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Moore History - Pioneers, Explorers and Florida · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

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Time for a little more history. Third hour of the Morning Show with Thrustin
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Scott Show fifty one hundred and that's Grant Allen over there playing hurt this morning
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and joining us in studio is our resident historian, doctor Ed Moore joins us,
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Hello, sir, how are you? I'm doing pretty good? Yeah,
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all things considered. As we age, we measure in way such questions
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how much time we're at the hospital or a doctor or whatever. You were
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telling me that you're working on a project. And I'm never ever amazed anymore
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by the people that listen to this show and their connections to things near and
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far. Yeah, I was hopeful that some of the listeners, I will
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give up my email even on this one, serve on the board of the
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Historic Florida Capitol Foundation, which helps to run and operate that beautiful museum we
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have downtown. Some of us have been around long enough that we actually worked
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in that building, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners have. And
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we're doing a writing project kind of voices of the Old Capitol, trying to
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capture things that might have happened within the building, memories people have of working
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there. So if you've worked there, if you serve there, if you
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get the historic Capitol building, historic Capitol Building, and think of the old
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wings, the Senate and House wings that were on there, if you played
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any part in any of that over time, I'd like to hear from you.
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Ed Hmore at gmail dot com. We're kind of building a nice little
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book on the voices of the people that have served in that building before we're
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all gone. You know, you start watching people age. I mean people
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that served as legislators in the old wings back in the sixties and fifties and
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seventies. In that era, they're passing first person stories only, or if
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mom or dad worked there and they remember a story mom and dad told them
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both. Okay, you know, we'll sort through them. I'll be doing
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a lot of editing and such, but we really like to hear some contributions
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from people and write it out. Put your thoughts to paper, and email
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it to me. And of course, if you submit it, that means
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you're okay with us using it. I mean, you know the editorial aspects
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of that. But old pictures as well, if you have old photos in
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the building. My wife often tells a story when she was a little girl,
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her dad work for Leroy Collins as the director of State Office Buildings,
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and as little kids, when they came up the old parkway, the building
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sitting up there all lit up, that was Daddy's castle. You know.
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I mean, there are people here in town that have those kinds of images.
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We want to grab them. Ed Hmore at gmail dot com. If
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you have such stories about the historical capital where you either worked, or your
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mom or dad, someone very close to you and your family worked, I'd
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love to hear from you. I mentioned to you that we started the show
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in our history segment with eighteen nineteen. It was on this date that Spain
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seeds Florida to the United States. Happy Birthday, Florida, SIA kind of
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sort of kind of, at least as an American territory. It's a fascinating
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bunch of stories. I keep going down these different rabbit holes on all of
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this. And essentially on this date was the signing of the Adams o'nice Treaty
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Adam's o'nice Adams Onicie said John Quincy Adams was Secretary of State under President Monroe,
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and this fellow ownee was the some kind of name plen of potentiary something.
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Oh yeah, he was a minister from Spain. And the reality of
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it all is that Florida went to Florida had East Florida and West Florida,
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and being American early on, they just decided on West Florida. They just
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moved down in there and took it over. I mean so from that day,
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meaning settlers and Spain. Spain had been tied up since around eighteen ten
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for seven or eight years in what was called the Peninsular War was against Napoleon
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Spain, Portugal and England against France and his empire ambitions fought on the peninsula,
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the Iberian Peninsula, and they spent a lot of money. And what
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started occurring during that time to time frame is Spain started looking at all of
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the colonies they had over here that they had to support with troops and money
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and kind of like, no, we can't do that, So they started
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finagling ways to we'll get in the next segment we'll talk about what they did.
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It was pretty interesting. But minutes after the hour, Doctor had more
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with us a little more history here on the Morning Show with Preston Scott,
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the Adam's o'neice. What is it treaty. It was a treaty. Yeah,
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it was actually a treaty. It had to be ratified both by Spain
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and the US Congress by the Senate. It took about two years to be
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ratified, mainly because there was all kinds of stuff going on that Spain was
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dealing with. There were revolutions in almost every country. If you if you
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think of the Gulf of Mexico. At that point, Spain controlled the entire
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Gulf of Mexico basically from Florida all the way around across South America. They
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just didn't have the money to do all of that. And the reach to
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the old to reach exceeded their grasp, you know. And that wasn't for
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heaven, that was for jungle, sure, you know. So it was
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kind of tough on them. US got pretty favorable terms. Basically, they
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didn't have to pay anything. This is for East Florida. We had already
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seated West Florida just by that's ours. We got for the equivalent debt of
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five million dollars not paid to Spain, but paid to other people that Spain
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owed money to. This is how this so we took on their debt.
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We basically took on their debt. Yeah, so sort of a Trumpian kind
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of mode. Yeah. I was just going to say yeah, yeah,
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and ended up with territory. Now, I pulled some numbers because the numbers
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are fascinating. Around that time, we didn't do a census until eighteen thirty,
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so you you got to go back eleven years, but you can get
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a picture of this Leon County. Leon County was the largest populated county in
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Florida. Now, this is by eighteen thirty. When this took place,
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there were only two counties in Florida, Okay, Saint John's County and Escambia
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County. Those were the only counties that were in Florida, and then they
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were spun off Jackson in the Panandle and Duval County spun off. So then
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we had four counties in Florida. But by eighteen thirty, Leon County had
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roughly sixty five hundred people. That was it. But did the city of
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Districts Florida, Florida. Florida only had thirty five thousand people in eighteen thirty.
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Now, I trace my ancestry in Florida back to around eighteen thirty five.
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They started coming here and you realized they're hardly there was nobody here,
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you know. And why Spain wanted to get rid of it, one was
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just because it was just burdensome to them. And two is they were getting
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constant complaints because what became the Seminole Tribe of Florida was going across into Georgia
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out of Florida and stealing slaves and bringing them back and freeing some and keeping
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some. There was all of this kind of stuff. So all the plantation
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owners all across Georgia and Alabama mad about what was going on down in Florida
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and looking to Spain to try to straighten it out. Spain was incapable of
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straightening it out, so they we're going to give you the problem that and
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Andy Jackson, who became the first governor Florida, was run by the military
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basically once we took it over in this timeframe, but he had already done
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incursions down into Florida. They formed first. Our area here has so much
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history that most people aren't aware of. If you go on Lake Seminole up
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towards the top, there was Fort Scott that was formed there where the Flint
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River comes down. Then the Fort Gadsden, which is just above Appalachicola.
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When you come up that way, you'll come by the signs on the river,
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right on the Apalachicola River. At that time, they called it the
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Negro Fort because it was mainly occupied by runaway slaves that had arms. And
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Andy Jackson came in and blew that whole place up, using Fort Scott as
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a way to get in and out of Florida. They just gradually, militarily
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just took over the state and we had Florida. You and I when we
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used to do that Saturday show, we talked about Florida Man. Yeah,
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well there's been Florida man, going way back to these time frames. I
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found one guy that we'll talk about when we come back. Just fascinating characters
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that were part of the territorial government that the President Monroe. He appointed a
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council that ran supposedly ran the state. Some really interesting cats. One segment
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left. We are talking explorers and pioneers this year in our history segments with
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doctor ed Moore, and we're focused on the Sunshine State. Yeah, eighteen
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twenty two, they created the territorial government and created a legislature of thirteen people
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at that point in time and of different characters involved in all this. There's
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this time sequence as well that from eighteen twenty six they became elected, they
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actually elected these folks, and then by eighteen thirty eight it became a bi
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camera legislature. And if you think, Florida became a state in eighteen forty
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five, so stuff going on in the thirties was kind of laying the groundwork
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so they could be approved as a state. So they went to a bi
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camera legislature. They had court systems set up. I mean, they started
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getting rather sophisticated, even though less than fifty thousand people lived in the state.
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But in doing the reading, when you think about all of this,
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you know, we all know the story. Most of it's wrong about how
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Tallahassee got founded as the capital. But there really weren't good roads anywhere.
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So they put out a contract and a guy named Bellamy that lived in Monticella
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picked up the contract and he used mostly slaves to build the road from the
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San Marco's monastery to Saint Augustine. They paid him somewhere thirteen or fourteen thousand
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dollars to build the road that far. He built it too narrow that two
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cars could carts couldn't pass each other. They left the stumps in along the
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road, and they thought they cut them short enough so that the wagon would
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clear it. But you had to go all around. I mean, it
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was kind of a mess. They had to ford probably half a dozen rivers
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between Tallahassee and Saint Augustine. That fourteen thousand dollars. I couldn't find a
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calculator that would tell me how much that was worth today, But most of
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the calculators go from nineteen thirteen for some weird reason, inflation calculators from nineteen
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thirteen to now, that would be four hundred and sixty seven thousand dollars,
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probably four times that value to build a road that far for only fourteenth thousand
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dollars. But the crew that hired him included people like a guy named Zephaniah
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Kingsley stefania How would you like that for handle? Okay? He was a
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plantation owner, a slave owner, polygamists. He had four wives that had
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been slaves that he freed and took on as his wives and had children with
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all of them. He was one of those thirteen legislators appointed by the President
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and what he pushed in Florida developing the territory was to allow for polygamy and
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allow for slaves if they were family to inherit be able to inherit and under
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US law and thought Florida law at the time, if you had a child
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with a slave, that child wasn't entitled any of your property and ay of
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yourharents, and you couldn't really leave it to him. The will could be
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challenged as being insufficient if you tried to do that. His wives, the
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four of them and all their kids fled from Florida when he passed and went
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to Haiti, and his sister and her family tried to take over his plantation.
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Anna Is, one of the wives, came back and they challenged all
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of this in federal court in Duval County, and one they ended up winning
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because going back to the Atoms Honest Treaty or ONEE Treaty, the provision in
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there that went to Spanish law, and under Spanish law, any slave born
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that was freeborn prior to eighteen twenty two was entitled to equal treatment under the
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law. And so she ended up people what tangled. Now let's say I'm
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going down these rabbit holes and you're reading all this, and then she went
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a bridge too far, basically because what she then demanded was getting back the
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slaves from the plantation, from his Kingsley's plantation, at which they forced the
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people who had taken them all to give them back to her. But then
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she tried to go in the slave rental business. Oh boy, and that's
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how she was going to fund everything. Because here I thought you were going
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to tell me she got them back to freedom. No, not at all.
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It's an interesting freed slave owning slaves and then trying to rent slaves out
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to other plantations. And you can't make that up. No, you can't
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make that up at all. But that's Florida. There's a whole other series
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that maybe we'll talk about a little bit next time. I could talk about
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this stuff forever, dealing with Amelia Island and Fernandina Beach and how it got
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invaded. There was a backroom deals in Washington paying some Georgians to go down.
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This is when Florida still was owned by Spain, sending troops in coming
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across from Saint Mary's down and taking control and then trying to move down to
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Saint Augustine and Congress got mad about it, and Monroe kind of went oops,
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never mind, called them all back, gave it back to Spain,
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Spain saying it's nuestro, it was theirs. Yeah, they just came right
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they left from the troops, ran away from them, and then when the
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troops left, patriot group and a troop group two different armies Spanish came right
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back in and took over a millia island again. So Florida's always been kind
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of strange. It's people coming and going peninsula. What do you expect.
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They've been doing it since the eighteen hundreds. Good to see you doctor Edmore
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with us back next month with another edition of More History here in the Morning
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Show with Preston Scott