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.