Historical Sketches of Colonial Florida

by Richard L. Campbell

He paid New Orleans a visit, and did some profitable trading there with six thousand dollars which he had at his command. He also secured a quantity of pitch and turpentine for his Company, as well as two pine spars, each eighty-four feet long, which he sent to Havana in the schooner. This was the beginning of the timber trade of Pensacola, its first known business transaction with New Orleans, and the last authenticated instance of one of its timber dealers engaging in the elegant pastime of sketching.

In vain has information been sought of its progress during the period between the time Don Serres made the sketch and 1754, which embraced the last eleven years of its existence, for in that year it was destroyed, together with many of its people, by a terrific hurricane. And thus it was that, as the Pensacola of Arriola perished in the conflict of human passions, its offspring was destroyed in a war of the elements.

The survivors, removing to the north shore of the Bay, settled upon a crescent-shaped body of dry land, about the eighth of a mile wide in its widest part, formed by the Bay and a titi swamp, which, extending from the mouth of an estuary on the west, curved landward to a marsh just below the outlet of another on the east. These estuaries, though seemingly the outlets of two, were in fact those of one and the same stream flowing through the swamp, and navigable by canoes for some distance from the bay. The bay-shore also curved deeply, the indentation being in fact the remnant of a cove, which, as old maps show, extended to and beyond the northern edge of the swamp.

That settlement was but a removal of Pensacola to its present site, like that by which it was removed to the island. Each settlement, in its order of time, like d’ Arriola’s town, being a continuation of the Pensacola founded by de Luna in 1559, four years before Menendez founded St. Augustine.

Of the history of the present Pensacola, beyond its bare existence, from 1754 to 1763, we have no information further than that its insignificance shielded it from the trials and sufferings of the seven years war ended by the treaty of Paris, February 10, 1763.

By that treaty Florida became a British colony. On July 6 of that year Captain Wills, in command of the third battery of Royal Artillery, then at Havana, forming a part of the British force which had captured the city during the late war, was ordered by General Keppel to proceed with his command to Pensacola for the purpose of taking possession of the place. Arriving thereon the seventh of August, Captain Wills having presented the order of the king of Spain to the Spanish commander for the surrender of the post, it was promptly obeyed.

It was the duty of Spain under the treaty to remove her troops from Pensacola. Her subjects, however, were, under the Nineteenth article, entitled to remain in the full enjoyment of their personal rights, religion and property; but, resolving to remove to Mexico, they applied to the Spanish government for transportation, which was promptly promised. Accordingly, on September 2, transports for the removal of the garrison and people arrived; and, on the third, the Spanish troops and the entire population, to the last man, woman and child, sailed for Vera Cruz, leaving Captain Wills and his command the only occupants of the town.

It is to a report written by him a few days after the Spanish exodus that we owe all the information we possess of the character and appearance of the town at that time.

It consisted of “40 huts, thatched with palmetto leaves, and barracks for a small garrison, the whole surrounded by a stockade of pine posts.”

The report says: “The country, from the insuperable laziness of the Spaniards, still remains uncultivated. The woods are still near the village, and a few paltry gardens show the only improvements. Stock, they have none, being entirely supplied by Mobile, which is pretty well cultivated and produces sufficient for export.”