Elias Durnford (13 June 1739 –21 June 1794) was a British army officer and civil engineer who is best known for surveying the town of Pensacola and laying out a city plan based on two public places (now the Plaza Ferdinand VII and the Seville Square). [1]
Between 1769 and 1778 he was Lieutenant Governor of British West Florida [1] and by 1794 Colonel Durnford was Chief Royal Engineer of the West Indies. [2]
Elias Durnford was born in Ringwood,Hampshire,England on 13 June 1739. [1]
Durnford served as an Ensign in the British army Corps of Royal Engineers,having signed up on 17 March 1759. In the Seven Years' War he participated in the Capture of Belle Île,France,1761 and was also at the Battle of Havana (1762). After the Cuban action Lord Albemarle made him an Aide-de-camp. Durnford became an accomplished artist while on the Cuban campaign and engravings made from his sketches are highly valued. [1]
After the Seven Years' War Durnford was posted to the newly established British colony of West Florida,where he was appointed chief engineer and surveyor general. To supplement his small salary he was paid for land surveying and as the colony was being divided into land grants he profited greatly from this arrangement. [1]
Durnford laid out the city plan for Pensacola after arriving there in 1764. His plan for the city was classic in nature,centered on two squares,one for government and one for military drill and public affairs. Streets were all surveyed at right angles named after royal family members and government representatives. He included in the housing plan gardening plots on the north side of the city along Garden Street, [3]
Durnford's own estate was 52,662 acres (213.12 km2),including his 5,000-acre (20 km2) plantation,named Belle Fontaine,which was located atop the eastern cliffs above Mobile Bay. The location was also home to a military convalescent hospital,named Crofton. He designed a new port for the area,but the plan was never put into action. His design for a road to link Mobile to the colony's capital,Pensacola was more successful and was partly completed. [1]
When the Governor of West Florida,John Eliot,hanged himself in 1769,Durnford was named Lieutenant Governor of the colony. After getting married in England,Durnford returned to West Florida and was appointed Acting Governor until the new governor,Peter Chester,arrived on 10 August 1770. Durnford remained as Lieutenant Governor and was a member of the West Florida Council until 1778. [1] [3]
Durnford's duties changed with the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. Spanish forces,allied with France and the American colonial rebels,moved to capture British West Florida. January 1780 found Durnford in command of Fort Charlotte in Mobile,an old French fort in disrepair that had been formerly known as Fort Conde. His force of 287 regulars and irregulars was opposed by a Spanish force of 2,000 troops,that arrived in Mobile Bay on 10 February 1780. Given that Durnford was greatly outnumbered the Spanish demanded the surrender of the British force,but Durnford refused,hoping for a relief force from Pensacola. The opposing commanders carried on protracted and polite negotiations over wine and cigars,while the Spanish prepared to take the old fort. Relief was not forthcoming and on 10 March 1780 Durnford surrendered,his estate having been burnt. [1]
As part of the surrender to the Spanish commander Bernardo de Gálvez,Durnford received an agreement that his garrison would be accorded the honours of war and that the Spanish would not punish the people of the town for the defence. De Gálvez agreed but insisted that the armed colonists would be treated as prisoners of war. This was agreed and Spanish troops entered Fort Charlotte in August 1780. De Gálvez later captured Pensacola and the rest of West Florida in 1781. [1]
Durnford and his family returned to Britain and he carried on his military career in the 1790s,campaigning against the French forces in Martinique,Guadeloupe and St. Lucia. [1]
While in England on 25 August 1769 Durnford married Rebecca Walker. Durnford and his wife had a total of nine children,five sons and four daughters. [1] He was the father of soldier-engineer Major General Elias Walker Durnford.
Elias Durnford died from yellow fever on 21 June 1794 while on the island of Tobago. [1]
West Florida was a region on the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico that underwent several boundary and sovereignty changes during its history. As its name suggests,it was formed out of the western part of former Spanish Florida,along with lands taken from French Louisiana;Pensacola became West Florida's capital. The colony included about two thirds of what is now the Florida Panhandle,as well as parts of the modern U.S. states of Louisiana,Mississippi,and Alabama.
Bernardo Vicente de Gálvez y Madrid,1st Count of Gálvez was a Spanish military leader and government official who served as colonial governor of Spanish Louisiana and Cuba,and later as Viceroy of New Spain.
The siege of Pensacola,fought from March 9 to May 10,1781,was the culmination of Spain's conquest of West Florida during the Gulf Coast Campaign of the American Revolutionary War.
The Capture of Fort Bute signalled the opening of Spanish intervention in the American Revolutionary War on the side of France and the United States. Mustering an ad hoc army of Spanish regulars,Acadian militia,and native levies under Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent,Bernardo de Gálvez,the Governor of Spanish Louisiana stormed and captured the small British frontier post on Bayou Manchac on September 7,1779.
The siege of Baton Rouge was a brief siege during the Anglo-Spanish War that was decided on September 21,1779. Fort New Richmond was the second British outpost to fall to Spanish arms during Bernardo de Gálvez's march into West Florida.
The Battle of Fort Charlotte,also known as the siege of Fort Charlotte,was a two-week siege conducted by Spanish general Bernardo de Gálvez against the British fortifications guarding the port of Mobile,during the Anglo-Spanish War of 1779-1783. Fort Charlotte was the last remaining British frontier post capable of threatening New Orleans,Louisiana. Its fall drove the British from the western reaches of West Florida and reduced the British military presence in West Florida to its capital,Pensacola.
The Battle at The Village,also known as the Second Battle of Mobile,fought on January 7,1781,was a failed British attempt to recapture a Spanish fortification at "The Village," during the American Revolutionary War. The attack was led by Waldecker Colonel Johann von Hanxleden who was killed in the attempt.
Bird's invasion of Kentucky was one phase of an extensive planned series of operations planned by the British in 1780 during the American Revolutionary War,whereby the entire West,from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico,was to be swept clear of both Spanish and American forces. While Bird's campaign met with limited success,raiding two fortified settlements,it failed in its primary objective. Other British operations that were part of the plan also failed.
The Gulf Coast campaign or the Spanish conquest of West Florida in the American Revolutionary War,was a series of military operations primarily directed by the governor of Spanish Louisiana,Bernardo de Gálvez,against the British province of West Florida. Begun with operations against British positions on the Mississippi River shortly after Britain and Spain went to war in 1779,Gálvez completed the conquest of West Florida in 1781 with the successful siege of Pensacola.
Spain,through its alliance with France and as part of its conflict with Britain,played a role in the independence of the United States. Spain declared war on Britain as an ally of France,itself an ally of the American colonies. Most notably,Spanish forces attacked British positions in the south and captured West Florida from Britain in the siege of Pensacola. This secured the southern route for supplies and closed off the possibility of any British offensive through the western frontier of the United States via the Mississippi River. Spain also provided money,supplies,and munitions to the American forces.
Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent was a French merchant and military officer who played a major role in the development of French and Spanish Louisiana.
Feliciana Parish,or New Feliciana,French:Paroisse de Félicianne,was a parish of the Territory of Orleans and the state of Louisiana,formed in 1810 from West Florida territory. Given an increase in population,it was divided in 1824 into East Feliciana Parish and West Feliciana Parish.
British West Florida was a colony of the Kingdom of Great Britain from 1763 until 1783,when it was ceded to Spain as part of the Peace of Paris.
Montfort Browne was a British Army officer and Tory,and a major landowner and developer of British West Florida in the 1760s and 1770s. He commanded the Prince of Wales' American Regiment,a Loyalist regiment,in the American Revolutionary War. He served as lieutenant governor of West Florida from 1766 to 1769,acting as governor from 1767,and then as governor of the Bahamas from 1774 to 1780.
The Battle of Lake Pontchartrain was a single-ship action on September 10,1779,part of the Anglo-Spanish War. It was fought between the British sloop-of-war HMS West Florida and the Continental Navy schooner USS Morris in the waters of Lake Pontchartrain,then in the British province of West Florida.
The Capture of the Bahamas took place in May 1782 during the American Revolutionary War when a Spanish force under the command of Juan Manuel Cagigal arrived on the island of New Providence near Nassau,the capital of the Bahamas. The British commander at Nassau,John Maxwell decided to surrender the island without a fight when confronted by the superior force.
General John Campbell,17th Chief of MacArthur Campbells of Strachur was a Scottish soldier and nobleman,who commanded the British forces at the Siege of Pensacola,and succeeded Guy Carleton,1st Baron Dorchester as Commander-in-Chief in North America in 1783 following the end of the American War of Independence.
Gálveztown was HMS West Florida,which the Continental Navy schooner USS Morris captured at the Battle of Lake Pontchartrain,which was then in the British province of West Florida. West Florida became Gálveztown,supposedly under the command of Bernardo de Gálvez,the Spanish governor of Louisiana.
Francisco Xavier Cruzat was a Spanish soldier who served as lieutenant governor of Upper Louisiana in New Spain from 1775 to 1778 and again from 1780 to 1787. He served as Interim Governor of East Florida in 1789.
Robert Farmar (1717–1778) was a British Army officer that fought in the Seven Years' War,served as interim governor of British West Florida and later served as the commander at Fort Charlotte.