Topic: Origins - Early Versions
In 1865, Francis L’Engle purchased the land west of Jacksonville, Florida, that had been owned by Baptist preachers. [1] After the Civil War, he platted the LaVilla subdivision [2] where James Weldon Johnson was raised.
L’Engle was the son of Susan Philipa Fatio and John Nicole Claudius L’Engle. Her family was from Switzerland and had owned land in Florida under the Spanish. His was from France and had lived in Haiti.
Francis Philip Fatio was a Protestant [3] who had fought with the Swiss Guard against France in the War of Austrian Succession. After he married Marie Madeleine Crispell, he developed land near Nice, France. [4] In 1761, he moved to London [5] where his brothers were merchants. [6] His son, Francis Phillipe, Jr., was born that year. [7]
Britain took control of Florida in 1763 as part of the settlement of the Seven Year’s War. [8] Fatio and two partners invested in an indigo plantation in 1769. Two years later he moved to the Saint John’s river to manage New Castle plantation. [9]
Fatio and his partners were granted 10,000 acres for a new plantation in 1774 called New Switzerland. [10] He remained when the Spanish regained control of Florida in 1783. [11] The next year he bought out his partners. [12] By 1800, Fatio was growing cotton. [13]
His son, Francis, Jr., married in Greensboro, Georgia, in 1802, [14] and Susan was born in 1806 in Saint Augustine. [15]
The elder Fatio died in 1811. During the War of 1812, Americans attempted to take Florida. While there, they burned the Fatio plantation. [16] The family fled over the international boundary to Saint Mary’s, Georgia. By 1816, they had returned to Fernandina. They moved back to the Saint Johns in 1822, and had returned to New Switzerland by 1824. [17]
L’Engle’s grandmother, Suzanne Guilman, was born in Haiti in 1775. [18] She had married Jean L’Engle by 1796, when their daughter Marie Madeline was born. [19] Neither were part of the planter class. Suzanne’s father may have been an officer in the Free Masons, and Jean may have been a ship’s captain and Mason. [20]
The Haitian Revolution broke out in 1791 and the United Kingdom invaded in 1796. After losing to yellow fever, the British troops retreated in 1798. [21] L’Engle’s father, John, was born in South Carolina in 1801. [22]
John graduated from West Point in 1819, and immediately was sent to Fernandina’s Amelia Island. [23] He married Susan Fatio in Saint Johns County, Florida, in 1830. [24] Francis was born later that year. [25] John remained in the army until 1838, when he resigned and settled in Florida. [26]
Their son Francis married Charlotte Johnston Porcher in 1853. [27] A letter at the time said she was the daughter of Dr. Peter Porcher and that Francis worked on the Broad River and “mostly lives in Goldsboro, North Carolina.” [28] While the immigrant Porcher is well known, her tie to the family has not been documented further. [29]
Francis was twenty-three years old when he married. He entered business with his father, who traded in real estate, bonds, and notes. He also rented slaves. On the eve of the Civil War, he owned fifteen or sixteen. [30]
In 1855, Seymour Baldwin became president of a railroad, which had been chartered in 1851. He convinced Jacksonville it should issue bonds to pay for construction. [31] One can only guess John L’Engle subscribed. The next year, Francis had the contract to survey the route from Jacksonville to Alligator Town, as Lake City then was called. [32] That was the same year he bought land in LaVilla, which would have benefited from his proposed route.
John Pease Sanderson took over management of the railroad in 1857, [33] and the road commenced operations in March 1860. Florida seceded from the Union in January 1861. [34] Francis’ younger brothers joined the army, [35] while John oversaw the construction of fortifications. [36] John died in 1864. [37]
At the end of the war, Francis faced reduced wealth. His wife complained she had problems managing with just one servant. [38] He and his brother Edward became involved with a society promoting immigration to Brazil. He hoped “to buy just “two or three slaves in Brazil and hold them as long as the damnable abolition spirit of the age will permit me.” [39]
The L’Engles had not been planters before the war; much of their real estate was in or near Jacksonville. Laura Jarnagin thought the brothers were less interested in leaving the country, than in establishing a business to handle the trade of those who did emigrate. [40]
Railroads were the only assets remaining in the state, and they were in poor condition. Before the first Union invasion of Jacksonville in 1861, [41] Confederate leaders ordered men to remove iron spikes, bolts, and rails, and then burn the crossties. [42] When Lake City became the transshipment point for food going north, parts of the original road were rebuilt. [43] They were the object of the fourth invasion of Jacksonville in 1864. [44]
Getting railroads operational after the war was a high priority for everyone. During the period when the Union was running the Pensacola and Georgia railroad that ran west from Lake City, Francis had a contract to produce crossties. [45] One suspects the family may have done similar business before the war. Later, his brother, Edward, and Sanderson tried to subvert attempts by outsiders to strip the railroad of its assets. [46]
Francis’ land in LaVilla was in equally poor condition. In 1862, Confederate troops used the Baptist church as a training camp, that led to a skirmish with Union troops in March. [47]
The next year Thomas Wentworth Higginson arrived with Black troops to build defenses for Jacksonville. To get materials and clear an area from invasion, they cut down “a large forest of pine and oak trees” and “destroyed about fifty dwellings, mostly of an inferior class.” [48]
In 1866, before the Freedmen’s Bureau was operational, Francis platted the land and gave 99-year leases to forty-one Freedmen. The next year, his wife signed similar leases. [49] Patricia Drozd Kenney says his motives are hard to discern. She thought perhaps he was trying to make money on land whose value “was not expected to increase over time.” [50]
Francis remained a businessman. When sixteen Blacks didn’t pay, he voided their contracts in 1869. [51] That was the year Johnson’s father contracted for a lot with a “four- or five-room dwelling, old, rough, and unpainted, a typical ‘poor white’ house.” [52] It may have been one of the repossessed lots.
Johnson was born in 1871 and believed his father bought his land for cash in 1869. [53] In 1871, he built a new house in the center of the lot. [54]
The next year, 1872, Kenney says “L’Engle entered into a new leasing agreement with twenty-one blacks, five of whom were among the original lessees, stipulating an option to purchase the property in fee simple.” [55]
Francis, no doubt, sold land to Johnson’s father when he saw the money. However, it would be interesting to know when, or if, he ever learned Johnson’s grandmother had left Haiti in 1802, [56] one year after Francis’ was born to Haitian refugees.
End Notes
1. Patricia Drozd Kenney. “LaVilla, Florida, 1866-1887: Reconstruction Dreams and the Formation of a Black Community.” Masters thesis. The University of Florida, 1990. 13. This land is mentioned in the post for 12 March 2023.
2. Kenney. 12.
3. William Scott Willis. “A Swiss Settler in East Florida: A Letter of Francis Philip Fatio.” Florida Historical Quarterly 64(2):174-188:1985. 187.
4. Willis. 174.
5. Willis. 175.
6. “Francis Philip Fatio.” Wikipedia website, accessed 11 February 2023.
7. Tommaso Valarani. “Francis Phillipe Fatio, Jr.” Geni website; last updated 20 September 2022.
8. “East Florida.” Wikipedia website, accessed 10 March 2023.
9. “Francis Philip Fatio.”
10. “Francis Philip Fatio.”
11. “East Florida.”
12. “Francis Philip Fatio.”
13. Willis. 183, 184.
14. Louise Ingersoll Lanier. A Genealogy of the Family Who Came to Virginia and Their French Ancestors in London. Washington, DC: Goetz Printing Company, 1965; reprinted 1970. 262.
15. “Susan Philippa L'Engle (Fatio).” Geni website; last updated 20 September 2022.
16. Willis. 187.
17. Samantha Williams. “Spotlight on Louisa Fatio.” St Augustine website, 8 January 2012.
18. “Marie Madeleine L'Engle.” Ancestry website.
19. Johnny. “Marie Madeleine “Aunt Leonis” L'Engle.” Find a Grave website, 13 January 2017.
20. Oliver Gliech. “Settlers from St.-Domingue without Landed Property. Domingino website, 2021.
21. “Haitian Revolution.” Wikipedia website, accessed 10 March 2023.
22. “John Claudius L’Engle.” Ancestry website.
23. Bill Thayer. “Class of 1819.” University of Chicago website.
24. “John Claudius L’Engle (1800 - 1864).” Wiki Tree website; last updated 24 July 2014.
25. “Francis Fatio “Frank” L’Engle.” Geni website; last updated 12 June 2018.
26. Thayer.
27. Lanier. 262.
28. Quoted by Towles, p183 - Louise Palmer Towles. A World Turned Upside Down: The Palmers of South Santee, 1818–1881. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1996.
29. Isaac Porcher immigrated to the French Santee in 1695. [57]
30. “John Claudius L'Engle account book (1858-1864).” University of Michigan, Clement Library website.
31. Edward A. Mueller. “The Florida Atlantic and Gulf Central Railroad.” Railway and Locomotive Historical Society, Southeast Chapter, Newsletter, February 2012. Additional material from Don Hensley. 1.
32. Mueller. 2
33. Mueller. 2.
34. Mueller. 3.
35. William Johnson L’Engle was born in 1833. [58] He died “suddenly” in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1861 while awaiting his commission as a surgeon. [59] Edward McCrady L’Engle was born in 1834, [60] and served was a quartermaster. He was wounded in 1862. [61] John Claudius L’Engle was born in 1840, [62] and rose to be a surgeon. [63]
36. Thomas Frederick Davis. History of Early Jacksonville. Jacksonville, Florida: The H. and W. B. Drew Company, 1911. 156.
37. “John Claudius L’Engle (1800 - 1864).”
38. Jerrell H. Shofner. Nor Is It Over Yet. Gainesville: The University Presses of Florida, 1974. 21-22.
39. Laura Jarnagin. “The Edgefield Southern Immigration Society.” 37-45 in A Confluence of Transatlantic Networks. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2008.
40. Jarnagin.
41. The post for 19 February 2023 discusses Jacksonville in the Civil War.
42. Samuel Proctor. “Jacksonville During the Civil War.” The Florida Historical Quarterly 41(4):343–355:1962. 459. Proctor thought: “it is questionable that this order was fully carried out.”
43. Mueller. 4.
44. “Florida Central and Western Railroad.” Wikipedia website; accessed 11 March 2023.
45. Shofner. 30.
46. Paul E. Fenlon. “The Notorious Swepson-Littlefield Fraud: Railroad Financing in Florida (1868-1871).” The Florida Historical Quarterly 32(4):231-261:April 1954.
47. “Skirmish of the Brick Church.” Wikipedia website, accessed 11 February 2023.
48. Davis. 180.
49. Kenney. 12.
50. Kenney. 49.
51. Kenney. 49.
52. James Weldon Johnson. Along This Way. New York: The Viking Press, 1933. 129–604 in James Weldon Johnson, edited by William L. Andrews. New York: Library Classics of the United States, 2004. 139.
53. Johnson. 139.
54. Johnson. 140-141.
55. Kenney. 50.
56. Johnson. 135.
57. “Porcher Family Papers, 1740–1967.” South Carolina Historical Society website.
58. Cousins by the Dozens. “William Johnson L'Engle.” Find a Grave website, 14 August 2010.
59. “William Johnson L’Engle Book, 1843-1863.” University of North Carolina, Wilson Special Collections Library website.
60. Kristy Thomas. “Edward McCrady L’Engle.” Find a Grave website. 23 July 2002.
61. Genealogy Trails Team. “Civil War Infantry Rosters.” Genealogy Trails website. Its source is: Fred L. Robertson. Soldiers of Florida in the Seminole Indian--Civil and Spanish-American Wars. Tallahassee, Florida: Board of State Institutions, 1903.
62. “John Claudius L’Engle.” Ancestry website.
63. Genealogy Trails.
Sunday, March 19, 2023
LaVilla Landowners - Francis L’Engle
Sunday, March 12, 2023
LaVilla Landowners - Joseph Stevens Baker
Topic: Origins - Early Versions
James McDonald’s contract with the Georgia Baptist Association in 1832 required him to keep a daily journal and report quarterly. [1] He often sent reports to The Christian Index, [2] which was published by the association. By the time McDonald was in Jacksonville, the editor was Joseph Stevens Baker. [3]
Baker’s family had moved to Dorchester, South Carolina, from Massachusetts in 1695. [4] The Congregational church removed to Liberty County, Georgia, in 1752. [5] His grandfather was the first deacon. [6] After the American Revolution, it affiliated with the Presbyterians. [7]
Joseph was raised to be a Presbyterian minster like his four step-brothers. For that purpose he was sent to Hampden-Sidney College. [8] While the school supported religious freedom, [9] it also housed the Presbyterian’s Union Theological Seminary. [10]
When he returned to Liberty County, the local church asked him to prepare an answer to the question: was John’s baptism a Christian baptism? Two years later, Baker sold his property in Georgia and entered Columbian College to study medicine. [11] It had been founded in 1821 by Baptists. [12]
Baker practiced medicine for a few years, then became a Baptist missionary. It was after he moved to Georgia around 1840 that he took over the editorship of The Christian Index. It suffered the same financial problems that McDonald did when the Southern Baptist Convention replaced the Northern Baptist sponsors. [13] He resigned in 1848, and moved to Jacksonville, Florida. [14]
By then, Baker was fifty years old. His son, McRobert Baker, was a lawyer who also moved to Jacksonville. In 1850, he was the town’s mayor. [15] Joseph must have acted as a preacher at McDonald’s church when the evangelist was out proselytizing. [16] In 1851, McDonald sold his land to the Bakers [17] and moved to Atlanta. McRobert turned part of the acreage into a plantation, which he called LaVilla. [18]
The same year, 1850, McDonald’s deacon, Elias Jaudon bought a 550 acre plantation on the Saint John’s River. The previous owner, William McKay, had used 50 slaves to grow sea island cotton. By 1855, Jaudon had expanded Magnolia Plantation to 1,000 acres and added livestock and over crops. [19]
In 1853, McRobert Baker was a circuit court judge for Sumter County in the central part of the state, but still lived in Jacksonville. [20] The next year, Joseph returned to Georgia. [21] McRobert’s interests in central Florida increased, and, in 1856, he sold LaVilla to Francis L’Engle. [22]
Jaudon remained the deacon for Bethel Baptist church, and supported the minister who arrived in 1859, E. M. Dennison. [23] The church had grown to 290 members, of whom 250 were Black. [24] By 1861, Jaudon provided land for a new building closer to town. [25] The cemetery remained where it was.
In the meantime, in 1860, Jaudon, McRobert, and others incorporated La Villa Institute as a school to train teachers. [26]
During the Civil War, the new church building was used as a hospital for Union troops. [27] After the war, the white and Black members fought over its ownership. In 1868, a court gave whites the property, and ordered them to pay compensation to the newly freed Blacks. They used the funds to erect a wooden building at a new location, which they called Bethel Baptist. In response, the whites changed their name to Tabernacle Baptist. [28]
Jaudon’s role in this fight is unknown. By 1868, he was 62 years old. [29] His oldest son had died in Richmond in 1862, [30] and he apparently had left the area during the war. [31] Jaudon returned a less wealthy man; he had lost capital when slaves were emancipated. His land had not been tended during the war and probably had been used by Union troops in 1865.
During Reconstruction, Jacksonville attracted northerners, like Harriet Beecher Stowe, [32] who came for the winters or to make investments. [33] Capital moved more freely after Federal troops were withdraw in April of 1869. [34] In 1869, Jaudon sold 100 acres to Elwell Jamison, who in turn sold 35 acres to William James. They hoped to build a residential suburb. [35]
Jaudon died in 1872. [36]. McRobert had died in Richmond in 1864. [37] His father, Joseph, moved to Quitman, Georgia, after the war where he died in 1877. [38]
End Notes
1. James C. Bryant. “James McDonald: Missionary to East Florida.” Florida Baptist Historical Society meeting, Deland, Florida, 5 May 1984. Republished on the society’s website. 17, footnote 27. James McDonald is introduced in the post for 5 March 2023.
2. Bryant. 3.
3. “The Christian Index.” Georgia Historic Newspapers website.
4. Dorchester Antiquarian and Historical Society. History of the Town of Dorchester, Massachusetts. Boston, Massachusetts: Ebenezer Clapp, Jr., 1859. 261-262.
5. James Stacy. History of the Midway Congregational Church, Liberty County, Georgia. Newman, Georgia: S. W. Murray, 1899. 16-18.
6. Stacy. 33.
7. Stacy. 12.
8. William Cathcart. Baptist Encyclopedia. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Louis H. Everts, 1881. Biography of Joseph S. Baker reprinted by Greg Willis. “Joseph S. Baker, Queries Considered
Church Discipline, 1847.” 247-249 in Polity, edited by Mark Dever. Center for Church Reform, 2001. 248.
9. “Hampden–Sydney College.” Wikipedia website, accessed 4 March 2023.
10. “Union Presbyterian Seminary.” Wikipedia website, accessed 4 March 2023.
11. Cathcart. 248.
12. “Columbian College of Arts and Sciences.” Wikipedia website, accessed 4 March 2023.
13. The post for 5 March 2023 discusses the impact of the division of the Baptist church over slavery on the income of McDonald.
14. Cathcart. 248.
15. Richard Lee Cronin. “Cowboys & Lawyers: Part 2 - Joseph McRobert Baker.” Citrus Land Fl website, 9 January 2020.
16. Thomas Frederick Davis. History of Early Jacksonville. Jacksonville, Florida: The H. and W. B. Drew Company, 1911. 88.
17. T. Frederick Davis. History of Jacksonville, Florida and Vicinity, 1513 to 1924. Saint Augustine, Florida: The Record Company for The Florida Historical Society, 1925. 43-44.
18. Davis, 1925. 44.
19. Wayne W. Wood. The Living Heritage of Riverside & Avondale. Jacksonville, Florida: Riverside Avondale Preservation, Inc., 1994. 9.
20. Cronin.
21. Davis, 1911. 88.
22. Patricia Drozd Kenney. “LaVilla, Florida, 1866-1887: Reconstruction Dreams and the Formation of a Black Community.” Masters thesis. The University of Florida, 1990. 13.
23. Item on E. M. Dennison in “Biographies D.” Florida Baptist Historical Society website, 23 November 2020.
24. Davis, 1911. 88.
25. Davis, 1911. 87.
26. Chapter 1,166—[No. 73]. An act to incorporate La Villa Institute, near Jacksonville, Florida, 1860. 157-1958 in The Acts and Resolutions Adopted by the General Assembly of Florida at Its Tenth Session. Tallahassee, Florida: Dyke and Carlisle for Office of the Floridian and Journal, 1861.
27. Davis, 1911. 87.
28. “Our History.” The Bethel Experience website.
29. “Elias Gabriel Jaudon, Jr.” Geni website, last updated 8 February 2023.
30. Isaiah W. “Elias Gabriel Jaudon III (1836 - 1862).” Wiki Tree website, 10 November 2013; last updated 20 April 2018.
31. Steve W. has been researching the history of the 169th Civil War regiment from Troy, New York. The men were camped north of Jaudon’s plantation in 1865. On 9 February 2014, he reprinted reports by men in the regiment on the Metro Jacksonville website who described vacant houses in the area. In another post on 9 February 2014, Steve concluded: “I think a possible reason why the mansion, plantation, and nearby village were not identified by the men is because the place was deserted, per orders of the Confederate authorities. Nobody was left behind to say who owned the property.” [39]
32. Stowe paid her first visit to Jacksonville in 1867. For the next 17 years she and her husband spent their winters on 90 acres of land they purchased. She became a bit of a tourist attraction herself when steamboats went buy their property. [40] Her observations on a ring shout are quoted in the post for September 2018.
33. Davis, 1925. 149, 152.
34. Davis, 1911. 197.
35. Wood. 10.
36. “Elias Gabriel Jaudon, Jr.”
37. Cronin.
38. Stacy. 138. Quitman is located near the Florida boundary; the rivers flow into the Suwannee in central Florida. The surrounding Brooks County was a center of vigilante activity during reconstruction. [41]
39. Steve W. “Topic: Jacksonville Plantation Mystery (Civil War) -- SOLVED.” Metro Jacksonville website, 9 February 2014.
40. Jeff Klinkenberg. “Mrs. Stowe’s Florida.” Tampa Bay website, 19 November 2006; last updated 20 November 2006.
41. “Brooks County, Georgia.” Wikipedia website, accessed 8 March 2023.
Sunday, March 5, 2023
LaVilla Landowners - James McDonald
Topic: Origins - Early Versions
James Weldon Johnson grew up in LaVilla, a small community west of Jacksonville after the Civil War. [1] The area originally was an island, but the surrounding creeks later were filled. [2]
Like most land in the area, it began as a Spanish grant, and changed hands several times. In 1836, Adin Waterman acquired 250 acres on behalf of Lydia Pinkston, apparently as an investment. [3] It was described as pine and oak woods in 1863. [4] Waterman had a large timber grant from the Spanish with a sawmill near modern Chester. [5] He had been named as her trustee when she married Milo K. Pinkston. [6]
In that year, 1836, James McDonald was a Baptist evangelist in Darien, Georgia. [7] He had been born in Limerick, Ireland, where his father was hung as a rebel in 1805. The seventeen-year-old fled the country after “exacting revenge upon a fellow countryman for his false testimony against his relatives.” He had been raised as a Roman Catholic, and so headed for Cuba, where he was arrested by the Spanish as a spy for England. A friend from Norfolk saved him from execution. [8]
That was around 1815. Sometime after he moved to Georgia, where he became a Baptist. During his voyage to Cuba, the ship’s captain had tried to convince him “it was not a mortal sin to read the Scriptures.” [9]
McDonald was living near Macon in central Georgia when he was licensed to preach in 1830. Two years later, the Georgia Baptist Association made him a missionary to Burke County near Augusta on the South Carolina border. [10] By 1837, he was working for the Sunbury Baptist Association and living in Darien. [11] Most of his converts there were Black. [12]
He made an exploratory trip down the coast into north Florida in the spring of 1837 where he held a three-day protracted meeting. In the summer, he returned to the area where he held a five-day meeting in Jacksonville. After people asked him to return, [13] he moved to Fernandina’s Nassau County in 1838. At the time the county seat was at the Court House Ditch on Waterman’s Grant. [14]
McDonald’s primary purpose was holding meetings where he converted attendees. If enough affiliated, he found some local person to run the congregation, while he went elsewhere. He did return on a circuit a preach at each group. [15] By 1839, he had organized 17 congregations, and was ministering to seven. [16]
In 1840, Jacksonville built a small church, [17] and, in June, McDonald moved from Nassau County to the town. The building was dedicated in September, with a gallery for slaves. [18]
His life became for secure in 1941, when he was hired by the American Baptist Home Missionary Society. [19] That year, he notified The Christian Index:
“In this beautiful river [St. Johns] opposite our town, I have never baptized but one white person, whilst thirty blacks have gone down into the water, and been buried with Christ by baptism into death.” [20]
In January 1842, Waterman transferred 250 acres to McDonald. In March, a neighbor deeded the adjoining 250 acres to him. [21] In May, the 44-year-old man married. [22] In August, the Seminole War, which had been raging since 1835, formally ended. [23]
McDonald’s wife, Theresa Amanda Pendarvis, was the descendant of the Joseph Pendarvis, who had gone to South Carolina from Barbados in 1672. [24] His son, John, recognized and freed the children of his slave mistress, Parthena. [25] Theresa’s father George was born in Dorchester, South Carolina, and was in Jacksonville by 1830. [26] One of her sisters was named Lavilla. [27]
Nothing is known about the wives of George’s father, William, or his grandfather, also William, the son of John. [28] PBS thought some of John’s descendants could have married white women, and within a few generations been considered white. [29] One assumes Theresa was deemed white.
McDonald’s security ended in 1845, when the Baptists split over slavery. He lost his position with the northern society, and returned to itinerant evangelism for the Southern Baptist Convention. [30]
Meantime, the congregation in Jacksonville sold its church building and erected a brick building on McDonald’s land in 1846. His deacon, Elias Gabriel Jaudon, purchased some adjacent land for a cemetery. [31]
The Southern Baptist Convention finances deteriorated and, in 1849, the 51-year-old began planning a move to Atlanta. [32] After weathering the war there, McDonald moved to Rome, Georgia, in 1869, where he died in April. [33]
Jaudon must have maintained the church during the periods McDonald was working as an evangelist. His immigrant ancestor, Daniel Jaudon, moved from the Bay of Biscay to the French Santee. [34] Sometime his grandson, Samuel Elias Jaudon, moved to the Black Swamp area near Beaufort. [35] There the family affiliated with the local Baptist church. [36]
Our Jaudon managed a plantation on Hilton Head for Mary Sarah Stoney Barksdale. This was probably after her husband died in 1832 and before she remarried in 1836. [37] Her grandfather, John Stoney, had migrated from Tipperary, Ireland, in 1774. [38] His son, her father James, married the daughter of a Baptist convert who lived in the Black Swamp area. [39]
Jaudon was able to marry in 1835, and, by 1840, was a planter in Beaufort. [40] He was in Jacksonville by the time McDonald held his first meeting. He and his wife were charter members, and must have been two of the few whites in the congregation. When he died in 1872, [41] he owned the Magnolia Plantation. [42]
End Notes
1. Johnson is discussed in the post for 12 February 2023.
2. T. Frederick Davis. History of Jacksonville, Florida and Vicinity, 1513 to 1924. Saint Augustine, Florida: The Record Company for The Florida Historical Society, 1925. 151.
3. Davis, 1925. 43.
4. Thomas Frederick Davis. History of Early Jacksonville. Jacksonville, Florida: The H. and W. B. Drew Company, 1911. 180.
5. John Hendricks. “Pioneers Who Lived in the Yulee Area Two Hundred Years Ago.” The Yulee News, 16 June 2022. 2. Not much more is known about them except Waterman named one of his sons Lewis Pinkston. [43]
6. Davis, 1925. 43.
7. Darien, Georgia, is mentioned in the posts for 2 October 2018 on Lydia Parrish and for 3 February 2019 on Robert Winslow Gordon. Gordon collected four versions of “Come by Here” near Darien in 1926.
8. “James McDonald.” Florida Baptist History website.
9. James C. Bryant. “James McDonald: Missionary to East Florida.” Florida Baptist Historical Society meeting, Deland, Florida, 5 May 1984. Republished on the society’s website. 9.
10. Bryant. 9.
11. “James McDonald.”
12. Bryant. 3.
13. Bryant. 4.
14. Bryant. 5. “So stagnant did business become between 1835 and 1840 that the county seat was removed from Fernandina to a community known as Court House Ditch at Waterman’s Grant, between King’s Ferry and Fernandina.” [44]
15. Bryant. 6.
16. “James McDonald.”
17. Davis, 1911. 86.
18. Bryant. 11.
19. “James McDonald.”
20. The Christian Index, 24 September 1841. 618. Quoted by Bryant. 12.
21. Davis, 1925. 43. Davis used the word “deeded.” This suggests McDonald may not have bought the land, as it seems hard to believe he would have accumulated any capital.
22. Bryant 17, note 18.
23. “Seminole Wars.” Wikipedia website, accessed 26 February 2023.
24. Agnes Leland Baldwin. First Settlers of South Carolina, 1670–1700. Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1985. 182.
25. Jim Latrip. “Pendarvis.” Gen website. The connection was made by Theresa’s daughter who knew the names of George, William, and William. Randy Floyd found the reference in a letter of James Barnwell Hayward. Hayward then tied the elder William to Joseph. [45] Hayward elided John’s children in his published genealogy of the family. [46]
26. Fred. “wilfredleblanc -- Cavaliers and Pioneers.” Roots Web website, last updated 9 May 2019. Page for “George Pendarvis.” Dorchester is discussed in the post for 12 March 2023.
27. George Pendarvis. Will, 28 October 1870. Transcribed by Jane Gibbs and posted on US Gen Web website. He called Theresa Tracy.
28. Latrip.
29. “Pendarvis.” Public Broadcasting System website.
30. Bryant. 13.
31. Davis, 1911. 87.
32. Bryant. 14-15.
33. Bryant. 15.
34. Robert E. H. Peeples and Sarah Nichols Pickney. “Jaudon of Carolina.” Huguenot Society of South Carolina, Transactions (89):123-139:1984. 123. Daniel probably immigrated after 1700, because he is not in Agnes Leland Baldwin’s list of seventeenth century settlers. [47] His son was born in 1715 in the French Santee. [48] The French Santee is mentioned in the post for 20 November 2022 on Hezekiah Maham.
35. “Samuel Elias Jaudon.” Gini website, 5 September 2017.
36. Peeples and Pickney.
37. “Calibogia (Lawton) Plantation.” The Heritage Library Foundation, Hilton Head, South Carolina, website.
38. Mags Gaulden. “John Stoney (abt. 1748 - 1821.” Wiki Tree website, 18 March 2014; last updated 20 February 2023.
39. Robert E. H. Peeples. Tales of Ante Bellum Island Families. Hilton Head, South Carolina: 1970. Part reprinted in “Gaillard Genealogy,” Square Space website.
40. Peeples and Pickney.
41. “Elias Gabriel Jaudon, Jr.” Gini website, 8 February 2023.
42. Peeples and Pickney.
43. Sally Spencer (Watkins) Lanoza. “Adin Eleazer Waterman.” Geni website, 8 November 2022. She does not have surnames for Waterman’s wife or mother.
44. “American Proprietors, 1818-1860.” Amelia Island Genealogical Society website.
45. Cited by Fred. Page for “Sarah Rebecca McDonald.”
46. James Barnwell Hayward. Pendarvis-Bedon Family. Atlanta, Georgia: Foote and Davies, 1905. 45.
47. Baldwin.
48. Edward Leo Neary. “Elias Timothy Jaudon.” Geni website, 14 July 2021.
Sunday, February 19, 2023
Jacksonville in the Civil War
Topic: Origins - Early Versions
James Weldon Johnson described ring shouts he saw in Florida, in the 1880s. As mentioned in the post for 12 February 2022, he generalized his experience to fit everything he read later. That was necessary when he was discussing ring shouts in the introduction to his collection of spirituals.
However, it makes it difficult to know what existed in Fernandina and Jacksonville where he spent time as a boy. As should be clear to anyone who has read many of these posts, Black experiences differed by location. This would especially be true of Florida where Spain controlled territory until 1821. [1] Spain imported its slaves from central Africa, rather than west Africa, and many were baptized in the Roman Catholic church. [2]
Ring shouts may not have existed in northeastern Florida under the Spanish, but they were there, in a modified form, in 1871. When Harriet Beecher Stowe visited Jacksonville that year, she asked to “visit the meetings of the coloured people.” She found it “quite easy to do” because “there were two very large, active prayer meetings, the one Baptist and the other Methodist.” The Presbyterian [3] did not say which she visited. [4]
Whatever slave communities existed after the United States took control were disrupted by the Civil War. When hostilities broke out, local white men were sent to fight in Tennessee and Virginia. Union forces from Port Royal, South Carolina, [5] took advantage of the vacuum on 4 March 1862 and seized control of Fernandina’s Amelia Island. [6] The ocean port on the Saint Mary’s River, which flows south from Georgia, was used a “base of operations” until the end of war. [7]
Jacksonville was an inland port on the Saint John’s River, which flows north, parallel to the coast, for more than 300 miles. When Confederate sympathizers heard news of Fernandina, they fled west. [10]
The United States Navy made its first foray into Jacksonville on 11 March 1861. Confederate troops responded by burning all but one lumber mill. Then, a mob of “refugees from Fernandina and Jacksonville” set fire to more buildings. [11] The navy stayed until 1 April. [12] The loyal citizens, who had stayed in March, moved to Fernandina with the troops. [13]
The next expedition to Jacksonville occurred after Confederates built fortifications south of the city. The northern troops from Hilton Head found the town to be “nearly deserted” in October 1862. [14] One soldier noted “Grass and weeds grow rank and tall in the principal streets,” while “about the streets you see darkies, a few women, and a very few men.” [15] They took the slaves back with them. [16]
The Army hierarchy was hesitant to enlist Black soldiers. The first tentative experiments were at Port Royal, where Thomas Wentworth Higginson was named commander of the First South Carolina Infantry regiment in November 1862. [17] He noted that plantation owners had taken their house slaves with them when they fled Saint Helena Island. The field hands were “very black.” [18]
He also observed that the slaves who had come back from the October expedition to Jacksonville were “much lighter in complexion & decidedly more intelligent.” [19] When they proved they could master the drills, he sent recruiters to Fernandina and Saint Augustine in December 1862. They filled the regiment. [20]
The First South Carolina saw its first action in January 1863 when it sailed to Fernandina, then went up the Saint Mary’s river into Georgia. [21] Their success prompted James Montgomery to organize the Second South Carolina Infantry in Beaufort. [22]
Higginson’s troops were part of the longest occupation of Jacksonville, which began in March 1863. [23] The general overseeing operations from Hilton Head said “the negroes are collecting at Jacksonville from all quarters.” [24]
The troops spent time building forts. Their camp was in pine woods on an island west of Jacksonville near a brick church [25] that was built before the war by Baptists. [26] One imagines the men recreated the camp life they had had in South Carolina, which included frequent ring shouts. Although a contingent was left with the fortifications, most returned to South Carolina at the end of March to support “operations against Charleston and Savannah.” [27]
Once the First South Carolina Infantry had proven the value of Black troops, the Army organized more companies with recruits from the north. [28] When Union troops returned to Jacksonville in January 1864, seven of the fifteen infantry regiments were Black. They came from Massachusetts (2), North Carolina (1), and South Carolina (4). Higginson’s First South Carolina was not included, but Montgomery’s Second was. [29]
The main purpose was to support the siege of Charleston by stopping the flow of food from central Florida. [30] The army was routed when it moved inland. [31] They began leaving in April, and by May most of the “2,500 or 3,000 men” left were Blacks. [32] They left in July. [33] While Confederates rightly boasted of their victory, [34] commanders in Washington were moving troops away from peripheral areas to mount the attack in Virginia [35] that resulted in Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on 9 April 1865.
At war’s end, the Army’s primary purpose was protecting federal buildings and supplies. [36] The Seventh Infantry of the regular army was assigned to Florida in May. [37] Otherwise, the military began mustering out volunteer units. It began with the expensive calvary in May 1865. [38] The Black regiments from the North left Florida in December. [39]
Congress was slower to respond to post-War needs. It established the Freedmen’s Bureau on 3 March 1865, but no one was sent to Florida until 1 September. [40] By then the planters were reestablishing their power. The legislature they elected passed its first laws controlling African Americans in October. [41]
Former slaves flocked to cities where there still were soldiers. Thomas Osborn, head of the Bureau, discontinued their rations in Fernandina and Jacksonville in November. He wanted them working on plantations, not living off the government. [42] His requests for continued military support were ignored by the War Department. [43]
Finally, in February 1866, nearly a year after Appomattox, Osborn was able to open an office in Jacksonville. [44]
A year later, on 15 March 1867, Congress put the South under martial law. [45] There must have been some troops in Jacksonville, [46] because the Freedmen’s Bureau moved its headquarters there in May. [47]
By 1868, Southern states had Republican governments, and Congress was preparing to declare victory. Florida elected Harrison Reed in July, and on the Fourth John Sprague, head of the Bureau, surrendered his authority to Reed. Reed’s request to have troops remain was refused. [48]
In October 1868, the head of the Army’s Department of the East moved troops to protect rail centers. Jacksonville had two companies of the Seventh Infantry, with men going to Fernandina as needed. [49] This was the regular army, and they were mainly white men from outside the South.
In December, Congress reduced the Freedman’s Bureau’s functions to education, and eliminated most of its employees. In February, the Seventh Infantry was moved to Montana [50] to protect miners against attacks by Native Americans. [51] Before they left, the soldiers opened fire on rioting Blacks in Jacksonville. [52] Sprague complained anarchy had returned. [53]
Graphics
Karl Musser. “St. Marys River Watershed.” Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 15 March 2007.
End Notes
1. Bland and Associates, Inc. “Historic Context and References.” Appendix A to The Historic Properties Resurvey, City of Fernandina Beach, Nassau County, Florida. 2007. 12.
2. Hugh Thomas. The Slave Trade. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. 397-398.
Michael A. Gomez. Exchanging Our Country Marks. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998. 145-146.
3. John Gatta. “The Anglican Aspect of Harriet Beecher Stowe.” The New England Quarterly 73(3):412-433:September 2000. 312.
4. Stowe’s version is discussed in the post for 30 September 2018, and reprinted in “Ring Shouts: Historic Descriptions and Contemporary Examples.” The latter is available on the Academia.edu website.
5. Union activities in Port Royal Sound are discussed in the post for 20 September 2018.
6. Bland. 24.
7. Bland. 25.
8. United States Census. 1880. Population, By Race, Sex, and Nativity. Table V. “Population, by Race and by Counties: 1880, 1870, 1860.” 384.
9. Bland. 32.
10. Thomas Frederick Davis. History of Early Jacksonville. Jacksonville, Florida: The H. and W. B. Drew Company, 1911. 160.
11. Davis. 161.
12. Davis. 167.
13. Davis. 169.
14. Davis. 174.
15. Valentine Chamberlain. “A Letter of Captain V. Chamberlain, 7th Connecticut Volunteers.” Florida Historical Quarterly 15:93:October 1935. Quoted by Samuel Proctor. “Jacksonville During the Civil War.” Florida Historical Quarterly 41(4):343-355:1962. 351.
16. Davis. 174.
17. William A. Dobak. Freedom by the Sword: The U. S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867. Washington DC: United States Army, Center of Military History, 2011. 34-35.
18. Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Quoted by Dobak. 35. His source is: The Complete Civil War Journal and Selected Letters of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, edited by Christopher Looby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Higginson is discussed in the post for 20 September 2018, which is reprinted in “Ring Shouts: Historic Descriptions and Contemporary Examples.”
19. Higginson. Quoted by Dobak. 36. Dobak suggests Higginson’s views were typical of the time, when whites thought people who were more like them, i.e., with lighter skins, were better than those that differed. This became a self-fulfilling prophecy when lighter skinned slaves were given more access to whites, and thus were more socialized into western ways, than those who were left alone because they had darker skins.
20. Dobak. 36.
21. Dobak. 39.
22. Dobak. 40.
23. Davis. 175.
24. Davis. 176.
25. Proctor. 352.
26. “Bethel Church (Jacksonville, Florida).” Wikipedia website, accessed 11 February 2023.
27. Davis. 178.
28. Dobak. 55. Joshua Rieger noted that families from areas controlled by the Union continued to move into the center of the state, and that “ planters’ families from across the South migrated to Middle Florida and southwest Georgia to protect their property interests in slaves.” [54] This would have increased the productive capacity of the area.
29. Dobak. 64.
30. Dubak. 61.
31. Davis. 186.
32. Davis. 189.
33. Davis. 191.
34. During Reconstruction, Joe Richardson said: “Floridians boasted that theirs was the only capital east of the Mississippi not captured during the war. The only attempt to take Tallahassee had been defeated in large part by a group of young boys and old men in March 1865. Though the Confederacy had fallen, the people did not feel that Florida had been conquered and they were inclined to be defiant and belligerent.” [55]
35. Dubak. 70.
36. Dubak. 459.
37. Steve A. Hawks. “7th United States Infantry Regiment.” Civil War in the East website, 2023. He has one sentence on its role in Reconstruction.
38. Dubak. 471.
39. Dubak. 473.
40. Reginald Washington. “Introduction” to Records of the Assistant Commissioner and subordinate field offices for the state of Florida, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1872. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 2002. 1.
41. Joe M. Richardson. “Florida Black Codes.” Florida Historical Quarterly 47(4):365-379:1968.
42. Joshua Rieger. “Florida Freedmen’s Bureau during Reconstruction, 1865-1872.” University of Florida senior paper, 8 April 2015. 14.
43. Rieger. 9.
44. Rieger. 19.
45. Merlin G. Cox. “Military Reconstruction in Florida.” Florida Historical Quarterly 46(3):219-233:1967. 219.
46. Most of the published research on Reconstruction in Florida deals with politics and vigilante groups in the central part of state. Little exists on the military. Even descriptions of the Seventh Infantry are sparse for the period between Chancellorsville and Montana.
47. Washington. 1.
48. Ralph L. Peek. “Aftermath of Military Reconstruction, 1868-1869.” Florida Historical Quarterly 43(2):123-141:1964. 123.
49. Peek. 133. The commander was George Meade.
50. Peek. 138.
51. “Fort Shaw.” Wikipedia website, accessed 17 February 2023.
52. Peek. 138.
53. Peek. 140.
54. Rieger. His source was Jerrell H. Shofner. Nor Is It Over Yet. Gainesville, University Presses of Florida, 1974. 3.
55. Richardson. 371.
Sunday, February 12, 2023
James Weldon Johnson - Ring Shout
Topic: Origins - Ring Shout
I just came across another description of a ring shout. This one was written by James Weldon Johnson in 1925, and reprinted with slight changes in 1933.
The preface to his Book of Spirituals drew upon both his boyhood experiences in a suburb of Jacksonville, Florida, and later research. [1] The hard part is isolating those sections which represent his first-hand experience in the 1880s in LaVilla.
In his 1933 autobiography, [2] he mentioned three churches: one he attended that was a mile from his home, one a block away from his house, and the ones his father served as a minister.
As a child, he walked two blocks to his maternal grandmother’s house. In his autobiography he mentioned the perils a small boy faced who knew things more by hearsay, than experience. He said he did not cross the street until he passed the house of Mr. Cole who “everybody said was crazy.” [3]
Next he passed the houses of two older women. He remembered: “we were a little bit afraid of Aunt Venie, too; for she was said to have fits.” [4] He added she was “the champion of all ‘ring shouters’ at the “colored church on the corner.” [5]
He gives no evidence he ever went into the church. Saint Paul was an African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), founded in 1869. [6] The AME denomination was introduced into Jacksonville by Charles Pearce in 1866, with the permission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. [7]
Johnson’s grandmother joined Mount Zion Methodist Church. [8] It was organized by the Northern Methodist Episcopal Church in 1864. The Methodists had split over slavery in 1844. [9] The Southern branch was the one that proselytized slaves in South Carolina and Georgia, then shucked them off into the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in 1870. [10]
The northern church sent its first missionary south to Beaufort. South Carolina, in 1862. [11] During the war, the hierarchy began recruiting “disabled clergy” to send to the “warmer climates” to serve soldiers. Sanford Swain went to Jacksonville in 1864 [12] where he began with Black soldiers. [13] He organized Mount Zion in May of 1866 with both Black and white members. [14]
The difference between Saint Paul’s and Mount Zion was more than the difference between the Northern and Southern branches of the Methodist Church. Neither of Johnson’s parents were ever slaves on plantations in this country. His mother was raised in the Bahamas after England abolished slavery in 1833. [15] Both her father and her grandfather were white. [16]
His father, James Johnson, was born free in Richmond, Virginia, and ran away to New York City when he was a teen. [17] Less information exists about him. Johnson admits he never heard his father “speak of his childhood and what lay back and beyond it.” [18] He learned about his father’s religious conversion from his maternal grandmother. [19]
The elder Johnson was in his fifties when he became a Baptist minister. His first assignment was in Fernandina, an old settlement thirty miles northeast of Jacksonville. [20] Johnson remembered he and his brother went to visit him for “a few days at a time” [21] and that the church was “large.” [22]
By 1886, his father had found a pulpit in Jacksonville, and returned home. Johnson described it as “little” [23]. In fact, it had some prestige in LaVilla. Shiloh Baptist was built in 1875 by several prominent Blacks. [24] When Johnson’s father was an alderman in 1872, the tax collector for the town was Samuel Spearing. [25] Spearing supervised the Sunday School. [26]
Later, Johnson’s brother, Rosamond, was the choir director and organist for Bethel Baptist church. [27]
I am not sure that Johnson saw a ring shout when he was young, despite asserting in Spirituals that he remembered “remember seeing this dance many times when I was a boy.” [28] His description matches that of many others, and include details someone who did not participate would not notice.
In his autobiography, he says something different. There he wrote:
“When there was a ‘ring shout’ the weird music and the sound of thudding feet set the silences of the night vibrating and throbbing with a vague terror. Many a time I woke suddenly and lay a long while strangely troubled by these sounds.” [29]
What is true in this statement is his reaction to the music. It may not have been a “ring shout” but an emotional religious service. He may not have known the difference as a child. The only experience he mentions is a revival he attended when he was nine years old. He contrasted the “decorum of the regular Sunday services” with “overlaid emotions” that came “to the surface.” [30]
I trust him on music because it was something he was attuned to as a child. His mother had a good voice, [31] and both he and Rosamund took piano lessons. [32] Drums were the one instrument he mentioned several times. They may be all he recalled about his visit to the Bahamas with his mother when he was four years old. [33]
Later, he said he wanted to be a drummer in a brass band, and recalled the skills of Martin who “could beat a continuous and unbroken roll on his muffled drum all the way from the church to the cemetery.” He added “I lost my ambition to be a drummer, but drums have never lost their tumultuous effect on me.” [34]
The question is why would Johnson write beyond his experience. By 1925, he had become politically active with the NAACP, while his brother wrote popular music. Rosamund created the piano arrangements for the Spirituals collection. No doubt the two compared notes when James was writing the “Preface” where he took on the persona of an expert. He broaches the ring shouts at the end of his discussion to distinguish them from spirituals.
“This term ‘shout songs’ has no reference to the loud, jubilant Spirituals, which are often so termed by writers on Negro music; it has reference to the songs or, better, the chants used to accompany the ‘ring shout’.” [35]
This led to a description of ring shouts. In his autobiography, he introduces part of his 1925 descriptions to explain the word “shout” after he said Aunt Vinnie was a “shouter.” Again, he may have felt a need to define a term for his less-informed readers.
If Johnson did see ring shouts when he was young, it was in one of the churches were his father was pastor. Rosamond was more likely to have seen them after James left for school in Atlanta in 1887.
End Notes
1. James Weldon Johnson. The Book of American Negro Spirituals. New York: The Viking Press, 1925.
2. James Weldon Johnson. Along This Way. New York: The Viking Press, 1933. 129–604 in James Weldon Johnson, edited by William L. Andrews. New York: Library Classics of the United States, 2004.
3. Johnson, autobiography. 157.
4. Johnson, autobiography. 157.
5. Johnson, autobiography. 158.
6. Teresa Stepzinski. “St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church celebrates 150 years of serving God and Jacksonville.” Jacksonville website, 15 September 2019.
7. John R. Scott. “Introduction of African Methodism into East Florida.” 168-174 in Proceedings of the Quatro-Centennial Conference of the African M. E. Church of South Carolina, edited by Benjamin W. Arnett. Xenia, Ohio: Aldine Printing. House, 1890. 173.
8. Johnson, autobiography. 143. Mount Zion is now Ebenezer United Methodist Church.
9. John T. Foster Jr. and Sarah Whitmer Foster. “The Last Shall Be First: Northern Methodists in Reconstruction Jacksonville.” The Florida Historical Quarterly 70(3):265–280:January 1992. 269.
10. The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church is discussed in the post for 15 November 2020.
11. Foster. 269.
12. Foster. 268.
13. Foster. 270-271.
14. Foster. 272.
15. Johnson, autobiography. 135.
16. Johnson, autobiography. 136.
17. Johnson, autobiography. 137.
18. Johnson, autobiography. 137.
19. Johnson, autobiography. 163.
20. Johnson, autobiography. 190.
21. Johnson, autobiography. 193.
22. Johnson, autobiography. 190.
23. Johnson, autobiography. 198-199.
24. Patricia Drozd Kenney. “LaVilla, Florida, 1866-1887: Reconstruction Dreams and the Formation of a Black Community.” MA thesis. University of Florida, 1990. 57.
25. Kenney. 34.
26. Kenney. 57.
27. Charlie Patton. Jacksonville Native Left a Huge Legacy, But Nothing Marks It.” The Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville, Florida, 15 June 2012. He said Johnson was the organist in the 1890s.
28. Johnson, Spirituals. 33.
29. Johnson, autobiography. 158.
30. Johnson, autobiography. 161.
31. Johnson, autobiography. 137.
32. Johnson, autobiography. 147.
33. Johnson, autobiography. 179.
34. Johnson, autobiography. 197.
35. Johnson, Spirituals. 33. Rosamond added to the confusion. His version of “Dry Bones” was advertised as a shout song in 1938. [36]
36. J. Rosamond Johnson. “Dry Bones: Descriptive, Characteristic Shout Song.” New York: Handy Brothers, 1938.