Florida Historical Quarterly Volume 41 Number 3 Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol 41, Article 1 Issue 3 1962 Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 41, Issue 3 Florida Historical Society [email protected] Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/fhq University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Full Issue is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Florida Historical Quarterly by an authorized editor of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Recommended Citation Society, Florida Historical (1962) "Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 41, Issue 3," Florida Historical Quarterly: Vol. 41 : No. 3 , Article 1. Available at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/fhq/vol41/iss3/1 Society: Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 41, Issue 3 J ANUARY 1963 Published by THE FLORIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY Published by STARS, 1962 1 Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 41 [1962], No. 3, Art. 1 THE FLORIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF FLORIDA, 1856 THE FLORIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, successor, 1902 THE FLORIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, incorporated, 1905 by GEORGE R. FAIRBANKS, FRANCIS P. FLEMING, GEORGE W. WILSON, CHARLES M. COOPER, JAMES P. TALIAFERRO, V. W. SHIELDS, WILLIAM A. BLOUNT, GEORGE P. RANEY. OFFICERS FRANK B. SESSA, president JAMES R. KNOTT, 1st vice president LUCIUS S. RUDER, 2nd vice president THELMA PETERS, recording secretary MARGARET CHAPMAN, executive secretary D IRECTORS ADAM G. ADAMS JAMES H. LIPSCOMB III CHARLES W. ARNADE PAUL L. MADDOCK THOMAS O. BROWN MARY MCRAE DUNCAN L. CLINCH REMBERT W. PATRICK WILLIAM M. GOZA BENJAMIN F. ROGERS W ALTER H ELLIER WESLEY STOUT ERNEST H. JERNIGAN JUSTIN WEDDELL GILBERT L. LYCAN, ex-officio HERBERT J. DOHERTY, JR., ex-officio (and the officers) (All correspondence relating to Society business, memberships, and Quarterly subscriptions should be addressed to Miss Margaret Chapman, University of South Florida Library, Tampa, Florida. Articles for publi- cation, books for review, and editorial correspondence should be addressed to the Quarterly, Box 3645, University Station, Gainesville, Florida.) * * * To explore the field of Florida history, to seek and gather up the ancient chronicles in which its annals are contained, to retain the legendary lore which may yet throw light upon the past, to trace its monuments and remains, to elucidate what has been written to disprove the false and support the true, to do justice to the men who have figured in the olden time, to keep and preserve all that is known in trust for those who are to come after us, to increase and extend the knowledge of our history, and to teach our children that first essential knowledge, the history of our State, are objects well worthy of our best efforts. To accomplish these ends, we have organized the Historical Society of Florida. GEORGE R. FAIRBANKS Saint Augustine, April, 1857. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/fhq/vol41/iss3/1 2 Society: Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 41, Issue 3 E FLORIDA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY VOLUME XLI JANUARY, 1963 NUMBER 3 CONTENTS JAMES ORMOND, MERCHANT AND SOLDIER . Alice Strickland . 209 AN EVALUATION OF THE FREEDMEN’S BUREAU IN FLORIDA . Joe M. Richardson . 223 WRECKERS AND WRECKING ON THE FLORIDA REEF, 1829-1832 . E. A. Hammond . 239 LA FLORIDE: 1565 . James W. Covington ..... 274 BOOK REVIEWS ................................................................................ 282 NEWS AND NOTES . 304 EDITOR’S CORNER “TALES OF OLD FLORIDA,” . BY Jane D. Brush . 309 CONTRIBUTORS . 324 COPYRIGHT 1963 by the Florida Historical Society. Reentered as second class matter July 2, 1956, at the post office at Jacksonville, Florida, under the Act of August 24, 1912. O FFICE OF P UBLICATION , C ONVENTION P RESS , J ACKSONVILLE , F LORIDA i Published by STARS, 1962 3 Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 41 [1962], No. 3, Art. 1 BOOK REVIEWS Carter, Territorial Papers of the United States, Vol. XXVI, by Herbert J. Doherty, Jr. ...................... 282 Gipson, The Triumph of Empire, by Cecil Johnson ............... 283 Horsman, Causes of the War of 1812, by Glenn Tucker ............. 285 Prucha, American Indian Policy in the Formative Years, by John K. Mahon ........................................ 287 Duckett, John Forsyth: Political Tactician, by Joseph H. Parks ............................................... 2 8 8 Graebner, Politics and the Crisis of 1860, by James I. Robertson, Jr. 288 Wilson, Patriotic Gore, by Frank G. Slaughter . 290 Eller, Civil War Naval Chronology, by William M. Goza ............ 291 Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro, by Charlton W. Tebeau .......... 292 Hirshon, Farewell to the Bloody Shirt, by Vincent de Santis ........................................... 293 Wynes, Race Relations in Virginia, 1870-1902, by Emily Stevens Maclachlan ............................... 295 Wertenbaker, Norfolk, by William J. Schellings .............. 297 Williams, Romance and Realism in Southern Politics, by Hugh Douglas Price ....................................... 298 Dumond, A Bibliography of Antislavery in America, by Arthur W. Thompson ................................................... 299 Ziegler and Wolfe, Citrus Growing in Florida, by John T. Lesley ............................................... 300 ii https://stars.library.ucf.edu/fhq/vol41/iss3/1 4 Society: Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 41, Issue 3 Published by STARS, 1962 5 Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 41 [1962], No. 3, Art. 1 https://stars.library.ucf.edu/fhq/vol41/iss3/1 6 Society: Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 41, Issue 3 JAMES ORMOND, MERCHANT AND SOLDIER by ALICE STRICKLAND HE FIRST MEMBER of the Ormond family to come to Florida was a Scotchman, James Ormond I, who owned and com- manded an armed brig, the Somerset, which sailed in the services of the famous trading firm of Panton and Leslie. In the 1700’s James Ormond sailed the Somerset in the pirate-infested waters of the West Indies and between Savannah and present day Apala- chicola. Later in life Ormond gave up seafaring and settled down on a cotton plantation on the island of Exuma in the West Indies. The invitation from the Spanish government for settlers to come to Florida, and the offer of large land grants induced James Or- mond to give up his plantation on Exuma and move to Florida. His first plantation was near New Smyrna and other families from the Bahamas, including a General Williams, also had plantations in that vicinity. A runaway negro slave from the Williams planta- tion shot and killed James Ormond as he was walking with his son Emanuel. The runaway negro was eventually captured and shot, and his “corpse cremated.” 1 Ormond’s widow, Russell Ormond, and son Emanuel, return- ed to their native Scotland to live with another son, James Or- mond II. This James Ormond had been born during one of his father’s voyages, had been left in Scotland, and had never seen his father. He was a junior partner in a firm which was engaged in the grain trade in the Baltic, but at some time in the 1820’s this firm failed. The loss of his business brought ruin to James Ormond II and he was forced to flee Scotland in order to escape a debtors’ prison. His mother and brother Emanuel joined him in the flight from Scotland to Florida and they settled on the Damietta plantation near the Tomoka River which James Ormond The portrait on the left is Captain James Ormond I. It is reproduced from an oil painting in the Ormond Beach Women’s Club. 1. Most of the material for this article was taken from “Reminiscences of the Life of James Ormond of Atlanta, Georgia,” an unpublished manuscript in the Anderson Memorial Library, Ormond Beach, Florida, and “Reminiscences of James Ormond Concerning the Early Days of the Halifax Country,” a brochure published by the Ormond Village Improvement Association, 1941. [ 209 ] Published by STARS, 1962 7 Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 41 [1962], No. 3, Art. 1 210 FLORIDA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY I had left to them. 2 This property, consisting of “2,000 acres in Mosquitoes,” had belonged to Colonel James Moncrief in British times, was one of the best known plantations, and had a large number of slaves. 3 When James Ormond II left Scotland his wife, the former Isabella Christie, and their four children, Agnes, Russell, Helen, and James Ormond III had been left behind. In 1824 James Ormond sent his brother Emanuel back to Scotland to bring his family to Damietta. Blonde, beautiful, talented Isabella with her “rose and lily complexion” had become ill with “brain fever” after her husband left Scotland, and the doctors had shaved off her beautiful hair and placed a “cap of ice or snow on her head” in an effort to reduce the fever. 4 This illness, according to her son, left her “demented and she never recovered her reason entirely. She was worse on full moons and better at other times (less violent).” 5 It took the little family and their nurse twenty-five days to cross over from Scotland to Charleston, and from Charleston they sailed in a schooner for St. Augustine. It must have been a tragic reunion for James Ormond II when he discovered the mental condition of his wife, but for his young son, James Or- mond III, the newness and strangeness of Florida was to make a lasting impression. The eight-year-old James was completely absorbed in the new sights, sounds, and smells of this fascinating wilderness that had become his home. Almost seventy years later these first vivid impressions were still clear in his mind when he wrote: “I first saw the beautiful river (either the Halifax or Tomoka) when I was a wee bit laddie, only eight years old, and I well remember how very strange, and how very different every- thing looked to what it did in my native land, Auld Scotia. The sun was brighter, the sky more brilliant and clearer. The food of all kinds was different, no grass, no hills or mountains, no soil but sand. Indian corn as we called it in Scotland I had only seen as a curious seed in my aunt’s collection of curiosities.