Growth of Pensacola—Panton, Leslie & Co.—A King and the Beaver—Governor
Chester’s Palace and Chariot—The White House of the British, and
Casa Blanca of the Spanish—General Gage—Commerce—Earthquake.
There is evidence of great improvement in the town within a few years
from Governor Chester’s advent; a progress which was accelerated as the
revolution in the Northern Colonies advanced. That great movement, ever
widening its area, extended at last from the Gulf to Canada, leaving no
repose or peace for those who, living within it, were resolute to remain
loyal to their king.
Some entered the royal military service; multitudes left America, and
others, to nurse their loyalty in quietude, removed to Florida. Though
most of that emigration went to East Florida, yet West Florida, and
especially Pensacola, received a large share. St. Augustine, however,
was the tory paradise of the revolutionary era. She can, without
question, supplement the glory of her antiquity with the boast of having
once seen her streets lighted up by the blazing effigies of John Adams
and John Hancock.[15]
The most important commercial acquisition of Pensacola by that tory
immigration was William Panton, the senior of the firm of Panton, Leslie
& Co., a Scotch house of great wealth and extensive commercial
relations. They had an establishment in London, with branches in the
West India Islands. During the English dominion in Florida they
established themselves in St. Augustine; later, during Governor
Chester’s administration, at Pensacola, and afterwards, at Mobile. Other
merchants also came to Pensacola about the same time, attracted
principally by the heavy disbursements of the government. But these
expenditures were not the attraction to the Scotchmen. Their object was
to grasp the Indian trade of West Florida. A building which they erected
with a wharf in front of it is still standing, or at least, its solid
brick walls are now those of the hospital of Dr. James Herron, whose
dwelling house stands on the site of the Council Chamber of Fort George.
In that building was carried on a business which grew steadily from year
to year during the British dominion, and afterwards attained great
magnitude under Spanish rule, as we shall have occasion to notice in a
future page. In building up that business, Panton had a most able and
influential coadjutor in General Alexander McGillivray, whom we lately
saw in the Council Chamber of Fort George. Through him their business
comprehended not only West Florida, but extended to and even beyond the
Tennessee river. In perfect security, their long lines of pack horses
went to and fro in that great stretch of country, carrying all the
supplies the Indians needed, and bringing back skins, peltry, bees-wax,
honey, dried venison, and whatever else their savage customers would
provide for barter. Furs were a large item of that traffic, for the
beaver in those days abounded throughout West Florida, and was found
even in the vicinity of Pensacola.
One of their ponds, still existing on Carpenter’s Creek, four miles from
the town, is suggestive of an instructive comparison between the fruits
of the life-work of its humble constructors, and those of the twenty
years rule, of a mighty monarch. Of the British dominion of his Majesty
George III., in this part of Florida, the millions of treasure expended,
and the thousands of lives sacrificed to establish and maintain it,
there exists no memorial, or result, except a fast disappearing bank of
sand on the site of Fort George. From that barren outcome of such a vast
expenditure of human life and money, we turn with a blush for the vanity
and folly of man, to contemplate that little pool fringed with fairy
candles,[16] where the water lilies bloom, and the trout and perch flash
in the sunlight, as the memento of a perished race, whose humble labors
have furnished pastime and food to successive generations of anglers.
An unsuccessful effort has been made to obtain reliable information as
to the number and description of the houses Pensacola contained in its
most thriving days during Governor Chester’s administration. But the
only account we have, is that of William Bertram, who though reputed an
eminent botanist is hardly reliable, for he describes Governor Chester’s
residence as a “stone palace, with a cupola built by the Spaniards;”[17]
and yet, according to the description of the town in Captain Will’s
report, at the close of Spanish rule, it consisted of “forty huts and
barracks, surrounded by a stockade;” and he witnessed at that time, the
exodus of the entire Spanish population. Besides, persons whose memories
went back within thirty years of Governor Chester’s alleged palatial
residence, neither saw, nor even heard, of the ruins of such a
structure.
Upon the same authority rests the statement, that the Governor had a
farm to which he took morning rides in “his chariot.”[18] But a traveler
whose fancy was equal to the transformation of a hut into a palace, may
have transformed his excellency’s modest equipage into a more courtly
vehicle.
It is probable, however, that although Governor Chester was not the
occupant of a stone palace with a cupola, he lived in a sightly and
comfortable dwelling built of brick or wood, or perhaps of both. One
such dwelling of his time, that of William Panton, was familiar, forty
years ago to the elders of this generation. It stood near the business
house of Panton, Leslie & Co. Taking its style and solidity as a guide,
there existed several houses in the town within the last half century
that could be identified as belonging to Governor Chester’s day.
One of them was the scene of a tragedy; a husband cutting a wife’s
throat fatally, his own more cautiously, or perhaps her cervical
vertibrae had taken off the edge of the razor, for he survived.
Thereafter, none would inhabit it, and consequently it rapidly went to
ruin. It stood on the north side of Government street, a block and a
half from Palafox. A jury acquitted him. Why? No one could conjecture,
unless because she was his wife, and therefore his chattel, like the cow
or sheep of a butcher.
In Governor Chester’s time there existed a large double story suburban
residence, which was a distinguished feature in the landscape looking
southwesterly from Fort George, or from any part of the Bay. It stood on
the bluff between the now Perdido R. R. and Bayou Chico. Painted white,
it became the “white house” of the English, and “Casa Blanca” of the
Spanish dominion.
It was the home of a family of wealth and social standing, composed of
three—husband, wife, and daughter, the latter a child. Gardens belonging
to it covered much of the area of that meadow-like district already
mentioned. That home was to be the scene of a drama in three acts; the
death of a child, the death of a husband, and a struggle of strong,
martyrlike womanhood in the toils of temptation, tried to the lowest
depth of her being, but coming forth triumphant.
In examining the calendar of the Haldimand collection by Mr. Douglas
Brymner, Archivest of the Dominion of Canada, we are impressed with the
great and varied responsibility, labor, and care, attending the office
of commander in chief of the American colonies, especially after Great
Britain’s, Canada, Florida, and Louisiana acquisitions. His
administration involved not merely general superintendence of the
military department, but likewise embraced the minutest details
requiring expenditures of public money. We accordingly find General
Gage, during Governor Chester’s administration, dictating letters in
respect to carpenter’s wages[19] in Pensacola. Again we find him busy
over a controversy which had sprung up there in respect to the
employment of a Frenchman, Pierre Rochon,[20] to do carpenter’s work,
and furnish shingles, to the exclusion of Englishmen. Upon economical
grounds his excellency decided in favor of Rochon. Pierre was evidently
an active and enterprising man. Before he came to Pensacola to secure
for himself all the public carpentering and shingle business there, he
had enjoyed the like monopoly at Mobile.
Again we find the General engaged with a small matter at Red Cliff.[21]
Lieutenant Cambell, of the engineer department, had furnished some
carpenters who were employed there with candles and firewood, doubtless
because they could not otherwise be procured by the men. That act of
kindness brought the benevolent lieutenant the following scorching
reproof: “I am sorry to acquaint you that his excellency, General Gage,
is greatly displeased at your giving of the carpenters candles and
firewood; and he desires to know by what authority you assumed to give
those allowances, or by what order they were given? For his excellency
declares, that a shilling shall not be paid on that account.” New York,
16 Feb. 1773. S. Sowers, Captain of Engineers.
Even the quality of bricks used on the public works at Pensacola was a
matter of interest to the commander in chief. In 1771, a brick
manufactured by the British, and one by the Spaniards, nearly a century
before, as General Haldimand says, were sent to headquarters at New
York, for the judgment of his excellency as to their comparative merits.
These letters impress us the more with the cares of General Gage, when
we reflect they were written at the time of the troublesome tea business
at rebellious Boston; and when the flowing tide of the revolution, as
may be discerned from almost every page of the calendar, was daily
rising, and threatening to sweep away the supports of British authority
in the colonies.
In a former page mention is made of a Philadelphia lady, whose name
occurs in the Pensacola correspondence of an earlier day. It is but
fair, therefore, that we should not leave unnoticed a New York lady who
is mentioned in letters of Governor Chester’s time; the more so, because
she seems to have been one of those thrifty housewives, who do not
entirely depend upon the tin can, and green glass jar of the shop to
supply their families with preserved fruits and vegetables; besides,
there can be brought in with her extracts from letters, exemplary of the
courtly style, with which in Governor Chester’s day, a gentleman
returned, and a lady received his thanks for a small courtesy.[22]
General Haldimand, at Pensacola, writes Captain S. Sowers, the husband
of the lady, who is in New York:
“I most respectfully ask Mrs. Sowers, to permit me, through you, to
tender to her my most grateful thanks for the three jars of pickels.”
The Captain replies: “Mrs. Sowers, with pleasure, accepts your thanks
for the pickels, and when ye season comes for curing of them, she will
send you another collection which she hopes will be acceptable.”
In this stirring, short-hand, type-writing age, the form of a like
exchange of courtesies would probably be: “Pickels received. Thanks.”
Though there was no lack of lawyers and doctors, who it is said, lived
in fine style, there was a sad want of clergymen or preachers in the
province. There was but one of whom we have any account up to 1779, and
he was stationed at Mobile. Stuernagel, the Waldeck Field Preacher, on
his arrival in Pensacola, in that year, christened a boy whose parents
had been waiting eight years to make him the subject of the holy office.
He also baptized men who had been watching from their boyhood for an
opportunity to make their baptismal vows. Nor can there be found a
reference to church or chapel during the English dominion.[23]
The most prosperous and promising days Pensacola ever saw, except those
since the close of the civil war, were from 1772 to 1781. As the
American revolution advanced, additions were made to the numbers,
intelligence and wealth of its population, owing to causes already
mentioned. It was the capital of a province rich in its forests, its
agricultural and other resources. Its Bay was prized as the peerless
harbor of the Gulf, which it was proposed by the British government to
make a great naval station, a beginning in that direction having been
made by selecting a site for a navy yard adjoining the town to the
westward. Its commerce was daily on the increase; not only in
consequence of the extension of Panton, Leslie & Co.’s trade with the
Indians, but other enterprising merchants who had been added to the
population, were engaged in an export trade, comprising pine timber and
lumber, cedar, salt beef, raw hides, cattle, tallow, pitch, bear’s oil,
staves, shingles, honey, beeswax, salt fish, myrtle wax[24], deer skins,
dried venison, furs and peltry. This trade, and the £200,000 annually
extended by the British government, as well as the disbursements of the
shipping, constituted the sources of the prosperity of the town.
This period, besides being a season of growth and prosperity to
Pensacola, as well as the rest of the Province, was one of repose,
undisturbed by the march of armies, battles, and the other cruel shocks
of war that afflicted the northern colonies. But it was not to remain to
the end a quiet spectator of the drama enacting on the continent. It,
too, had an appointment with fate. Though not even a faint flash of the
northern storm was seen on its horizon, yet there had been one for long
brooding for it in the southwest.
The earthquake, too, that visited it on the night of February 6,
1780,[25] was but a presage of that which on May 8, 1781, was to shake
it to its center; and prove the signal of an exodus of the English
almost as complete as was that of the Spanish population in 1763.
-----
Footnote 15:
Fairbank’s History of Florida, p. 223.
Footnote 16:
A name which the children of the neighborhood have bestowed on the
bloom of a water plant, suggested by its wax like stem and its yellow
point, and here mentioned to suggest to our people that it is time we
should have popular designations for others of our beautiful wild
flowers.
Footnote 17:
Fairbanks Florida, p. 219.
Footnote 18:
Pickett, Vol. II. p. 25.
Footnote 19:
Canadian Archives B. Vol. 15, p. 267.
Footnote 20:
Id. 15 p. 195.
Footnote 21:
Id. 17 p. 267.
Footnote 22:
Canadian Archives B. Vol. 15 p. 161.
Footnote 23:
Von Elking Vol. II p. 139.
Footnote 24:
This is the product of the wild myrtle, obtained by putting the seed
into hot water, when the wax liquifies and floats on the surface.
Footnote 25:
“On the sixth of February 1780, at night, a fearful storm arose with
repeated thunder and lightning. An earthquake was accompanied by such
a violent shock, that in the barracks the regimentals and the arm
racks fell from the walls in a great many places, and everything was
moved in the rooms. The doors were sprung, chimneys were thrown
together, and from the fires burning on the hearths, a conflagration
threatened to burst forth. Neighboring houses clashed together, and
those buried in the ruins cried for help. The sea foamed and raged;
the thunder continually rolled. It was a terrible night. Only towards
one o’clock, the raging elements in some measure again became subdued.
Wonderful to relate, no human life was lost.”—Von Elking, Vol. II, p.
144.
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