From the River to the Sea
Upwardly Mobile Minorcans and Florida's First Beachside Development

Sandie A. Stratton and Stacey A. Cannington

The Minorcans of St. Augustine in the late 1700s and early 1800s were no strangers to relocation.  They had survived two major moves since 1768, once from the Old World to the New, and then from New Smyrna to St. Augustine.  It should come as no surprise then, that some of these families began to move to the beach along the northeast coast of St. Johns County.  They had come to the New World for an opportunity to own their own land.  In acquiring land along the North and Guana Rivers, they were finally realizing their dream.

Who were these Minorcans and what prompted them to begin development along the ocean?  To answer this question one has to look back to the ambitious plans of the British during the two decades when East Florida was a British colony.  In 1763, at the end of the Seven Years War, the British received East Florida from the Spanish in exchange for Havana.  Therefore, the Spanish population, with the exception of a handful of people left behind to deal with land sales,abandoned East Florida ‘en masse’.¹

There had been an earlier and disastrous population change in Florida.  Native American population numbers at time of contact are difficult to calculate.  Some researchers place the number at 25,000 while others claim up to a million people constituted the various tribes and bands on the Florida Peninsula.² Recent work in population demographics of Native Americans on the Florida peninsula estimates 600,000 natives at the time of contact. ³   The Spanish had maintained a settlement at St. Augustine since 1565.  Various conquistadors attempted development in East Florida, and while there were some sporadic, short-term success stories, colonization in East Florida was not successful during the first Spanish period (1565-1763).⁴  By the end of the first Spanish period, the native population had been pushed out or taken as slaves to the Caribbean.⁵  The largest single factor that led to almost total loss of the Native American population was decimation due to Old World diseases.⁶  Spanish colonization attempts effectively ended with the final collapse of the Spanish Mission system in 1705. 

When the British arrived in East Florida in 1763, they found a landscape almost completely devoid of human habitation.  What the peninsula lacked in people it made up for in sheer size and abundant natural wonders.⁷  St. Augustine, a backwater military presidio for the Spanish, was the only settlement in East Florida, and it was a virtual ghost town.  East Florida’s new governor, James Grant, immediately set about rectifying British East Florida’s lack of population.

Governor James Grant-The Florida Archives

Grant, with an eye to Britain ’s successful agricultural colonies to the north, began aggressively recruiting new settlers to East Florida with offers of land in exchange for development.⁸  Grant was himself interested in agriculture and began clearing land north of the city gates.  His 308-acre tract served as an experimental farm as well as an agricultural chamber of commerce and an impromptu planters ‘university’.⁹ He would later own one of the largest successful plantations in East Florida.  Grant’s Villa, situated on a peninsula between the Guana and North Rivers, served as the first large scale single development along the First Coast.  This plantation was a showcase for the production of indigo and later, rice.¹⁰

One of the largest colonization attempts in East Florida during the British Period was Andrew Turnbull’s New Smyrna Plantation.

Andrew Turnbull

Turnbull, a Scottish physician, along with his absentee partners, Sir William Duncan and Lord George Grenville, held title to over 100,000 acres of land at the Mosquettos in the area of the present day New Smyrna and Edgewater communities.¹¹  To work this large amount of acreage, Turnbull enlisted over 1,400 individuals as indentured servants.  He gathered them from Italy , Corsica, Greece and the Balearic Islands.

The greatest number of recruits came from the island of Minorca in the Balearic Islands , and Minorcans would be the most common name for this group in the future. ¹² 

Turnbull’s colonists landed in East Florida in the summer of 1768.  The enterprise was practically doomed from its inception because Turnbull had initially built small houses and

Click on map for more information

provisioned for 500 workers, and in actuality, 1,403 boarded the eight ships that left Mahon, Minorca in the summer of 1768.  Of these, 1,255 survived the ocean crossing to disembark in the New World.  The colony began without adequate provisions, and this would remain the norm for the life of the colony.¹³  The colonists also had to contend with malaria, poor water supplies, and inadequate clothing. 

The colonists went to work immediately, and a great deal of land was cleared and planted with indigo.

The British government paid a premium for indigo and it was in great demand in the European markets.  Turnbull was certain that the profits from indigo would quickly make him and his partners wealthy.  The reality would be that the settlement was deeply in debt almost from the beginning.  Indigo yields were never as great as Turnbull hoped due to several years of drought as well as the decline in yields due to soil depletion.¹⁴ 

During the nine years that the Minorcans were at New Smyrna, the death rates were brutal.  “By the end of 1768 a total of 450 people had died, a rate of 320.74 per thousand, a population crash equaling that of a natural disaster such as a flood or an earthquake.”¹⁵

Patricia C. Griffin’s Mullet on the Beach-used with the author’s permission

These numbers, as well as the birthrate, would stabilize in the early 1770s and then begin to rise again after 1774.  When the Minorcans left New Smyrna in 1777 for St. Augustine, their numbers stood at roughly 600.

Turnbull contracted the Minorcans as indentured servants.  They were to serve as labor on his plantation for a specified number of years, and at that time they would be eligible for a land grant of their own, as well as their freedom.  No original signed contract survived, and there are questions as to whether all of the transported colonists actually signed a contract.  There are also questions concerning the number of years that the contracts were in effect.  The majority of the population seemed to believe that their contracts expired nine years after their arrival in New Smyrna.  Turnbull was of the opinion that the nine-year obligation would begin, not with the colonists first day of work at New Smyrna, but the day after all of the plantations debts were paid.  Turnbull and his partners had expended over 40,000 pounds in the nine years of their New Smyrna experiment.¹⁶  This equates to over six million dollars in today’s U. S. currency.¹⁷  Though there had been some good years of indigo production at New Smyrna, the amount of profits never equaled the amount of debt.

By the fall of 1777, the Minorcans had had enough.  Several of their members slipped away to St. Augustine to petition the governor of East Florida , Patrick Tonyn, for release from their contracts of indenture.  

Patrick Tonyn- Florida Archives

Tonyn and Turnbull had been at odds since Tonyn had arrived in Florida.  Tonyn was happy to hamper Turnbull’s efforts by releasing the Minorcans from any further legal obligation.  He welcomed the Minorcans to St. Augustine, and allowed them to settle in the northern section of the city near the city gates.¹⁸ 

So began a new life for the Minorcans.  The north part of the city was sparsely settled until the arrival of the Minorcans.  Housing was scarce and the settlers were once again forced into crude shelters that left them exposed to the elements.  Death rates for the first months in St. Augustine were quite steep.  However, once left to their own devices, the Minorcans began to recover.  Documentary information for the Minorcan’s early years in St. Augustine is not abundant but their numbers did begin to rebound after the first year in St. Augustine.

Griffin’s Mullet on the Beach-used with the author’s permission

In 1784, Spain once again claimed Florida.  Britain’s loss to the new United States and its ally, Spain in the American Revolutionary War secured East Florida as a Spanish crown colony once again. ¹⁹   Unlike the empty colony they left behind, Spanish officials returned to an East Florida populated by not only the Minorcans, but also a large number of loyalists who had taken refuge in St. Augustine during the Revolutionary War.²⁰  Spain required all those who remained in the colony to swear an oath of loyalty to the Spanish crown and they also required a conversion to the Roman Catholic religion. The population would once again drop dramatically as many loyalists, unwilling to comply with the Spanish demands, moved out of East Florida.           

The Minorcans living north of the plaza in St. Augustine had been given some small plots outside the city gates on the north side of the city.  Here they returned to the Mediterranean style arrangement: going out to their vegetable plots during the day and returning to town in the evening.²¹  This cultural pattern had been severely disrupted by the arrangement of the colony at New Smyrna, which had spread the settler’s dwellings out along a seven-mile stretch of Turnbull’s land holdings at New Smyrna.  Now the Minorcans could once again live in close proximity to the complex and interwoven kinship groups created by marriages and godparent obligations. 

The Minorcan’s arrival in St. Augustine in the fall of 1777 came at an auspicious time.  The American Revolutionary War to the north was beginning to bring an influx of loyalists into British East Florida that would swell the numbers of people living in St. Augustine.  The arrival time of the Minorcans before the population of St. Augustine and East Florida occurred allowed them to take up residence in abandoned houses and lots in the north part of the city, and to also make use of garden plots to the north of the city walls. 

The Minorcan Quarter

Some of these Minorcans set up small farms on the land of the previous British governor of St. Augustine, James Grant, who had returned to England in May of 1771.²²

Governor Grant also had a plantation along the North River.  This was a large and prosperous plantation where Grant had grown indigo and rice as well as other crops.  Grant had begun this plantation endeavor by clearing land at the south end of the peninsula between the Guana and the North Rivers.  As the indigo depleted the soil he had moved northward clearing more land over the years.  The northern half of the plantation was crisscrossed with drainage and irrigation ditches.  This drainage system allowed the cultivation of rice.²³ 

Some of the earliest Minorcans to move out to the North Beach area rented small farms at the south end of Grant’s Villa.  The most common rental agreement was the use of the property in exchange for one-tenth of the produce produced on the farm during the year.²⁴  In this way the Minorcans, who had arrived in St. Augustine penniless and in rags, finally became landholders.  A number of Minorcan families began to acquire property along the North Beach. 

A look at the Spanish Census records as well as the later U. S. Township maps for the area list several dozen families along the North River and along the strip of land between the Guana River and the Atlantic Ocean.  Names such as Arnau, Parades, Andreu, Segui, Leonardi, Peso de Burgo, Beria, Cocifacio, Sabate, Capo, de Medici, and Solano are just some of the familiar Minorcan names that appear in the records.²⁵  By utilizing these maps and other historical documents including Spanish and U.S. census records, church records, Spanish Land Grant records and the East Florida Claims, a picture of daily life for these beachside Minorcans begins to emerge.

While census and townships records are helpful aids, the Patriot War Claims contained in the East Florida Claims make these people and their endeavors come to life.  The conflict that was the Florida Patriot War was fought with words, weapons, and fire from 1811 until 1813.  During this time, soldiers and patriots from the United States attempted to take St. Augustine in a failed attempt to add the lands of Spanish East Florida to the new and growing country to the north.  The farms and plantations to the north of St. Augustine were especially hard hit by this war.  Bands of marauding patriots looted and burned many of the homesteads in the North Beach area.²⁶  The subsequent claims filed by the farmers are a treasure trove of information on the lifestyles of these settlers.   

When the U.S. troops appeared outside St. Augustine the alarm sounded and everyone outside the city dropped whatever they were doing, fled from their plantations, and sought protection within the city gates. 

City gates with fort in background

Due to the limited amount of time required to reach the gates safely, people left with only the personal belongings they could carry with them.  This mass exodus into the city left the plantations and all their personal property vulnerable to the marauding U.S. Troops.  When the fourteen-month exile ended, in 1812, the Minorcans and others who had sought safety within the city walls returned to their plantations in the North Beach area to find massive destruction.  This in turn left many people wondering who would compensate them for their devastating losses.  Thus, many who had suffered the loss of property filed a Patriot War Claim, allowed under article 9, of the Adams-Onís Treaty.  The article states that Spanish citizens could file for damages suffered by the U.S. Troops and after investigation would receive compensation for said damages.²⁷  The treaty did not come into effect until February 22, 1821, therefore many of the original claimants had died and their heirs filed on their behalf.  As a result, the resolution of the claims in many cases became quite long and complicated.  Compensation was delayed in some cases for many years.

The claims filed consisted of all damage done to each individual property.  The damage included but was not limited to loss of crops, livestock, dwellings, barns, and other out buildings.  The claims also included crops lost that were in storage, in the fields and the crops they were unable to plant in 1813 due to the inability to tend their fields before the U.S. troops left.  The loss of slave labor and the monies generated by leasing slaves was also included in many Patriot War Claims.  

The Patriot War Claims are unique documents that allow a look into the daily lives and activities of the Minorcans living in the North Beach area.  Combining these documents with other primary source materials opens a window of understanding into their lives.  By isolating individuals through multiple documents a personal snapshot emerges that allows one an understanding of these people that is lost if reliance is only on personal manuscripts that were never written.

Juan Segui was one of the new residents at North Beach.  Juan was born July 13, 1754 in Ciudadella, Minorca.  He married Aqueda Enrique who was born in Mercadal, Minorca.  They were married in New Smyrna, July 13, 1777, approximately one month before the Minorcans’ mass departure from the Turnbull plantation.  They had five children Benedictus, Matheus, Magdalena, Juan and Pedro, all of them born in St. Augustine.²⁸  According to the 1783 Spanish Census report, Juan, his wife, and one son lived in a cottage behind the chapel of the Virgin of La Leche before moving to the North Beach area.²⁹

On September 5, 1807, Juan Segui purchased 107 acres on the North River from Lozaro Ortega.  Ortega had originally been granted the land under Spanish Royal Title.  

Juan Segui Claim-Spanish Land Grants-Florida Archives

The plantation, known as San Ignacio, was located approximately nine miles north of St. Augustine.  His property was situated between Guana Creek and the North River .  Antonio Andreu owned the land directly to the north.³⁰                                                           

Florida Archives

The Patriot War Claim filed by Peter Segui, administrator for the deceased Juan Segui, demonstrates the typical type of personal property that was left behind and ultimately destroyed by the U.S. troops.  The claim describes in detail every item of value that the Segui family lost during the Revolution.  The list begins with the crops in the ground and in the storehouses lost to the enemy which included; several acres of corn, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, onions, beans, peas, melons, a variety of other garden vegetables, and thirty bushels of corn in the corn house.  Also stolen or destroyed were thirty-two fowls, one breeding sow, and assorted farming implements.³¹  

The other major losses described in the claim were the actual buildings on the plantation that were destroyed by fires set by the Patriots.  Segui lived in a small clapboard house with a palmetto roof with a single apartment.  The kitchen was small and built of the same material as the house.  There was also a small abode for the slave on the property made of the same materials as the house and the small kitchen.  The remaining building was the corn house, which was constructed of poles and had a palmetto roof. All buildings were valued at $142.00³²

In the original claim, Peter Segui’s request for the loss of property was valued at $1118.00.³³   Yet, there was some discrepancy as to whether the damage was actually caused by the U.S. troops, or by the Spanish themselves.  One witness in the claim stated seeing the Patriots on Segui’s plantation and noted that the fires were visible from the city and distinctly seen from the fort.

Looking towards the North River from the top of the fort

A decision written by Levi Woodbury to the Honorable Robert Raymond Reid, Judge of the Superior Court, St. Augustine, East Florida states:

The evidence in this case is vague and unsatisfactory.  It appears from the testimony of Estivan Arnow, one of the witnesses, that an expedition was sent by the Spanish Governor of St. Augustine to this plantation or its neighborhood to capture an individual named Solana, whose property was confiscated and that Segui was taken by this party and carried into St. Augustine.  The presumption, therefore, arises that the claimant’s losses may have been occasioned by this party.  To remove this impression, there should be more conclusive evidence adduced if practicable.  It is therefore recommitted for this purpose and also to ascertain if the Patriots were actually known to have been at this place, and, if so, were such as cooperated with the United States Troops.³⁴

Ultimately the claim was settled in December 1838 for $554.00, approximately half of the original value of the claim.³⁵

Another interesting claim was filed by another Minorcan, Maria Peso de Burgos Papy, daughter and administrator of the estate of José Peso de Burgos, who died in St. Augustine in 1819.  José was born in Corsica about 1759.  He married Maria MacBride, on April 14, 1789.³⁶ José had three daughters, Geronima, Maria and Magdalena and one son, Pedro.³⁷ 

On May 7, 1777, a Peso de Burgo family member, Babpina, was one of the seventeen deponents to give testimony to Governor Tonyn as to the treatment of the colonists at New Smyrna.  He stated that he had agreed to an indenture of six years with Turnbull.  He had also been promised “good victuals and five pounds sterling per year which he hath never received.”  He further stated after having served his time he was afraid to petition for discharge for “fear of being flogged and put in irons.”  He further declared that he had received no clothes for two and a half years.³⁸

José had a substantial plantation before the Revolution.  His plantation was located 11 miles from St. Augustine, situated on the Guana Creek, which was connected to the North River on the west side of his land.  The plantation was roughly 40 to 50 acres in total. They had just completed building a new home on the plantation.  It was a story and a half high, approximately forty-five feet long and twenty feet wide.  It was framed of hard pine and weather boarded.  The upper story was sealed; the lower story was unfinished, but the lumber was on site to complete the house.  The windows did not have sashes, having yet to be finished.  The upper story contained two apartments and the lower floor had two as well.  There was a chimney of stone half completed.  The doors and window shutters were installed and the floor had been laid.  There were other buildings on the property as well.  A small house was there, approximately twenty-five feet long and fifteen feet wide with a piazza and a piazza room in front, and a story and a half high.  Two rooms were on the half story and two rooms were contained in the body of the house.  The house had a chimney of stone and brick completely finished.  The half story was not sealed but did have a finished floor of pine.  The lower story was of terrace and was plastered as well.  The windows were sashed and glazed. 

The window shutters and doors were complete and made of plain, yet substantial wood.  The house was painted red with green and red doors and windows.  The other dwelling was a small house.  It was roughly twelve feet long and nine feet wide.  The poultry house was framed and built of boards, twelve feet in length and nine feet wide and was covered with clapboards.  The other structure on the property was a shed to protect barrels and other farm implements.  The total value of the dwellings and other out buildings was approximately $2,689.00.³⁹ 

The claim also included the other property owned by José that was lost to the Patriots during the Revolution.  The claim included three hundred or more head of poultry, ten horses, six hogs, four sows with piglets, four bales of Sea Island cotton, forty barrels of turpentine, and two thousand bushels of lime.  Also listed were the cotton crop of 1812, one flat and several other small boats, an orange grove and its crop, roughly two hundred and fifty bushes of corn as well as the crop in the field.  The document also lists the cost of feeding and clothing the Negro slaves during the time they were inside the city gates as well as the loss of his personal cook who was taken by the U.S. Troops.⁴⁰  

The claim filed by Maria Papy was valued at $10,997.00 for the loss of all personal property during the Revolution.  Witnesses claimed that the Patriots and U.S. Troops were seen on his land and all evidence indicates that they were responsible for burning the dwellings and the orange groves and for either consuming or killing the livestock left behind.  The decision written by Levi Woodbury and submitted to Judge Robert Raymond Reid substantiated all the losses incurred by José.  The decision states that the claim was satisfactorily supported by witness testimony with the exception of $216.00, the wages of the cook that was taken but ultimately returned to José, thus reducing the final payment of the claim from $10,997 to $5921.00.⁴¹

Another Minorcan living on the west side of the North River approximately 12 miles from the city was Bartolome Leonardi. His father, Roque Leonardi, was the original owner of the plantation. 

Roque Leonardi Claim-Spanish Land Grants-Florida Archives

His mother, Roque’s second wife, was Aqueda Coll, from Mahon, Minorca, and they produced eleven children, two born at New Smyrna and the other nine children born in St. Augustine.  Bartolome was one of the children born in St. Augustine in 1782.  After Roque drowned in 1801, Bartolome inherited the family plantation.⁴² 

His plantation totaled about eight acres of land, seven acres planted with corn and one acre with potatoes.  Also in his possession before the Revolution were one horse, a mare and two colts.   Leonardi planted peas among his corn and a variety of garden vegetables.  He had a large number of poultry and three hogs.  On the property was a plank house roughly twenty-three feet long and eighteen feet wide with a clapboard roof and terrace floor.  There was a corn house built of logs one hundred and fifty feet long by sixteen feet wide.  The value of the dwellings was around $70.00.⁴³ 

The plantation also had a number of orange, peach, plum, figs and other fruit trees as well as a vineyard consisting of one hundred or more vines.  The vines were large and flourishing.  The grapes of these vines were intended for wine production, which Leonardi would eventually bottle and sell at his wine shop in St. Augustine.⁴⁴ Not only did Leonardi have a dwelling on the plantation, but he also owned and inhabited a house and grounds fronting the plaza near the quarters.  In addition, according to the 1783 Spanish Census, he owned 2.5 acres of land with a house, five slaves, horses, cattle and three cows.⁴⁵

After the U.S. Troops left St. Augustine, Bartolome filed a claim for the devastating losses incurred at his plantation.  Everything was in complete ruins.  Everything was gone, chopped down or burned into submission.  Several witnesses claimed that the destruction had to occur at the hands of the U.S. Troops due to the utter desolation left behind.⁴⁶  Although the decision written by Levi Woodbury claimed that no witness could swear to have seen any U.S. Troops or Patriots on the Leonardi plantation, and that it was a case of mere abandonment, restitution was still awarded.⁴⁷  The original claim estimated the damages at $1,855.00, yet once again the claim was settled for about fifty percent of the original request.  On June 18, 1838, Bartolome Leonardi’s claim was settled for $575.⁴⁸

The Minorcans continued to live on their farms in the North Beach area into the early 20th century.  Their subsistence style of farming and fishing allowed them to support their families.  Excess produce or seafood was rowed or sailed to the market in St. Augustine.  These records show the variety of agricultural products produced by these settlers, but fail to reveal the full scope of Minorcan subsistence.  The resourcefulness of these hardy and determined people allowed them to extract food from a number of sources.  The beach offered fish, turtle eggs and meat: especially mullet from the beach.  Even in the toughest of times a Minorcan, with his hand woven cast net, could expect a good catch when the cry of ‘mullet on the beach’ went out. 

Stuart Pacetti, a direct descendent of the New Smyrna colonists throws one of the traditional hand-knit mullet nets he makes.

The North River was a frontier supermarket offering fish, shrimp, oysters, clams, and waterfowl.  The woods offered deer, feral hogs, turkeys, berries and edible and medicinal plants.  A family who was willing to work hard and be flexible could make a good living in this area.

The late 1800s brought a great change as northern visitors discovered the mild and pleasant winters of Northeast Florida.  Henry Flagler, the railroad tycoon, built magnificent hotels in St. Augustine to house and entertain wealthy visitors to the Ancient City.

Henry Flagler’s Ponce de Leon Hotel in 1895

These hotels, with their lavish dining rooms, must have supplied a ready market for the winter vegetables grown on the farms along North Beach.  A day or two in the woods would net enough meat for the table of a Minorcan family and perhaps enough left over to sell at the kitchen door of one of the hotels in town.  A quick trip to the shop of a cousin in town to purchase perhaps a tin of coffee, a few yards of cloth, and a man could sail the afternoon sea breeze and the incoming tide and be back on his farm before nightfall. 

 
Gaff rigged sloop on the North River-1895

Visitors from the north would write in their journals that the locals appeared content to ‘just hunt and fish.’⁴⁹  The tourist glance obviously missed the multifaceted subsistence pattern of a group of people who had survived the nightmare of New Smyrna and had built a strong and lasting life along the beach.

The same land that these hardy Minorcans developed still sits between the North River and the Atlantic Ocean.  A few Minorcan families still make their homes there.  The farms are all gone now.  The beach has returned to a single crop much like the days of James Grant’s indigo plantation.  The single crop grown at the beach now is condos.

The Usina Bridge connects St. Augustine with North Beach today. It was named after Minorcan descendents Francis and Mary Usina

¹ Robert L. Gold, Borderland Empires in Transition; The Triple-Nation Transfer of Florida, (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), 188.

² Henry F. Dobyns, Their Number Become Thinned: Native American Population Dynamics in Eastern North America, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983), 41.

³ Jerald T. Milanich, Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe, (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1995), 132.

⁴ Eugene Lyon, “ Spain ’s Sixteenth-Century North American Settlement Attempts: A Neglected Aspect,” Florida Historical Quarterly 59 (1981), 275.

⁵ Jerald T. Milanich, Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe, (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1995), 132.

⁶ Noble D. Cook and W. George Lovell, Secret Judgments of God: Old World Diseases in Colonial Spanish America ( Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992(, 240.

⁷ John and William Bartram, “New World in a State of Nature: Travels on the St. John’s River 1765-1766,” href="http://www.unf.edu/floridahistoryonline/Projects/Proj-B-P.html" (accessed November 25, 2006).

⁸ Charles L. Mowat, “The First Campaign of Publicity for Florida,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 30 (1943), 362.

⁹ Daniel L. Schafer, “Governor James Grant’s Villa: A British East Florida Indigo Plantation,” El Escribano 37 2000, 7.

¹⁰ Daniel L. Schafer, “ St. Augustine’s British Years, 1763-1784,” El Escribano 38 2001, 36.

¹¹ Kenneth H. Beeson, Fromajadas and Indigo: The Minorcan Colony in Florida, ( Charleston: The History Press, 2006), 31-32.

¹² Patricia C. Griffin, Mullet on the Beach: The Minorcans of Florida, 1768-1788, (Jacksonville: University of North Florida Press, 1991), 21.

¹³ Griffin, Mullet, 39.

¹⁴ Ibid, 86.

¹⁵ Ibid, 36.

¹⁶ Beeson, Fromajadas, 78.

¹⁷  Currency conversion over time is always a difficult issue.  The formula used here for conversion is multiplying the amount by a factor of 100 and then converting that amount from British pounds to American dollars using current exchange rates.  This formula is taken from Elizabeth Furdell’s James Welwood: Physician to the Glorious Revolution, Pennsylvania: Combined Publishing, 1998.  For currency exchanges involving Spanish and pre-revolution American colonial currency see page 280 of Daniel L. Schafer’s “ St. Augustine’s British Years: 1763-1784, El Escribano 38 2001.

¹⁸ Griffin, Mullet, 106.

¹⁹Abel Poitrineau, “Demography and the Political Destiny of Florida During the Second Spanish Period,” Florida Historical Quarterly 66 1988, 421.

²⁰ Linda K. Williams, “East Florida as a Loyalist Haven,’ Florida Historical Quarterly 59 1976, 446.

²¹ Griffin, Mullet, 151.

²² Daniel L. Schafer, ‘Governor James Grant’s Villa: A British East Florida Indigo Plantation,” El Escribano 37 2000, 22.

²³ Ibid, 16.

²⁴ Spanish Census Records, 1783 and 1784, transcription by Ruth Cook, copy on file at University of North Florida, History Department.

²⁵ U.S. Township Maps, 1834, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, http://data.labins.org/2003/surveydata/landrecords/glo/index.cfm.

²⁶ James Cusick, The Other War of 1812 ( Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 2003), 7.

²⁷ Adam-Onis Treaty, 1821, National Archives and Records Administration, reel # 110, 1813-18.

²⁸ Leonard McCown genealogy collection at http://www.mccown.org/ accessed 10 December 2006.  McCown has spent a decade researching and compiling records of Minorcan ancestry.  His online database is by far the most complete listing of Minorcan genealogy available on the internet.

²⁹ 1783 Spanish Census.

³⁰ Spanish Land Grants, listed under John Segui, confirmed claim, claim 107a American State Papers, Vol 5 pp 377, 381, report 1 no 45, 1828

³¹ East Florida Claims, NARA, file of John Segui, no. 75880

³² Ibid

³³East Florida Claims, NARA, file of John Segui, no. 75880

³⁴Jose Peso de Burgo File, Patriot War Papers and Claims, 1812-1846, Manuscript Collection 31, St. Augustine Historical Society Research Library, St. Augustine, FL. 

³⁵ John Segui Claim, East Florida Claims, NARA, file of John Segui, no. 75880.

³⁶ McCown.

³⁷ Claim of José Peso de Burgo, East Florida Claims, NARA, , no. 75878

³⁸ “Smyrnea: Dr. Andrew Turnbull and the Mediterranean Settlement at New Smyrna and Edgewater, Florida, 1766-1777,” http://www.unf.edu/floridahistoryonline/Turnbull/letters/8.htm (accessed 14 December 2006).

³⁹ Claim of Jose Peso de Burgo, Patriot War Claims, MC 31, SAHSRL, 75878.

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ Claim of Peso de Burgo, Patriot War Papers and Claims, 1812-1846, Manuscript Collection 31, SAHSRL.

⁴² McCown.

⁴³ Claim of Bartolome Leonardi, East Florida Claims, NARA, no.74768.

⁴⁴ 1783 Spanish Census.

⁴⁵ Ibid

⁴⁶ Claim of Bartolome Leonardi, East Florida Claims, NARA, , no.74768

⁴⁷ Patriot War Papers and Claims, 1812-1846, Manuscript Collection 31, SAHSRL

⁴⁸ EFC, no.74768, SAHSRL.

⁴⁹ R. K. Sewall, Sketches of St. Augustine: With a View of its History and Advantages as a Resort for Invalids, (New York: Putnam, 1848), 40.  Sewall’s Sketches of St. Augustine is somewhat infamous for its negative remarks regarding the Minorcan community.  Extant copies of this book with pages 40-41 intact are rare.  The offending pages were excised by some unknown Minorcan while the books were warehoused in St. Augustine.  Sewall fled the city soon after publication of the book, allegedly in fear for his life.  This fear obviously did not extend to his wife and children as they continued to live in St. Augustine for some months after the incident.  For a different perspective on the Minorcan community prior to the Civil War see William Cullen Bryant’s Letter’s of a Traveller; or Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America, (New York: G. P. Putnam and Son, 1870), 106-120.