Growth of Pensacola—Panton, Leslie & Co.—A King and the Beaver—Governor Chester’s Palace and Chariot—The White House of the British, and Casa Blanca of the Spanish—General Gage—Commerce—Earthquake.

There is evidence of great improvement in the town within a few years from Governor Chester’s advent; a progress which was accelerated as the revolution in the Northern Colonies advanced. That great movement, ever widening its area, extended at last from the Gulf to Canada, leaving no repose or peace for those who, living within it, were resolute to remain loyal to their king.

Some entered the royal military service; multitudes left America, and others, to nurse their loyalty in quietude, removed to Florida. Though most of that emigration went to East Florida, yet West Florida, and especially Pensacola, received a large share. St. Augustine, however, was the tory paradise of the revolutionary era. She can, without question, supplement the glory of her antiquity with the boast of having once seen her streets lighted up by the blazing effigies of John Adams and John Hancock.^[15]

The most important commercial acquisition of Pensacola by that tory immigration was William Panton, the senior of the firm of Panton, Leslie & Co., a Scotch house of great wealth and extensive commercial relations. They had an establishment in London, with branches in the West India Islands. During the English dominion in Florida they established themselves in St. Augustine; later, during Governor Chester’s administration, at Pensacola, and afterwards, at Mobile. Other merchants also came to Pensacola about the same time, attracted principally by the heavy disbursements of the government. But these expenditures were not the attraction to the Scotchmen. Their object was to grasp the Indian trade of West Florida. A building which they erected with a wharf in front of it is still standing, or at least, its solid brick walls are now those of the hospital of Dr. James Herron, whose dwelling house stands on the site of the Council Chamber of Fort George.

In that building was carried on a business which grew steadily from year to year during the British dominion, and afterwards attained great magnitude under Spanish rule, as we shall have occasion to notice in a future page. In building up that business, Panton had a most able and influential coadjutor in General Alexander McGillivray, whom we lately saw in the Council Chamber of Fort George. Through him their business comprehended not only West Florida, but extended to and even beyond the Tennessee river. In perfect security, their long lines of pack horses went to and fro in that great stretch of country, carrying all the supplies the Indians needed, and bringing back skins, peltry, bees-wax, honey, dried venison, and whatever else their savage customers would provide for barter. Furs were a large item of that traffic, for the beaver in those days abounded throughout West Florida, and was found even in the vicinity of Pensacola.

One of their ponds, still existing on Carpenter’s Creek, four miles from the town, is suggestive of an instructive comparison between the fruits of the life-work of its humble constructors, and those of the twenty years rule, of a mighty monarch. Of the British dominion of his Majesty George III., in this part of Florida, the millions of treasure expended, and the thousands of lives sacrificed to establish and maintain it, there exists no memorial, or result, except a fast disappearing bank of sand on the site of Fort George. From that barren outcome of such a vast expenditure of human life and money, we turn with a blush for the vanity and folly of man, to contemplate that little pool fringed with fairy candles,^[16] where the water lilies bloom, and the trout and perch flash in the sunlight, as the memento of a perished race, whose humble labors have furnished pastime and food to successive generations of anglers.

An unsuccessful effort has been made to obtain reliable information as to the number and description of the houses Pensacola contained in its most thriving days during Governor Chester’s administration. But the only account we have, is that of William Bertram, who though reputed an eminent botanist is hardly reliable, for he describes Governor Chester’s residence as a “stone palace, with a cupola built by the Spaniards;”^[17] and yet, according to the description of the town in Captain Will’s report, at the close of Spanish rule, it consisted of “forty huts and barracks, surrounded by a stockade;” and he witnessed at that time, the exodus of the entire Spanish population. Besides, persons whose memories went back within thirty years of Governor Chester’s alleged palatial residence, neither saw, nor even heard, of the ruins of such a structure.

Upon the same authority rests the statement, that the Governor had a farm to which he took morning rides in “his chariot.”^[18] But a traveler whose fancy was equal to the transformation of a hut into a palace, may have transformed his excellency’s modest equipage into a more courtly vehicle.

It is probable, however, that although Governor Chester was not the occupant of a stone palace with a cupola, he lived in a sightly and comfortable dwelling built of brick or wood, or perhaps of both. One such dwelling of his time, that of William Panton, was familiar, forty years ago to the elders of this generation. It stood near the business house of Panton, Leslie & Co. Taking its style and solidity as a guide, there existed several houses in the town within the last half century that could be identified as belonging to Governor Chester’s day.

One of them was the scene of a tragedy; a husband cutting a wife’s throat fatally, his own more cautiously, or perhaps her cervical vertibrae had taken off the edge of the razor, for he survived. Thereafter, none would inhabit it, and consequently it rapidly went to ruin. It stood on the north side of Government street, a block and a half from Palafox. A jury acquitted him. Why? No one could conjecture, unless because she was his wife, and therefore his chattel, like the cow or sheep of a butcher.

In Governor Chester’s time there existed a large double story suburban residence, which was a distinguished feature in the landscape looking southwesterly from Fort George, or from any part of the Bay. It stood on the bluff between the now Perdido R. R. and Bayou Chico. Painted white, it became the “white house” of the English, and “Casa Blanca” of the Spanish dominion.

It was the home of a family of wealth and social standing, composed of three—husband, wife, and daughter, the latter a child. Gardens belonging to it covered much of the area of that meadow-like district already mentioned. That home was to be the scene of a drama in three acts; the death of a child, the death of a husband, and a struggle of strong, martyrlike womanhood in the toils of temptation, tried to the lowest depth of her being, but coming forth triumphant.

In examining the calendar of the Haldimand collection by Mr. Douglas Brymner, Archivest of the Dominion of Canada, we are impressed with the great and varied responsibility, labor, and care, attending the office of commander in chief of the American colonies, especially after Great Britain’s, Canada, Florida, and Louisiana acquisitions. His administration involved not merely general superintendence of the military department, but likewise embraced the minutest details requiring expenditures of public money. We accordingly find General Gage, during Governor Chester’s administration, dictating letters in respect to carpenter’s wages^[19] in Pensacola. Again we find him busy over a controversy which had sprung up there in respect to the employment of a Frenchman, Pierre Rochon,^[20] to do carpenter’s work, and furnish shingles, to the exclusion of Englishmen. Upon economical grounds his excellency decided in favor of Rochon. Pierre was evidently an active and enterprising man. Before he came to Pensacola to secure for himself all the public carpentering and shingle business there, he had enjoyed the like monopoly at Mobile.

Again we find the General engaged with a small matter at Red Cliff.^[21] Lieutenant Cambell, of the engineer department, had furnished some carpenters who were employed there with candles and firewood, doubtless because they could not otherwise be procured by the men. That act of kindness brought the benevolent lieutenant the following scorching reproof: “I am sorry to acquaint you that his excellency, General Gage, is greatly displeased at your giving of the carpenters candles and firewood; and he desires to know by what authority you assumed to give those allowances, or by what order they were given? For his excellency declares, that a shilling shall not be paid on that account.” New York, 16 Feb. 1773. S. Sowers, Captain of Engineers.

Even the quality of bricks used on the public works at Pensacola was a matter of interest to the commander in chief. In 1771, a brick manufactured by the British, and one by the Spaniards, nearly a century before, as General Haldimand says, were sent to headquarters at New York, for the judgment of his excellency as to their comparative merits.

These letters impress us the more with the cares of General Gage, when we reflect they were written at the time of the troublesome tea business at rebellious Boston; and when the flowing tide of the revolution, as may be discerned from almost every page of the calendar, was daily rising, and threatening to sweep away the supports of British authority in the colonies.

In a former page mention is made of a Philadelphia lady, whose name occurs in the Pensacola correspondence of an earlier day. It is but fair, therefore, that we should not leave unnoticed a New York lady who is mentioned in letters of Governor Chester’s time; the more so, because she seems to have been one of those thrifty housewives, who do not entirely depend upon the tin can, and green glass jar of the shop to supply their families with preserved fruits and vegetables; besides, there can be brought in with her extracts from letters, exemplary of the courtly style, with which in Governor Chester’s day, a gentleman returned, and a lady received his thanks for a small courtesy.^[22]

General Haldimand, at Pensacola, writes Captain S. Sowers, the husband of the lady, who is in New York:

“I most respectfully ask Mrs. Sowers, to permit me, through you, to tender to her my most grateful thanks for the three jars of pickels.”

The Captain replies: “Mrs. Sowers, with pleasure, accepts your thanks for the pickels, and when ye season comes for curing of them, she will send you another collection which she hopes will be acceptable.”

In this stirring, short-hand, type-writing age, the form of a like exchange of courtesies would probably be: “Pickels received. Thanks.”

Though there was no lack of lawyers and doctors, who it is said, lived in fine style, there was a sad want of clergymen or preachers in the province. There was but one of whom we have any account up to 1779, and he was stationed at Mobile. Stuernagel, the Waldeck Field Preacher, on his arrival in Pensacola, in that year, christened a boy whose parents had been waiting eight years to make him the subject of the holy office. He also baptized men who had been watching from their boyhood for an opportunity to make their baptismal vows. Nor can there be found a reference to church or chapel during the English dominion.^[23]

The most prosperous and promising days Pensacola ever saw, except those since the close of the civil war, were from 1772 to 1781. As the American revolution advanced, additions were made to the numbers, intelligence and wealth of its population, owing to causes already mentioned. It was the capital of a province rich in its forests, its agricultural and other resources. Its Bay was prized as the peerless harbor of the Gulf, which it was proposed by the British government to make a great naval station, a beginning in that direction having been made by selecting a site for a navy yard adjoining the town to the westward. Its commerce was daily on the increase; not only in consequence of the extension of Panton, Leslie & Co.’s trade with the Indians, but other enterprising merchants who had been added to the population, were engaged in an export trade, comprising pine timber and lumber, cedar, salt beef, raw hides, cattle, tallow, pitch, bear’s oil, staves, shingles, honey, beeswax, salt fish, myrtle wax^[24], deer skins, dried venison, furs and peltry. This trade, and the £200,000 annually extended by the British government, as well as the disbursements of the shipping, constituted the sources of the prosperity of the town.

This period, besides being a season of growth and prosperity to Pensacola, as well as the rest of the Province, was one of repose, undisturbed by the march of armies, battles, and the other cruel shocks of war that afflicted the northern colonies. But it was not to remain to the end a quiet spectator of the drama enacting on the continent. It, too, had an appointment with fate. Though not even a faint flash of the northern storm was seen on its horizon, yet there had been one for long brooding for it in the southwest.

The earthquake, too, that visited it on the night of February 6, 1780,^[25] was but a presage of that which on May 8, 1781, was to shake it to its center; and prove the signal of an exodus of the English almost as complete as was that of the Spanish population in 1763.