbidding the introduction of French ideas, books, citizens, or slaves originating from French possessions."
| John Hedges | 20 Jul 1763 – 30 Jul 1763 | capital at St. Augustine (acting governor) |
| Francis Ogilvie | 30 Jul 1763 – 29 Aug 1764 | acting governor |
| James Grant | 29 Aug 1764 – 9 May 1771 | Considered the inaugural governor. |
| John Moultrie | 9 May 1771 – 1 Mar 1774 | |
| Patrick Tonyn | 1 Mar 1774 – 12 Jul 1784 | |
| Vicente Manuel de Céspedes y Velasco | 12 July 1784 – July 1790 | capital at St. Augustine |
| Juan Nepomuceno de Quesada y Barnuevo | July 1790 – March 1796 | |
| Bartolomé Morales | March 1796 – June 1796 | acting governor |
| Enrique White | June 1796 – March 1811 | |
| Juan José de Estrada | March 1811 – June 1812 | Patriot War with U.S. |
| Sebastián Kindelán y Oregón | June 1812 – June 1815 | Patriot War with U.S. |
| Juan José de Estrada | June 1815 – January 1816 | |
| José María Coppinger | January 1816 – 10 July 1821 | First Seminole War with U.S. |
|
|
