Nassau County is the northeasternmost county of the U.S. state of Florida. According to the July 2022 United States Census analysis, the county's population was 97,899.
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.
Fernandina Beach is a city in northeastern Florida and the county seat of Nassau County, Florida, United States. It is the northernmost city on Florida's Atlantic coast, situated on Amelia Island, and is one of the principal municipalities comprising Greater Jacksonville. The area was first inhabited by the Timucuan Indian people. Known as the "Isle of 8 Flags", Amelia Island has had the flags of the following nations flown over it: France, Spain, Great Britain, Spain (again), the Republic of East Florida (1812), the Republic of the Floridas (1817), Mexico, the Confederate States of America, and the United States.
General Gregor MacGregor was a Scottish soldier, adventurer, and confidence trickster who attempted from 1821 to 1837 to draw British and French investors and settlers to "Poyais", a fictional Central American territory that he claimed to rule as "Cazique". Hundreds invested their savings in supposed Poyaisian government bonds and land certificates, while about 250 emigrated to MacGregor's invented country in 1822–23 to find only an untouched jungle; more than half of them died. Seen as a contributory factor to the "Panic of 1825", MacGregor's Poyais scheme has been called one of the most brazen confidence tricks in history.
David Levy Yulee was an American politician and attorney. Born on the island of St. Thomas, then under British control, he was of Sephardic Jewish ancestry: His father was a Sephardi from Morocco, and his mother, also of Sephardi descent, was born in Sint Eustatius and raised in St. Thomas. The family moved to Florida when he was a child, and he grew up there on their extensive lands. He later served as Florida's territorial delegate to Congress. Yulee was the first person of Jewish ancestry to be elected and serve as a United States senator, serving 1845–1851 and again 1855–1861. He founded the Florida Railroad Company and served as president of several other companies, earning the nickname of "Father of Florida Railroads." In 2000 he was recognized as a "Great Floridian" by the state.
Amelia Island is a part of the Sea Islands chain that stretches along the East Coast of the United States from South Carolina to Florida; it is the southernmost of the Sea Islands, and the northernmost of the barrier islands on Florida's Atlantic coast. Lying in Nassau County, Florida, it is 13 miles (21 km) long and approximately 4 miles (6.4 km) wide at its widest point. The communities of Fernandina Beach, Amelia City, and American Beach are located on the island.
The Battle of Pensacola was a battle of the Creek War during the War of 1812, in which American forces fought against forces from the kingdoms of Britain and Spain who were aided by the Creek Indians and African-American slaves allied with the British. General Andrew Jackson led his infantry against British and Spanish forces controlling the city of Pensacola in Spanish Florida. Allied forces abandoned the city, and the remaining Spanish forces surrendered to Jackson.
Louis-Michel Aury was a French privateer operating in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean during the early 19th century.
Fort Barrancas (1839) or Fort San Carlos de Barrancas is a United States military fort and National Historic Landmark in the former Warrington area of Pensacola, Florida, located physically within Naval Air Station Pensacola, which was developed later around it.
The Amelia Island affair was an episode in the history of Spanish Florida.
The Original Town of Fernandina Historic Site, also known as "Old Town", is a historic site in Fernandina Beach, Florida, located on Amelia Island. It is roughly bounded by Towngate Street, Bosque Bello Cemetery, Nassau, Marine, and Ladies Streets. On January 29, 1990, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places as a historic site. Lying north of the Fernandina Beach Historic District, it is accessible from North 14th Street.
During most of the American Civil War the Florida city of St. Augustine was under Union control. Its Confederate history was exceedingly brief. One Union general and one Confederate general were natives of the Ancient City. Many officers on both sides had previous military experience in St. Augustine, particularly during the Second Seminole War. The city's historic Sea Wall was built in the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s by West Point engineers who went on to design military fortifications for both sides in the Civil War. Many black Union soldiers either came from St. Augustine, or settled there after the war, providing a leadership cadre for the community known as Lincolnville that was established in 1866. Many of the city's old cemeteries feature the distinctive marble tombstones marked "USCT" – United States Colored Troops.
José Masot, also known as José Fascot, was a senior officer of the Spanish Navy who served as governor of West Florida, subdelegate of the intendant, and superintendent general for an island in the Escambia river, from March 1816 until his deposition in May 1818 by American general Andrew Jackson.
The Patriot War was an attempt in 1812 to foment a rebellion in Spanish East Florida with the intent of annexing the province to the United States. The invasion and occupation of parts of East Florida had elements of filibustering, but was also supported by units of the United States Army, Navy and Marines, and by militia from Georgia and Tennessee. The rebellion was instigated by General George Mathews, who had been commissioned by United States President James Madison to accept any offer from local authorities to deliver any part of the Floridas to the United States, and to prevent the reoccupation of the Floridas by Great Britain. The rebellion was supported by the Patriot Army, which consisted primarily of citizens of Georgia. The Patriot Army, with the aid of U.S. Navy gunboats, was able to occupy Fernandina and parts of northeast Florida, but never gathered enough strength to attack St. Augustine. United States Army troops and Marines were later stationed in Florida in support of the Patriots. The occupation of parts of Florida lasted over a year, but after United States military units were withdrawn and Seminoles entered the conflict, the Patriots dissolved.
Fort San Carlos was a military structure built in 1816 to defend the Spanish colonial town of Fernandina, Florida, now called Old Town, which occupied a peninsula on the northern end of Amelia Island. The fort, a lunette fortification, stood on the southwest side of the town next to the harbor, on a bluff overlooking the Amelia River. It was made of wood and earthworks, backed with a wooden palisade on the east side, and armed with an eight or ten gun battery. Two blockhouses protected access by land on the south, while the village was surrounded with military pickets. An 1821 map of Fernandina shows that the street plan, laid out in 1811 in a grid pattern by the newly appointed Surveyor General of Spanish East Florida, George J. F. Clarke, today preserves nearly the same layout as that of 1821. The fort occupied the area bounded by the streets Calle de Estrada, Calle de White, and Calle de Someruelos. The structure itself has disappeared and only traces remain in what is now Fernandina Plaza Historic State Park.
George J. F. Clarke was one of the most prominent and active men of East Florida during the Second Spanish Period. As a friend and trusted advisor of the Spanish governors of the province from 1811 to 1821, he was appointed to several public offices under the colonial regime, including that of surveyor general.
Enrique White was an Irish-born Spanish soldier who served as Governor of West Florida and of East Florida.
Vicente Sebastian Pintado y Brito was a Spanish cartographer, engineer, military officer and land surveyor of Spanish Louisiana and Spanish West Florida. He is known for conducting surveys of lands for settlers who had requested grants in Louisiana and Florida, as well as the so-called "Pintado plan", a street map of Pensacola drawn in 1812 which included the position and size of the solares designated for construction of the city's church and other public buildings. He lived more than 35 years in the Americas and left a large corpus of work consisting of maps, plats, letters and documents vital to an understanding of the complicated sale of lands in Florida and Louisiana during the period. In 1974, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. obtained a donation of the Pintado Collection, a collection of about 1,500 documents now stored in its Division of Manuscripts.
The Republic of East Florida, also known as the Republic of Florida or the Territory of East Florida, was a putative republic declared by insurgents against the Spanish rule of East Florida, most of whom were from Georgia. John Houstoun McIntosh was chosen as "Director" of the self-named Patriots in March, 1812, to receive formal Spanish capitulation at Amelia Island. In July, while under the occupation of U.S. forces, the Patriots created a constitution of government that provided for an executive office, a legislative council, and a court system. Under its provisions, on July 27 McIntosh was named "Director of the Territory of East Florida". He was later succeeded in that office by Gen. Buckner Harris. Patriots wished neither independence nor statehood in the United States; they desired annexation by the U.S., connoted by the word "Territory" in their name of the country, and as expressly declared by the delegates at their constitutional convention.
The Republic of the Floridas, also called Republic of Floridas, was a short-lived attempt, from June to December 1817, to establish an independent Florida. It was led by Gregor MacGregor, a Scottish military adventurer, and he was joined by French adventurer and soldier of fortune Louis-Michel Aury and by the Scot Richard Ambrister, whose execution by General Andrew Jackson shortly thereafter provoked an international incident. MacGregor conquered Amelia Island, the only territory the country consisted of, and raised the Green Cross of Florida flag over the Spanish Fort San Carlos.
