The Haddocks of Wiregrass

After the Revolutionary War for East Florida, the boom was over. The economy and the population fell rapidly.

By 1785 only 450 whites and some 200 Negroes remained, most of them in New Smyrna.

Burgeoning new plantations throughout north Florida between the St. Johns and St. Marys Rivers were simply abandoned by their former British owners.

Just across the St. Marys River in Georgia however, things were quite different. The new State of Georgia was expanding rapidly with new settlers from the Carolinas and Virginia. War veterans were being offered land in proportion to their war service. Soon, virtually all of the good land was taken and Georgia settlers moved to take land belonging to the Indians.

The Treaty of Galphinton in 1785 took land from the Creek Indians and moved the official borders of Georgia to the edge of Florida, “from the depths of the Okeefeenokee Swamp to the mouth of the St. Marys River.” [Source: Murdoch, Richard K., The Georgia-Florida Frontier 1793-1796 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1951), p. 4-5. ]

As Americans obtained Spanish land grants and moved over into Florida, they farmed or established businesses that exploited the abundant timber in the area. The new mill established by the Mizell Brothers also had a "commissary" (above, white frame building), or grocery store that served the surrounding community. As a young man, Archibald "Arch" Haddock Connors worked as a clerk in the Commissary. A black cat with a fluffy tail had taken residence in the store which also served as a gathering place for locals to sit around and "jaw." The cat had a rather irritating habit of walking up and down on the counter in front of Arch. One day, while he was unconsciously twiddling with a rubber band, the cat paraded by in front of him as he entered accounts into the ledger. Brushing the cat out of the way, he snapped the rubber band around the cat's tail. He thought the rubber band would divert the cat's attention away from the counter. Getting busy with customers, Arch forgot about the incident until about a week later when one of the "regulars" pointed out that some "low life" had cut off the cat's tail. Mr. Mizell was "maddern hell," but he never did find out exactly what happened to the cat's tail.

Arch Connors in a photograph taken not long after he worked in the Mizell Mill commissary.

Soon, in 1788, the first permanent town site on the American side of the St. Marys River was being laid out at a place called Buttermilk Bluff. Four years later, the local residents petitioned the state to change the name to St. Mary’s, Georgia.

As settlers gobbled up the good land, it didn’t take long for them to begin looking across the St. Marys into Florida. What they saw was an abundance of fertile land, much of it partially developed during the previous twenty years of British possession, now unoccupied. Few Spanish settlers had returned. St. Augustine needed more farm produce and goods. Empty land and abandoned farms was not going to satisfy that need.

So, in 1787, Governor Vicente Manuel de Cespedes suggested a new policy, one that would permit some industrious, carefully selected and controlled Americans to settle in East Florida.

A royal order was issued in 1790 which invited aliens into East Florida, providing they did not practice openly religions other than Roman Catholicism, and that they swore allegiance to the crown, thus becoming Spanish citizens.

Heads of families were allocated 100 acres, 50 acres more for each white family member and slaves. After ten years of successful cultivation and the building of a home, an outright deed would be granted to the land.

American settlers began to move into Spanish Florida.

The situation did not take long to become tense. The Spanish had restrictions on crops, on commerce, travel, public assembly and foreign trade.

Sympathies of settlers on the American side of the river favored the former Americans, many of whom were members of the same families, branches of which had simply moved across the river—and into another country.

Most of the new settlers in east Florida “were dissatisfied with their lot under the Spanish flag and were willing to support any action that might lead to a change in government...The government of the state of Georgia was in the hands of a group of men either generally partial to such action or so involved in various land schemes as to be indifferent to affairs outside the state.” [Source; Murdoch, Richard K., The Georgia-Florida Frontier 1793-1796 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1951), p. 4-5. ]

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