Governor Elliott—Social and Military Life in Pensacola—Gentlemen—Women—
Fiddles—George Street—King’s Wharf on November 14, 1768.
There exists evidence in the Canadian archives that, in July, 1767, Mr.
Elliot was appointed to succeed Governor Johnstone, but careful search
has failed to discover any official act upon which to rest the
conclusion that he ever came to the province.
In a note dated eighteenth of October, 1768, at Pensacola, General
Haldimand tells Governor Brown that “assistance will be given to land
Governor Elliot’s baggage, and put the garden in order,” in answer,
evidently, to a request of Governor Brown, made in expectation of the
new governor’s early arrival. But these preparations were manifestly
made in vain, for in a letter written at Pensacola, in January, 1769, by
the general to Mr. John Bradley of New Orleans, he says: “I hope that
these matters will be settled on the arrival of Governor Elliot, daily
expected.” And numerous papers in the Canadian archives, as well as
documents in the American state papers, show that from the eighteenth of
December, 1766, up to the appointment of Governor Peter Chester, in
1772, Brown was the acting governor of the province. The evidence is
therefore conclusive that though Elliot was appointed, he either died or
resigned without ever having gone to the province.
The coming of officers and others from the military posts of the
province to headquarters, as well as the frequent courts-martial held
there, especially numerous and exciting in 1766-7, enlivened military
life at Pensacola.
Of the social life of the town during Johnstone’s and Brown’s
administrations, we have but little information. If, however, the
opinion of an official high in rank is to be accepted as evidence,
gentlemen were not numerous up to 1767, as will be seen from an extract
from a letter of his to a friend: “A ship lately arrived from London,
has brought over the chief justice and the attorney-general of the
province, and _other gentlemen, who are very much wanted_.” But who are
and who are not gentlemen? Let the moralist, the sectarian, partisan,
votary of sport or fashion, dude, friend, enemy, the prejudiced, the
just, the harsh, and the charitable successively sit in judgment upon
the same man; what a very chameleon in character will he not appear, as
he is reviewed by each of his judges? Of this variety of judgments, an
occurrence, at Pensacola during this period, is illustrative.
Major Farmer of the Thirty-fourth regiment of infantry, stationed at
Fort Charlotte,[10] was by the Johnstone party accused of embezzlement
and fraud. But a court-martial which sat at Pensacola honorably
acquitted him, and upon a review of the record the finding of the court
was approved by the King.
Another letter, in 1770, gives the following uninviting picture of the
civil as well as the social condition of the place: “Pensacola has been
justly famed for vexatious law-suits. It is contrived, indeed, that if a
poor man owes but five pounds, and has not got so much ready money, or
if he disputes some dollars of imposition that may be in the account, or
if he is guilty of shaking his fist at any rascal that has abused him,
he is sure to be prosecuted, and the costs of every suit are about seven
pounds sterling.... I have known this province for a little more than
four years, yet I could name to you a set of men who may brag of one
governor resigned, one horse-whipped and one whom they led by the nose
and supported while it suited their purpose, and then betrayed him. What
the next turn of affairs will be, God knows.”
Perhaps, however, the writer owed a shopkeeper who sued him; or he had
been fined for offering violence to some other importunate creditor; and
as to the costs of litigation, it is likely, that in this year of grace
some luckless litigant, in the modern Pensacola, can be found who would
heave a sympathetic sigh on reading the complaint which comes to us from
a suitor in its early days.
Besides, the reference to the treatment received by three governors, in
a letter written in 1770, is rather puzzling, for though three governors
had been appointed for West Florida up to that time, but two, Johnstone
and Brown, administered its government. Johnstone resigned and,
therefore, Brown must have been the man, if any, who was horsewhipped
and led by the nose. As “led by the nose,” however, is a metaphor,
“horsewhipped” may, perhaps, be regarded as a figure of speech likewise.
Strange though it be, yet so it is, in the mass of Pensacola
correspondence, from 1763 to 1770, we find mention made of military
officers of every grade, governors, secretaries, surveyors, judges, male
Indians, ships, boats, bricks, lumber, shingles, wine, swords, muskets,
cheese, cannon and fiddles, but of a woman or any of her belongings,
never, with only two exceptions.
One comes to us like an attractive mirage on the far-off horizon of this
Sahara of masculinity and soulless things in the person of Mrs. Hugh
Wallace of Philadelphia, a friend of General Haldimand, in respect to
whom, in a letter to her husband, he says: “I beg my best respects may
be acceptable to Mrs. Wallace.” The other is a nameless moral wreck, of
whom the writer of a letter exclaims: “I wish I could make the mother of
my children my wife!” forcing upon the imagination the shadow of a
wronged wife, with one’s heart touched by the probable sorrows of a
blighted life.
But, though excluded from men’s letters, we do not need their
correspondence to inform us that wives, mothers, sisters and nurses
formed no inconsiderable part of the population of Pensacola in those
early days, for we know it as certainly, fully, and confidently as we
know the town must have been blessed with air, light, food, and all the
other vivifying conditions of human existence.
It has been intimated that fiddles were the subject of correspondence,
and thuswise. It appears that General Haldimand was the owner of two
fiddles. Whether fiddling was one of his accomplishments does not
appear. But as ownership of one fiddle ordinarily creates the
presumption that the owner is a performer in some one of the three
degrees of good, bad or indifferent, the ownership of two would seem to
be conclusive of the fact.
However that may be, it seems that Governor Thomas Penn of Pennsylvania
had knowledge of the instruments, and, presumably, knowing their merits,
coveted them to such a degree that the general induced him to pay $360
for them. As the bargain was made by letter, after the general and the
fiddles had been in Pensacola for several years, we may infer that their
dulcet tones must have made a deep and ineffaceable impression upon the
governor, which no other fiddles could remove. By a vessel sailing from
Pensacola to Philadelphia, the general sent a box containing the two
fiddles to Mr. Joseph Shipping of that place, agent of Governor Penn,
and also a letter to Hugh Ross, his own agent, whom he tells (evidently
with the chuckle of a trader who has made a good bargain) of the $360 he
is to collect from Shipping, closing the letter with the exclamation, “I
wish I had more fiddles to sell!”
Correspondence in 1767 shows courtesies exchanged between Pensacola and
Philadelphia. A Pensacolian sends a sea turtle, and the Philadelphian
returns a cheese.
The town was accused of being hot and inhospitable. But the letter of
complaint tells what a specific wine is for the prevention of all
climatic diseases and the other ills of life. One gentleman, to be sure
of a supply of the panacea, orders a pipe of old Madeira.
On November 14, 1768, we are walking down the east side of George street
from the gardens to the Bay. After passing two blocks we find ourselves
on the Public Square and in front of a large building. Going in and out
of that building are many people, the most of them soldiers and Indians,
and somewhere in or about it we find a Mr. Arthur Neil. Upon inquiry we
are informed the building is the king’s store-house, and Mr. Neil its
keeper. Leaving the store, a short walk brings us to the shore and
afterwards to the king’s wharf, which we see covered with troops, some
of them getting into boats, whilst others, already embarked, are going
to a ship lying at anchor. That ship is the _Pensacola_ bound for
Charleston, South Carolina. The troops are the Thirty-first regiment,
lately stationed at Mobile, whence they have just arrived, after an
overland march, for the purpose of embarking in the _Pensacola_. Whether
they shall remain at Charleston in winter quarters will, according to a
letter of General Haldimand to Colonel Chisolm, “depend upon the conduct
of the Bostonians.”[11]
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Footnote 10:
Formerly Fort Condé at Mobile.
Footnote 11:
Can. Archives, B. 14, pp. 31, 37, 41.
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