Letter from Charleston 31 July 1776

Extract of a Letter from Charlestown, South Carolina, Dated July 31, 1776.

We are just setting out for the burning sands of Georgia.  An expedition is planned against part of East Florida.  Two brothers of Governour Wright, with many others, are intrenched on St. Mary's River, which divides Florida from Georgia.
Sir James Wright (1716-1785) served as the royal governor of Georgia from 1760 to 1782.  Mary R. Bullard writes that two of Governor Wright's brothers, Jermyn and Charles, built Wright's Fort in 1773-74.  The simple stockade was on the Georgia side of the St. Marys, about five miles inland from where the river meets the Atlantic Ocean.  Wright's Fort, Bullard explains, became a refuge for Tories (Americans Loyal to Britain) during the American Revolutionary War.  

St. Augustine: That Pestiferous Nest

On 27 August 1778, Henry Laurens of South Carolina, serving as President of the Continental Congress, wrote to Georgia Governor John Houston about St. Augustine, the capital of British East Florida:

While St. Augustine remains in possession of the Enemy, Georgia will be unhappy, and her existence as a free and Independent State rendred very doubtful.  South Carolina too will be continually galled by Rovers and Cruizers from that Pestiferous nest--another Expedition must therefore be undertaken at a season of the Year which will not out vie the bullets and bayonets of the Enemy in the destruction of our Men.

Henry Laurens to John Houston, 27 August 1778, in Paul H. Smith, editor, Letters of Delegates to Congress: Volume 10: June 1, 1778-September 30, 1778 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1983), page 409.

Minorca

Along with 18,970 mercenaries hired from Freiedrich Wilhelm II, Landgraf of Hesse-Cassel, the British hired thousands of other German mercenaries during the American War of Independence.  Britain's King George III, using his authority as Elector of the German state of Hannover, sent 2,373 Hannoverian mercenaries to man British garrisons at Gibraltar and Minorca.

By using of German troops in Minorca, George III freed British troops to serve in his campaigns in America.   Please consult David Hackett Fischer, Washington's Crossing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pages 52-54, 60.  Sarah Percy, Mercenaries: The History of a Norm in International Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), page 123.  

Physician and investor Dr. Andrew Turnbull recruited Minorcans, Greeks, Italians and others to serve on his indigo plantation of New Smyrna in the British province of East Florida.  This diverse collect of indentured servants, whose descendants are still collectively known as "Minorcans" in Florida, reached the peninsula in 1769.  The Florida Minorcans did not encounter those German mercenaries.  For more on the Minorcans, see Patricia C. Griffin, Mullet on the Beach: The Minorcans of Florida, 1768-1788 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1991).  

The Cowkeeper: "Perfectly Sober"

In Dec. 1765, The Cowkeeper brought an entourage of his relations to St. Augustine to visit James Grant, the British Governor of East Florida. In Jan. 1766, Grant reported to the Board of Trade, "The Cowkeeper is One of the most intelligent Indians I have met with, 'til his Business was settled he kept perfectly Sober.... We parted upon the best Terms."

James Grant to the Board of Trade, January 13, 1766, PRO: CO (British Public Record Office: Colonial Office) 5/540, quoted in Robert L. Gold, "The East Florida Indians Under Spanish and English Control: 1763-1765," Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 44 (July 1965-April 1966), page 116, note 30.

Saint Taffy?

In the mid-1700s, English colonists in Georgia spoke of a Florida locale named for "St. Taffy." Once a Franciscan mission settlement of the Spanish among the Timucua Indians, Santa Fé (Spanish for "Holy Faith") was a site near the modern city of Gainesville, Florida.

Jerald T. Milanich, The Timucua (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 102-103; Helen Hornbeck Tanner, Zéspedes in East Florida, 1784-1790 (Carol Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1963), 83.

Cowkeeper, a Headman "of the Creek Nation"

In a 1949 article for The Florida Historical Quarterly, Kenneth W. Porter rightly denominated Cowkeeper as the "Founder of the Seminole Nation," but this title is tricky. (Consult Kenneth W. Porter, "The Founder of the Seminole Nation' Secoffee or Cowkeeper," The Florida Historical Quarterly 27 (April 1949), 362-384.) Cowkeeper certainly was the headman or mico of the Gainesville-area settlement called Alachua. The residents of this village, and its 1771 successor-village of Cuscowilla, became Seminoles by the early-1800s. For most of his life, however, Cowkeeper spoke of the Creek Nation as "the Nation," his Nation.

In November 2006, Florida's St. Augustine Record published a letter I wrote on the topic:


Derived from cimarron, a Spanish-American word for feral cattle and runaway slaves, the word Seminole meant "wild'' in Creek. In his March 1774 meeting with East Florida's new Governor, Patrick Tonyn, Cowkeeper emphasized that although he was "called a Wild man by the Nation, it was not so...'' In the 1700s, the Creek Nation meant the word "Seminole'' as an insult, and Cowkeeper took it for one.

British East Florida

Historians generally consider 1763-1783 the "British Period" of Florida history. The British designated peninsular Florida the province of "East Florida." St. Augustine, the Spanish capital of Florida, was also the capital of East Florida.

The British administered the colony of East Florida from 1764 to 1784. The British recongized American independence and ceded Florida back to Spain in 1783, but the transfer occurred in 1784.