J. T. Van Campen

St. Augustine was at last a part of the United States. Most of its Spanish residents bid the narrow streets farewell. The Minorcans, now firmly domiciled here, made up the major portion of the town’s population. Many by this time had risen to positions of influence in its affairs.

Officials of the new regime found St. Augustine a rather dilapidated old town, devoid of progress and ambition. Due to the poverty that had marked the closing years of the second Spanish period, public and private buildings were badly run down, some almost in ruins. Soon after the change of flags, speculators and promoters flocked to the city, and were quartered in some of the deserted houses. In the fall of 1821 an epidemic of dreaded yellow fever carried off many of the newcomers. A new cemetery was opened up near the City Gates to receive the victims, a few of whom may have been of Huguenot descent. It became known as the Huguenot, or Protestant cemetery.

In spite of its unkempt condition, St. Augustine possessed a certain mellow charm. At times the scent of orange blossoms hung heavy in the air and could be noticed by passing ships at sea. Along the narrow streets latticed gates led into cool courtyards and secluded gardens. There was no industry or commerce to disturb the serenity of the scene. St. Augustine’s shallow inlet, which preserved it from its enemies, also prevented it from becoming a place of bustling trade.

Visitors Begin to Arrive

Although difficult to reach by sea because of its treacherous bar, and by land over a road that was little more than a trail, a few adventurous travelers began to visit this quaint old city, which the United States had recently acquired. They were chiefly invalids and tubercular victims, for whom the mild winter climate was considered beneficial. Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was later to become the noted New England poet and philosopher, visited St. Augustine in 1827, at the age of 23, suffering from what he termed a “stricture of the chest.” During his ten weeks’ stay he recorded in his journal and letters his impressions of the city as he then saw it.

“St. Augustine is the oldest town of Europeans in North America,” he observed, “full of ruins, chimneyless houses, lazy people, horse-keeping intolerably dear, and bad milk from swamp grass, as all their hay comes from the North.”

Napoleon Achille Murat, one of St. Augustine’s early visitors.

But it restored his health and later he was inspired to comment: “The air and sky of this ancient, fortified, dilapidated sandbank of a town are delicious. It is a queer place. There are eleven or twelve hundred people and these are invalids, public officials, and Spaniards, or rather Minorcans.”

While here Emerson met another distinguished visitor of the time, Prince Napoleon Achille Murat, son of the King of Naples, and nephew of the great Napoleon. Murat came to Florida in 1824, purchased an estate south of St. Augustine, and was a frequent visitor to the city, living here for a time during the Seminole War. He later settled on a plantation near Tallahassee. St. Augustine began to prosper in a small way from its increasing number of visitors and winter residents.

The Freeze of 1835

The growing of oranges was an important industry in St. Augustine and its vicinity at this time. Many of its residents derived their principal income from the sale of the golden fruit, which was shipped by sloop to northern cities. The town was described by visitors as being virtually bowered in groves, and on each side of the Plaza were two rows of handsome orange trees, planted by Governor Grant during the English occupation.

During February of 1835 a biting cold of extended duration swept down out of the northwest. At nearby Jacksonville the thermometer dropped to eight degrees, and ice formed on the St. Johns River. St. Augustine’s beautiful orange groves were killed to the ground, sweeping away the main source of livelihood for many of its people. Only the bare trunks and branches remained, making the city look bleak and desolate.

Some of the trees sprouted from their damaged roots; others were planted, and in a few decades St. Augustine’s orange groves were again the subject of admiring comment on the part of visitors. But during the winter of 1894-95 another freeze destroyed them. The citrus industry moved farther south and was not again revived on a commercial scale in St. Augustine or its immediate vicinity.

Osceola, colorful leader of the Seminoles. From a portrait by George Catlin, painted during the chief’s imprisonment at Fort Moultrie, S. C.

The Seminole War

The Seminole War followed closely on the heels of the disastrous freeze of 1835. Shortly after New Year’s day of 1836 St. Augustine learned of the massacre of Major Dade and his command of 110 men. They were ambushed by Seminoles while enroute from Fort Brooke (Tampa) to Fort King (Ocala). On the same day, December 28, 1835, General Wiley Thompson, the Indian agent at Fort King, and another officer were killed. Soon plantations in the vicinity of St. Augustine were attacked and burned, and refugees arrived with gory tales of Indian atrocities. The February 27, 1836, issue of Niles Register carried the following item:

“The whole country south of St. Augustine has been laid waste during the past week, and not a building of any value left standing. There is not a single house remaining between this city and Cape Florida, a distance of 250 miles.”

When this occurred the original Indian tribes of Florida encountered by the early Spaniards had completely disappeared. Some had been wiped out during the long period of border conflict with the English. Others had succumbed to epidemics of disease. By the early 1800’s the principal Indians found in Florida were called Seminoles, and were a combination of several tribal remnants from Georgia and Alabama.

Under United States rule the Seminoles were first restricted to a more limited area by the Treaty of Moultrie in 1823. But as settlers continued to pour in, a demand arose for their complete removal from Florida to reservations in the West, which the younger Seminole leaders were determined to resist. The effort to force their removal to western reservations resulted in conflict that dragged on for seven years, from 1835 to 1842.

Officer after officer was sent to Florida to take command of operations against the Indians, including General Winfield Scott of subsequent Mexican War fame; and General Zachary Taylor, later to become President of the United States. But roving bands of Seminoles continued to strike and vanish into the dense swamps and little known woodlands.

In 1837 two prominent Seminole leaders, Osceola and Coacoochee, with seventy of their warriors, were seized by General Hernandez under orders from General Jesup at a point a few miles south of St. Augustine. The Indians had come in under a white flag for a parley with United States officers. The captives were brought to St. Augustine and imprisoned in the Castillo, from which Coacoochee and twenty companions managed to escape. Osceola died soon after transfer to Fort Moultrie, Charleston.

During May of 1840 a party of actors enroute from Picolata to St. Augustine were attacked by Indians, and near the same point two St. Augustine residents were murdered.

“It is useless to complain,” stated a news item of the day. “The fact remains that we have been pent up in this little city for the last four years and a half by a few worthless outlaws. Our friends and neighbors, one after another, have been hastened to the mansions of the dead, and he who is foolhardy enough to venture beyond the gates may be the next victim.”

But St. Augustine as usual managed to be gay. A young lieutenant, William Tecumseh Sherman of later Civil War fame, was stationed at Picolata and frequently rode into St. Augustine for diversion. In one of his letters home he wrote under date of February 15, 1842:

“The inhabitants (of St. Augustine) still preserve the old ceremonies and festivities of old Spain. Balls, masquerades, etc., are celebrated during the gay season of the Carnival (just over), and the most religious observance of Lent in public, whilst in private they can not refrain from dancing and merry making. Indeed, I never saw anything like it—dancing, dancing, and nothing but dancing, but not such as you see in the North. Such ease and grace as I never before beheld.”

Dr. Motte, a young military surgeon, made a similar observation in his journal: “The St. Augustine ladies certainly danced more gracefully, and kept better time, than any of my fair country women I ever saw in northern cities. It was really delightful to see the beautiful Minorcan girls moving through their intricate waltz to the music of violin and tambourine.”

Finally most of the Seminoles were killed or surrendered for transfer to reservations in the West. A few were allowed to remain deep in the Everglades. There were probably less than 5,000 Indians in Florida at the outset, yet the war involved the enlistment of 20,000 men, an estimated cost of thirty million dollars, and 1,500 United States casualties.

St. Augustine somewhat reluctantly saw the war come to an end. The presence of officers and troops had enlivened its social life, and poured government funds into the city.

A Peaceful Interlude

The end of the Seminole War made Florida safe again for travelers. William Cullen Bryant, the popular poet and author, paid St. Augustine a visit in 1843 and wrote articles about the city that were widely read. He noted that gabled roofs were rapidly replacing the flat roofs of the first Spanish period, and that some “modern” wooden buildings had been constructed. More than half the inhabitants still spoke the Minorcan, or Mahonese language.

Another visitor of 1843 was Henry B. Whipple, later a prominent Episcopal Bishop. He found masquerading still a popular pastime in the city. Masking began during the Christmas holidays and continued until Lent. Small groups of people dressed in various disguises spent the evenings going from house to house, acting out their parts and furnishing their own music with guitar and violin. Whipple wrote that St. Augustine was still full of old ruins, and that “he liked to wander through the narrow streets and gaze upon these monitors of time, which whispered that the hands that built them were long since mouldering in the grave.”

St. George Street as it looked in the 1870’s.

In 1845 Florida became the twenty-seventh state admitted to the Union. Tallahassee had been selected as its territorial capital in 1824, being a compromise between St. Augustine and Pensacola, both of which were difficult to reach from most of the state.

General Edmund Kirby Smith.

During the Civil War

St. Augustine lived on, enlivened during the winter by an influx of visitors, and drowsing undisturbed through the long summers until aroused by another conflict—the Civil War.

Slaves played a relatively minor role in its economy, as compared with the rest of the state. Although a few plantations in the immediate vicinity employed slave labor, they were chiefly used as domestic servants and were generally well treated. There was considerable Union sentiment in the city due to its number of northern-born residents.

Edmund Kirby-Smith, who had played in St. Augustine’s streets as a boy, became one of the leading Confederate Generals. His father came to the city in 1822 as Judge of the Superior Court and died here in 1846. His mother continued to occupy their home on what is now Aviles Street. During January of 1861 she wrote her son: “Our hearts are steeped in sadness and anxiety. Forebodings of evil yet to come depress us. We are threatened with the greatest calamity that can befall a nation. Civil war stares us in the face.”

In the same letter she tells of how the news of Florida’s secession from the Union was received at St. Augustine: “Our state has seceded, and it was announced here by the firing of cannon and musketry, and much shooting. A large flag made by the ladies is waving on the square. By order of the Governor of this State, the Fort, Barracks, and Federal property were taken possession of. Cannon are mounted on the ramparts of the Fort to defend it if any attempt should be made to retake it.”

Soon the shouting ceased and war became a stark reality with its heartaches, poverty, and privation. Many young men from St. Augustine went into the Confederate armies. The majority of its northern-born residents returned to the North to live for the duration of the war. The flow of visitors to the city ceased.

During March of 1862 a Union blockading squadron appeared off the inlet, and an officer came ashore with a white flag to demand the city’s surrender. During the night its small Confederate garrison withdrew. Next morning St. Augustine was occupied by Union forces and held by them during the remainder of the conflict. Before the Federal troops landed the women of the city cut down the flag pole in the Plaza so that the Union standard could not be raised where their Confederate banner had waved.

Tourist Industry Resumed

When the Civil War came to an end in 1865, St. Augustine was three centuries old. As the effects of the war and the reconstruction period wore away, the entertainment of winter residents and visitors was resumed. The city was still exceptionally quaint and foreign in appearance.

A visitor of 1869 found the Florida House, one of the city’s three small hotels, crowded with guests and wrote: “The number of strangers here greatly exceeded our expectations, and thronged in every street and public place. The fashionable belle of Newport and Saratoga, the pale, thoughtful clergyman of New England, were at all points encountered.”

The city badly needed better hotels and travel facilities. Visitors then had to come up the St. Johns River by steamer to Picolata, and from there a horse-drawn stage jolted them for eighteen miles over a miserable road to the San Sebastian River, where a flatboat ferried the carriage across the river to the city’s outskirts.

By 1871 travelers could go up the St. Johns River by steamer to Tocoi Landing, and there take a mule-drawn car over a crude railroad that ran fifteen miles east through the wilderness to St. Augustine. It was called the St. Johns Railway and a few years later installed two wood-burning locomotives.

Its Isolation Broken

The bonds of isolation and inaccessibility, which had retarded St. Augustine’s growth yet preserved its Old World character, were gradually being removed. Some signs of this awakening were apparent. “Hammers are ringing on the walls of a new hotel,” a visitor noted, “in which northern tourists are to be lodged, a splendid coquina wall, which might have stood for another century, having been torn down to make room for this ephemeral box.”

The same observer lamented that because of these changes the city was losing some of it former charm: “The romance of the place is gradually departing now. The merry processions of the Carnival, with mask, violin and guitar, are no longer kept up with the old taste; the rotund Padri, the delicate form of the Spanish lady, clad in mantilla and basquina are gone.”

In 1883 the Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Halifax River Railway was completed, linking the city with South Jacksonville. A mammoth four-story wooden hotel, the San Marco, arose on a site just west of the Castillo. The tide of tourists swelled. Souvenir shops, museums, and showplaces sprang up.

The Flagler Influence

Among St. Augustine’s many visitors during the winter of 1883-84 was Henry M. Flagler, one of the co-founders of the Standard Oil Company. Immensely wealthy, he came to rest but was impressed with St. Augustine’s charm and possibilities. Many well-to-do families were then wintering on the southern shores of France and Italy, a section known as the Riviera. Flagler believed they could be induced to come to Florida if proper facilities were provided for them. He decided to invest in the construction of luxurious hotels at St. Augustine that would make the Florida coast an “American Riviera.”

His first hotel, the Ponce de Leon was begun in 1885. Two others, the Alcazar and Casa Monica (later renamed Cordova), were soon underway nearby. These and other Flagler-financed structures were massively built of solid concrete in a style of architecture adapted from palaces in Spain.

The magnificent Ponce de Leon opened on January 10, 1888, the Alcazar and Cordova soon afterward. Wealth and fashion flocked to St. Augustine, which became termed the “Southern Newport.” Sailboats dotted the bay and fine carriages dashed about the streets.

When Flagler began the construction of his hotels, he also purchased the small railroads in the vicinity, improving their service and facilities as a means of making the area easier to reach. This marked the beginning of the Florida East Coast Railway, which he later extended down the coast, creating Palm Beach in 1894, and launching Miami upon its career of magic growth in 1896.