Page 47 - Our Place in History

Our Place in History

Florida – A Colony of Spain

Florida was a colony of Spain from 1513 and had
been ceded to the British Empire by 1763. It was returned
back to Spanish control by England in 1784. After the war
of 1812 between the young United States and England,
President James Monroe recognized the Adams-Onis
Treaty, which put Florida permanently under U.S. control.
In 1765 Colonel James Grant, the first Governor of British
East Florida recognized the need for a road to link his
command together. Florida was a wilderness place, but
British investors saw the profit in building plantations
along the east coast. Plans were started to make a
roadway following old Indian trails. Thus began one of the
first major roads in America.

In 1767 the British Lieutenant Governor John Moultrie
had stated that “his Indian friend Grey Eyes” blazed a
road from St. Augustine to Turnbull’s new plantation at
Mosquito inlet. He was a Creek Indian, probably part of
the Alachua people under their leader Cowkeeper.

The roadway was important to the Plantations and
farms to get their crops to market, or to reach the nearest
navigable waterway. In 1764 Scotsman Richard Oswald
received a 20,000-acre land grant from the British
government. With 50 slaves, Oswald launched his first
settlement in Volusia County, a Native American inhabited
sub-tropical region along the east coast of Florida. The
Three Chimneys Sugar Mill, built in 1765 and operated on
the Oswald Plantation, was the first sugar mill and rum
distillery in North America. In 1784 after return to
Spanish control, the roadway was reported to be in poor
condition but still very much there.

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