Fort Thompson was a military post established during the Second Seminole War along the Caloosahatchee River in Florida. The fort was named for Lt. Colonel Alexander Thompson, who was killed in the Battle of Okeechobee in 1837.
The property was acquired by Francis Asbury Hendry who used it for cattle ranching. It preceded LaBelle, Florida. [1]
During the American Civil War, Union forces advanced inland from the previously occupied Fort Myers and occupied Fort Thompson in an attempt to disrupt the Confederate cattle supply. [2]
The settlement of Caloosahatchee was built around the fort, with a population of 13 in 1870. [3]
The Fort Thompson Hotel was named for the fort. [1] It was managed by Everett Edward Goodno. [4] LaBelle has a Fort Thompson Avenue.
Henry Ford acquired the Fort Thompson property and used it as an experimental rubber plantation. [5]
The Fort Thompson Formation is a geological feature in the area. [6] A historical marker commemorates Fort Thompson's history.
Hendry County is a county in the Florida Heartland region of the U.S. state of Florida. As of the 2020 census, the population was 39,619, down from 42,022 at the 2010 census. Its county seat is LaBelle.
Lee County is located in southwestern Florida on the Gulf Coast. As of the 2020 census, its population was 760,822. In 2022, the population was 822,453, making it the eighth-most populous county in the state. The county seat is Fort Myers, with a population of 86,395 as of the 2020 census, and the largest city is Cape Coral, with an estimated 2020 population of 194,016.
The Seminole Wars were a series of three military conflicts between the United States and the Seminoles that took place in Florida between about 1816 and 1858. The Seminoles are a Native American nation which coalesced in northern Florida during the early 1700s, when the territory was still a Spanish colonial possession. Tensions grew between the Seminoles and settlers in the newly independent United States in the early 1800s, mainly because enslaved people regularly fled from Georgia into Spanish Florida, prompting slaveowners to conduct slave raids across the border. A series of cross-border skirmishes escalated into the First Seminole War in 1817, when General Andrew Jackson led an incursion into the territory over Spanish objections. Jackson's forces destroyed several Seminole and Black Seminole towns and briefly occupied Pensacola before withdrawing in 1818. The U.S. and Spain soon negotiated the transfer of the territory with the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819.
Middleburg is an unincorporated area and census-designated place (CDP) within Clay County in the U.S. state of Florida, located 26 miles (42 km) southwest of downtown Jacksonville and 16 miles (26 km) northwest of Green Cove Springs, the county seat of Clay County. As of the 2020 census, the population of Middleburg was 12,881.
Fort Myers is a city in and the county seat and commercial center of Lee County, Florida, United States. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated that the city's population was 92,245 in 2021, ranking the city the 370th-most-populous in the country. Together with the larger and more residential city of Cape Coral, the smaller cities of Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel, and Bonita Springs, the village of Estero, and the unincorporated districts of Lehigh Acres and North Fort Myers, it anchors a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) which comprises Lee County and has a population of 787,976 as of 2021.
Punta Rassa is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Lee County, Florida, United States. The population was 1,620 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area.
The Second Seminole War, also known as the Florida War, was a conflict from 1835 to 1842 in Florida between the United States and groups of people collectively known as Seminoles, consisting of Native Americans and Black Indians. It was part of a series of conflicts called the Seminole Wars. The Second Seminole War, often referred to as the Seminole War, is regarded as "the longest and most costly of the Indian conflicts of the United States". After the Treaty of Payne's Landing in 1832 that called for the Seminole's removal from Florida, tensions rose until fierce hostilities occurred in the Dade battle in 1835. This conflict started the war. The Seminoles and the U.S. forces engaged in mostly small engagements for more than six years. By 1842, only a few hundred native peoples remained in Florida. Although no peace treaty was ever signed, the war was declared over on August 14, 1842.
Francis Asbury Hendry was a Florida cattle rancher, politician, and officer in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He was known by the nickname "Berry."
Holata Micco was an important leader of the Seminoles in Florida during the Second Seminole War and was the remaining Seminole's most prominent chief during the Third Seminole War, when he led the Seminoles' last major resistance against the United States government. With the possibilities of military victory dwindling and facing starvation, he finally agreed to relocate with his people to Indian Territory in 1858. He is buried in Hughes County, Oklahoma.
Fort Duncan was a United States Army base, set up to protect the first U.S. settlement on the Rio Grande near the current town of Eagle Pass, Texas.
Florida participated in the American Civil War as a member of the Confederate States of America. It had been admitted to the United States as a slave state in 1845. In January 1861, Florida became the third Southern state to secede from the Union after the November 1860 presidential election victory of Abraham Lincoln. It was one of the initial seven slave states which formed the Confederacy on February 8, 1861, in advance of the American Civil War.
Fort King was a United States military fort in north central Florida, near what later developed as the city of Ocala. It was named after Colonel William King, commander of Florida's Fourth Infantry and the first governor of the provisional West Florida region.
The Battle of Fort Myers was fought on February 20, 1865, in Lee County, Florida during the last months of the American Civil War. This small engagement is known as the "southernmost land battle of the Civil War."
LaBelle is a city in and the county seat of Hendry County, Florida, United States. The population was 4,640 at the 2010 census, up from 4,210 at the 2000 census. It was named for Laura June Hendry and Carrie Belle Hendry, daughters of pioneer cattleman Francis Asbury Hendry.
Lake Harney, named for General William S. Harney, is a lake that straddles the county line between Volusia County and Seminole County, Florida, at the coordinates latitude 28°45’21.404", longitude 81° 03’36.019". It is fed by the Saint Johns River which flows through central Florida and feeds many of the nearby lakes such as Lake Monroe.
Fort Center is an archaeological site in Glades County, Florida, United States, a few miles northwest of Lake Okeechobee. It was occupied for more than 2,000 years, from 450 BCE until about 1700 CE. The inhabitants of Fort Center may have been cultivating maize centuries before it appeared anywhere else in Florida.
Hogtown was a 19th-century settlement in and around what is now Westside Park in Gainesville, Florida, United States where a historical marker notes Hogtown's location at that site and is the eponymous outpost of the adjacent Hogtown Creek. Originally a village of Seminoles who raised hogs, the habitation was dubbed "Hogtown" by nearby white people who traded with the Seminoles. Indian artifacts were found at Glen Springs, which empties into Hogtown Creek.
Fort Denaud is a census-designated place (CDP) and former fort in Hendry County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 census,the population of the CDP was 2,049.