Stateside With Rosalea Barker: Florida

The DK State-by-State Atlas puts it this way: “In 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon sailed to the region during Spain’s spring holiday, Pascua Florida, the Feast of the Flowers. He came ashore and named the land La Florida in honor of the holiday.” Most people assume, if they even know what the Spanish word means, that the feminine noun that the flowery adjective is describing is the land itself. So much for the state’s connection to Easter, which is when the Feast of Flowers takes place.

One book reference turned up by Google calls the festival “the Passover Feast of Flowers,” perhaps in deference to the high numbers of Jewish retirees in the state. Judaism, of course, is the only one of the three major religions with their origins in the Middle East that denies the validity of the New Testament and therefore Easter. Ah, the irony!

But it’s not the Spanish or members of the Jewish faith that I’ll be writing about today.

Nor will I be writing about the Burglar King George 43, whose ascension to the Presidency came courtesy of the US Supreme Court putting a stop to the recount of votes in Florida after the 2000 presidential election. Not even will I write of the global corporate monster headquartered in that state—Burger King—although you could slip away now if you’ve lost interest and play with BK’s Subservient Chicken.

Oh, wait! There is one thing about Spain. Earlier this year, the Mexican ambassador to Spain complained about BK’s disrespectful use of the Mexican flag in European print ads for the Texican Whopper, and said that the whole campaign "improperly use[s] the stereotyped image of a Mexican." You can see the TV ad here. Hmm, I can’t say my stereotyped image of a Mexican is of a pint-sized wrestler doing housework with his Long Tall Texan buddy; it’s more like Billy T James’ “Arriba! Arriba!” portrayal in Came a Hot Friday. But I digress even from my digressions!

Heck, I’m not even going to write about the three Seminole Wars either. The second Seminole War (1835-1842) was the fiercest war waged by the US government against American Indians, during which fewer than 3,000 warriors were pitted against four US generals and more than 30,000 troops, according to one official Florida state website. The US resorted to tactics that included inviting one Seminole leader to peace talks and then imprisoning him when he turned up for the talks. Osceola died in prison in 1838.

Florida was admitted to the United States three years after the end of that war, in 1845.

Nope. What I’m going to write about is a Scotsman and a couple of boatloads of Greeks, Italians, Minorcans, and Corsicans. You see, from 1763 until 1784 that part of Florida which doesn’t include the panhandle was the British colony of East Florida. “To encourage demographic and economic growth the British quickly invalidated all Spanish land claims and instituted a liberal land policy which by 1776 had amounted to 114 grants totaling 1.4 million acres.

“Two of these grants were to Dr. Andrew Turnbull and Sir William Duncan which became known as the Smyrnea Settlement. This settlement (currently New Smyrna Beach) was the largest British settlement ever attempted in the New World, and was three times the size of Jamestown.” So sayeth the website of the Southeast Volusia Historical Society.

In 2001 and 2003, two major collections of papers concerning the conception, operation, and eventual demise of Smyrnea were archived in Scotland, and the University of North Florida has posted extracts of many of the documents on its website Florida History Online. They make for extraordinary reading as an insight into the trials and tribulations of the colonization process and the mindset of the colonizers. Because the university isn’t the copyright holder of the material, I can’t quote them at length here, but the letters between all the major players are well worth going to the site and reading.

From the casual way in which land was dished out, to the complex arrangements that had to be made to move anything—provisions, cattle, people—around the world and between New Smyrna and neighboring towns and states, to the local gossip and political in-fighting, the letters reveal most everything about the time that a Scottish physician was given a land grant in the New World and planned to populate it with Mediterranean indentured laborers. Along with, of course, the women they picked up along the way—described in one letter as having been chosen because they were “handsome, laborious, and excellent breeders.”

Turnbull had arranged for 500 small houses to be built for the laborers, but he arrived from his recruiting trip around the Mediterranean with more than twice that number of people. By the time they arrived, Indians had already created a road even though “your friend the Engineer thought it impossible,” slaves had been bought in South Carolina by the plantation owner’s agents at 35 pounds sterling a head, and cattle had been bought in Georgia for 27 shillings a head and driven south.

Unsurprisingly, things turned to custard pretty quickly, especially as Dr Turnbull was always complaining about the way the Province of East Florida was being run, thereby making enemies of the richest and most powerful in the colony. He was also a tyrant, if the 1777 depositions of some of the laborers who survived the experience are to be believed. Of the original 1255 settlers, 964 had died by 1777, when the settlement was finally closed down—450 of them in the first year.

Even after Smyrnea’s demise, 53 men and women, and 16 children died from the privations they had suffered. According to the British provincial governor at that time, “only a few now that have obtained their freedom are sufficiently industrious or in health to provide for themselves, for these, my Lord, I have allotted lands between this and the St. Johns River, and must give them some assistance in the provision way.”

Governor Tonyn had his hands full by that time because of the American Revolution: “The two Floridas remained loyal to Great Britain throughout the War for American Independence (1776–83). However, Spain—participating indirectly in the war as an ally of France—captured Pensacola [capital of West Florida] from the British in 1781. In 1784 it regained control of the rest of Florida as part of the peace treaty that ended the American Revolution.” (From the state’s official website.)

The Spanish required everyone who wasn’t already so to convert to Catholicism, and many people left Florida because of it. That suited the surviving Minorcans, as the New Smyrna settlers were collectively known, just fine. They mainly resettled in St. Augustine, which is the oldest European settlement in the US, dating back to the Spanish in 1565.

--PEACE—

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

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