Utopian Communities of Florida

I have visited all the Plantations and Settlements on the Mosquito River, and I am happy to inform you that as well on this visitation as that of the St. Johns River, I have reason to be pleased, and that a Spirit of Improvement, of Industry and good humor everywhere prevails among the Settlers; of which they feel the good effects. Their plantations carry the appearance of Improvement; they have plenty around them and are beginning to recover the expenses they have been at on their first setting down in this New Colony.

Had there been a newspaper in St. Augustine in 1767, the morning headline might have read, in true Florida fashion, “British Developers Seek to Build Major Settlement.” Of course, the story would have featured the plans of Dr. Andrew Turnbull, a wealthy Scottish physician, and his partners, all wealthy and well-connected members of the British establishment. Taking advantage of the plans of the British government to colonize its newly acquired territory of Florida and to add it to its growing empire in North America, Turnbull envisioned an agricultural community, populated by slave and indentured labor, that produced indigo, silk and cotton for export to British factories and subsidized by government bounties.

Great Britain took control of the Florida Peninsula in 1763 at the end of the French and Indian War, a theater of operations in the larger Seven Years’ War, which had pitted the British against the French and Spanish. After defeating its adversaries, Great Britain controlled Canada and other territories in North America. An unexpected, but eventually profitable, result of the war was the 1762 British conquest of Havana, the administrative capital of Spain’s enormous colonial empire in the Americas. With its colonies in North America, Great Britain had little real use for this southern city and, in 1763, agreed to the Peace of Paris, which ended the war and exchanged Florida for the Cuban city. Control of Florida allowed Great Britain to end Spanish attacks on its shipping in the Gulf Stream and to extend its sovereignty the full length of North America’s Atlantic coast. With the end of the war, Great Britain set out to incorporate its new possession into the mercantile system of colonial supplies for home country industries—the real basis of its position as a world power.

A line of weather-beaten rocks now marks the site of the Turnbull wharf, where ships unloaded supplies and loaded the products of the colony. The use of native stone material to construct this wharf indicated the intention of the colony’s owner, Andrew Turnbull, to permanently occupy this site. Courtesy of Dorothy Moore and Roger T. Grange.

Britain’s rise to world dominance had been rapid but not without turmoil. The advent of the eighteenth century produced many significant changes in European society and politics, and no country was more affected by these changes than Great Britain. The unification of England, Scotland and Wales in 1706 and 1707 provided a sound basis for the nation’s assumption of a leading role in colonization of new lands, while the early beginnings of the Industrial Revolution soon vaulted Great Britain into the position of the world’s greatest economic power. The rise of a strong parliamentary form of government, strong military and commercial navies and the creation of a large standing army strengthened Great Britain’s new status as a power to be reckoned with. Two centuries of anti-Catholic warfare and the creation of a monolithic state church had also fused nationalism and religion into a unifying force.

The enclosure movement, started in the previous century, took public lands used for agriculture away from the citizenry, consolidated them and put them under the control of private owners. Although the end result was an increased food supply and a large supply of labor for emerging factories, the dislocation of rural populations produced a growing number of persons in poorhouses, dramatic rises in the number of petty crimes committed and an increasing population of the underemployed and unemployed. As the rate of poor persons, including those who were out of work, grew, the British government embarked on reform campaigns to enlarge and strengthen the laws regulating the administration of poorhouses and the subsidies granted to these unfortunates. In addition, new penal reforms were examined and ultimately enacted into law. Chief among these was the belief that the solution to the problems created by the poor was the adoption of a policy of “transport and transform,” which meant that petty criminals, debtors, orphans and bastard children could be forcibly rounded up and shipped to new colonies.

In addition to these new penal reforms, the British government broadened and strengthened existing laws governing indentured servitude, which mandated a specified period of contractual labor in return for subsistence. At the end of the period of indentureship, the laborer would receive a grant of land or a small stipend to provide for the transition into a free labor economy. To populate its expanding colonial empire, indentureship provided the British government with a ready source of labor. Such was the case in North America, where an estimated 40 to 75 percent of the white population had experienced this form of labor. More than 50 percent of the migrants from Great Britain who came to North America between 1660 and 1775 came as indentured servants, convicts or involuntary laborers. By drawing on the poor, petty criminals and unemployed, the government ensured that its new possessions would peopled by individuals who were familiar with the English language and would be mostly Protestant. Although the Church of England was the official religion of the nation, the rise of sects within the larger Protestant population and the rapid acquisition of new colonies like Canada and Florida, taken from the French and Spanish, forced the British government to conveniently ignore its own rules about a state religion. By the end of 1763, Great Britain had three Catholic colonies in North America: Canada, Maryland and Florida. This flexibility in adjusting religious requirements gave Great Britain a tremendous advantage in developing its colonies since it had no competing institution like the Catholic Church to interfere.

Having acquired Canada and Florida, the British government set about attracting colonists. In the case of Florida, writers like John Bartram and Bernard Romans had regaled the British public with tales of the rich lands, exotic flora and fauna and boundless opportunities that Florida offered. The government offered generous bounties for certain agricultural products that could be produced on the vast grants of land that could be had for the asking. Although slow to attract takers, the generosity of the British government proved too appealing to long ignore, and by 1766, several individuals and groups had stepped forward to avail themselves of the opportunities.

One of the earliest claimants for land grants was Denys Rolle, a wealthy British aristocrat, who gradually enlarged his holdings in Florida between 1765 and 1784 to include in excess of eighty thousand acres. Rolle, whose reputation as a miser and generally unsavory character did not endear him to government officials in St. Augustine, attempted to populate his holdings with indentured labor from the slums of London. One contemporary wrote a satirical note to Governor James Grant denouncing Rolle’s labor force as a “a valuable colony of sixty people consisting of shoe blacks, cheminy sweepers, sink boys, tinkers and taylors, bunters, cinder wenches, whores and pickpockets.” Most of the indentured laborers Rolle had brought from Great Britain fled his control when the ships transporting them arrived at Charleston on their way south. Rolle soon abandoned his attempts at white indentured labor and resorted to importing slaves from Africa.

Grant was not a supporter of Rolle or of his efforts to establish a large agricultural operation in Florida, referring to him as “the most miserable wretch I ever saw.” Grant’s opinion was shared by almost everyone who had dealings with Rolle. Only his personal wealth kept Rolle’s operation afloat.

Dr. Andrew Turnbull’s relations with British officials in St. Augustine were the exact opposite of those of Rolle. Turnbull, who had spent several years in diplomatic service for the British Crown, was highly regarded by Grant and officers of the small military force in St. Augustine. Authorities in London also held Turnbull in great esteem, as evidenced by the fact that the British prime minister, George Grenville, was a silent partner in his colonization efforts. So, too, were Sir Richard Temple, the commander of the British navy, and Sir William Duncan, a wealthy and politically influential aristocrat. After an exploratory voyage to determine the proper place for establishing a new settlement, Turnbull returned to Great Britain to inform his partners of what he had found and to make arrangements to secure indentured servants as workers.

In 1767, Turnbull and his partners received the first adjoining grants of 20,000 acres each for establishing an agricultural colony in Florida, to be called New Smyrna, on the shores of Mosquito Inlet. Eventually, their holdings would exceed 100,000 acres. The labor for the colony was to be provided by five hundred African slaves and another five hundred indentured laborers recruited from Greece and Italy. The African slaves were to undertake the heavy work of clearing land and building houses, while the indentured laborers were to plant, harvest and process the crops of cotton, indigo and silk. Turnbull was convinced that these two groups, accustomed to the hot climates of the Mediterranean and Africa, would soon have the colony’s economy up and running. Turnbull’s plans for using African slaves were thwarted, however, when the ship carrying the cargo of slaves wrecked, and all the ship’s crew and the slaves perished. Later, small numbers of African slaves would be purchased in Georgia and South Carolina to perform heavy manual labor on the colony.

These ruins in New Smyrna have been variously identified as a hotel, a fort, a warehouse for the products of the Turnbull enterprise and the foundations for a mansion. No one knows for sure, but they add a sense of mystery for individuals seeking remnants of the Turnbull colony. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Despite the misfortune of losing his African slaves, Turnbull proceeded with his plan to recruit workers from the Mediterranean. Although he initially wanted to recruit 500 workers from Greece, he was unable to secure permission from Turkish authorities to enlist more than 200 tribesmen, who were in revolt against their Turkish overlords. Next he tried to recruit colonists from southern Italy but managed to secure only 110 more would-be colonists. Turnbull found the colonists he needed on the island of Minorca, a British possession that was experiencing a three-year drought that left many farmers on the verge of starvation. Instead of the few hundred colonists he sought, Turnbull was overwhelmed when more than 1,100 farmers responded to his call and agreed to become indentured laborers. Forced to hire extra ships and purchase additional supplies, he now had the laborers he needed for his grand adventure.

Turnbull’s success in recruiting colonists for his Florida venture was enthusiastically supported by the British establishment. Despite the fact that the Minorcans who constituted the bulk of new residents were Spanish speakers and Catholics, who were prohibited by British law from legally migrating to Florida, Turnbull received a special dispensation from these prohibitions. Governor James Grant, instructed by the Lords of Trade in London to support the new colony in any way he could, prepared for the arrival of the new colonists by erecting temporary living quarters for them at New Smyrna, providing four months of basic provisions for them and informing the Native Americans in the area of their arrival.

Grant wanted to ensure that the colony had every chance for survival, and pacifying the Native Americans was among his chief concerns. Southeastern Creek Indians, who had long been allied with the British in North America and who had developed a hatred for the Spanish, occupied the countryside along the St. John’s River. Grant went out of his way to explain to the Indian leaders that although most of the new colonists resembled the hated Spanish in appearance and spoke Spanish, they were English colonists and were to be treated as such. Grant’s cautious efforts paid off, and the colonists had few problems with the Indians.

Archaeologists uncovered the remains of a communal bakery at the site of the Turnbull colony. The large square of rocks in the upper right-hand corner of the photograph was the base of a large oven, which has since been removed and relocated to a different site. Courtesy of Dorothy Moore and Roger T. Grange.

Archaeologists uncovered the footprint of this two-family residence at the Turnbull site. Families lived on different sides of the small structure. They shared a common entryway, and the residences were separated by a common wall. Courtesy of Dorothy Moore and Roger T. Grange.

Work started on clearing land and planting food crops immediately upon the arrival of the colonists at New Smyrna in June 1768. Work also started on the construction of small family homes for the indentured laborers, usually constructed on foundations of coquina rock. A quarry for mining coquina was established, and this soft limestone rock became the basic material used for buildings of substance. In addition to food crops, the colonists cleared fields for planting a variety of cash crops like corn, cotton, rice, indigo and sugarcane. Despite the best efforts of the colonists to become self-sufficient and produce profits for the colony’s proprietors, the residents of New Smyrna remained dependent on provisions purchased in other British colonies.

Clearing large fields and planting large crops required the use of gangs of laborers working under the supervision of overseers. The colonists were accustomed to working alone or in small groups at their own pace, and they resented the overseers, who were accustomed to supervising slaves and whose authority was reinforced by the application of corporal punishment.

Resentful at what they considered to be harsh treatment by the overseers, the Greek and Italian colonists, led by Carlo Forni, an Italian overseer, mutinied in August 1768. Forni led this group of about three hundred mutineers, which broke into the colony’s warehouses, seized firearms and liquor and embarked on a three-day drunken rampage. The mutineers planned to seize a ship that was in the harbor, load it with the booty they had collected from the warehouses and private dwellings and sail to Cuba. The largest group of colonists, the Minorcans, refused to participate in the mutiny until threatened by Forni’s followers.

In the meantime, Turnbull, who was absent from New Smyrna with a group of touring planters, received word of the mutiny while at the plantation home of Richard Oswald, some sixty miles away. Turnbull immediately wrote to Governor James Grant and requested help in putting down the mutiny. Determined to safeguard his financial interests and those of his investors, he left the Oswald plantation and headed toward New Smyrna. Once there, Turnbull collected a small group of loyal servants and set out to assess the situation firsthand. Informed that his principal manager, a Mr. Cutter, had been imprisoned and tortured by the mutineers, he managed to find him and rescue him. Cutter had indeed been tortured by Forni and his followers, who had cut off one of his ears and two of his fingers. By the time Turnbull found him, he was in a desperate condition. Rather than confront the mutineers, who were having a drunken feast on the waterfront, Turnbull took Cutter back to his plantation home to care for him.

As the mutineers boarded their ship and made their way to the mouth of the harbor to await the high tide to carry them over the bar, two British warships approached the harbor and fired cannons. Immediately, most of the mutineers waved white flags of surrender, but a small group of ringleaders abandoned the ship in a small boat and made their way ashore. The mutiny was over, and the New Smyrna colony was saved. A search was launched to find the escaped mutineers, and four months later, they were apprehended in the Florida Keys.

Turnbull wrote to Governor Grant on August 25, 1768, that “[upon] examining some of the chief plotters I find that Carlo Forni has been the sole cause of all this disturbance by flattering some of the most unruly of the Greeks and Italians with hopes of great things at the Havannah [sic ]. These had several consultations when at work in the woods, but the time of the execution of their scheme was not even concluded on till the morning they mutinied.” Brought to trial and charged with piracy, Forni and two of the men were sentenced to death, although one of them was pardoned on the condition that he execute the other two. The remainder of the mutineers were convicted but pardoned. In early September 1768, Turnbull confidently reported to one of his investors, Sir William Duncan, “Everything is now quiet, and the Families are hard at work on their Farms.”

The quick response of Governor James Grant in sending ships to suppress the mutinous colonists at New Smyrna was an indication of both his support of British efforts to establish permanent settlements in Florida and his personal friendship with Andrew Turnbull. Like Turnbull, Grant was Scottish and a member of the gentry. As an indication of Grant’s fondness and respect for Turnbull, he had him appointed to the position of Secretary of the East Florida Council, a quasi-legislative group that advised the governor on matters of importance. When the mutineers briefly took control of the New Smyrna settlement, Grant informed Sir William Duncan that although he was ill with a fever, he “was so uneasy at the Doctor’s situation and so anxious to send him assistance, that I forgot the sickness, moved about for some hours, and employed every boat and every man civil and military who I thought could be of use” in helping him. When Turnbull and his family were in St. Augustine, they frequently stayed at Grant’s home, and the personal friendship between the men translated into unquestioning support for Turnbull’s colonization efforts. As it turned out, Turnbull would later pay a heavy price for his friendship with Grant.

In 1771, Grant, suffering from a life-threatening illness, received permission to return to England to recover. In his absence, a lieutenant or deputy governor would be appointed to take his place. Several names were put forward, including Turnbull, whose standing among Florida planters, military leaders and colonial officials in London made him the logical choice. Grant, however, rejected the selection of his friend as his replacement, arguing that Turnbull was too busy ensuring the success of his New Smyrna colony to undertake such a chore. The New Smyrna colony would certainly fail without his on-site leadership. Grant argued for the appointment of another planter, John Moultrie, instead. In the end, Grant prevailed, and Moultrie was named as his temporary replacement.

John Moultrie, a native of South Carolina and a physician, served as Grant’s lieutenant governor from 1771 until 1774. A graduate of the University of Edinburgh with a medical degree, Moultrie was also a successful planter, and his Bella Vista plantation, located on the north side of Moultrie Creek, was famous for its stately stone manor house and beautiful grounds. The scion of one of the wealthiest and most successful families in South Carolina, he had made his way to Florida in 1767 to take possession of a large tract of land. A brother, James Moultrie, served as the chief justice of East Florida until his death in 1765.

Workers excavate a natural sink on the site of the Turnbull plantation. This sinkhole, when filled with water, was used to provide water for various operations on the plantation. Courtesy of Dorothy Moore and Roger T. Grange.

Moultrie and Turnbull shared many similarities—both were of Scottish origin, both were physicians and both were planters—and should have been friends. Moultrie, however, lacked Turnbull’s outgoing personality and suffered from an insecurity complex that governed many of his decisions. Officers in the British military units stationed in St. Augustine tended to ignore Moultrie, regarding him as a weak, vacillating and indecisive individual. Moultrie took these slights to heart, and Andrew Turnbull, who was liked and respected by the military officers and his fellow planters, was to become the target of Moultrie’s anger.

The animosity between Moultrie and Turnbull grew during the next three years. Grant had been gone from St. Augustine for only a few weeks when the first clash of these two dominant personalities occurred. In May 1771, a group of Creek Indians came to New Smyrna, suspicious that the Minorcan colonists were actually Spaniards. After a brief violent confrontation with a small Minorcan working party that frightened the entire community, Turnbull was able to convince the Indian leader, Cowkeeper, that the colony was English and that the Minorcans were British subjects. In a letter to Moultrie, Turnbull informed him that the possibility of a conflict between the Native Americans and the colonists at New Smyrna was a false alarm and that there was no imminent danger. Moultrie so informed his superior, Lord Hillsborough, in London. A few days later, Turnbull made his way to St. Augustine to confer with the lieutenant governor. During this conference, he informed Moultrie that he had changed his mind about the Indian threat and that he had written a letter to Sir William Duncan asking him to pass his new opinion along to Hillsborough. When he learned of Turnbull’s actions, Moultrie was livid and immediately fired off a letter to Hillsborough denying there was any danger.

Although he disagreed with Turnbull’s assessment, Moultrie consulted with the members of the East Florida Council, who agreed with him that there was no danger of an attack. Moultrie then suggested that a small detachment of soldiers might be sent to New Smyrna to reinforce the small garrison that had been stationed there since the Forni mutiny. The council agreed to this proposal, but when the lieutenant governor made a formal request to the commander of the British troops in East Florida, the request was denied. Moultrie was incensed by this action but lacked the authority to force the transfer of troops.

Within a few months of the humiliation Moultrie suffered from the refusal of the military commander to send additional troops to New Smyrna, he found himself once again embroiled in a confrontation with Turnbull. Events in Britain’s northern colonies were escalating the conflicts between British authorities and colonists over questions of taxation, colonial manufacturing and an increased role of colonist in self-government. Although a recent addition to the British colonial empire, Florida experienced some of the same conflicts as its northern neighbors. Governor Grant had skillfully managed these conflicts without any open breaks. Moultrie, on the other hand, lacked the personal charisma of Grant and his ability to attract the friendship of the colony’s planters. His personal dislike for Turnbull was evident in the letters he sent to his superiors in London. Turnbull’s identification with the planters who wanted more self-rule was unfortunate, as it pitted him directly against Moultrie, an avid Loyalist. As the colonials in the northern colonies moved closer to a revolution against British authority, he found his influence growing less and less with Moultrie. Changes in the British colonial office further eroded Turnbull’s standing, and he could no longer rely on the wholehearted support of allies in position of influence and importance.

Moultrie’s assumption of the governor’s office marked the beginning of the end of Turnbull’s prominence in Florida, a situation that became even more accelerated when a new governor, Patrick Tonyn, was appointed in 1774. Tonyn proved to have an even more prickly personality than the man he replaced and was a stickler for observing the fine points of protocol, and he and Turnbull clashed almost immediately after his arrival in St. Augustine in March 1774. At the heart of the initial clash between the two men was the discovery that Turnbull’s Minorcan colonists had been conducting ongoing relations with the Catholic bishop of Havana for a number of years. Although the colonists explained that their contact was only for the purpose of securing spiritual guidance (the priest who had originally accompanied them to New Smyrna had died), the suspicious British authorities dealt with them harshly. Turnbull, whose failure to discover and stop this contact, saw his stock fall even further.

Despite the conflicts with British governors, the Turnbull colony continued to function as originally intended. When drought threatened the existence of the colony’s crops, he designed and had constructed a series of irrigation canals patterned on those he had observed in Egypt. These canals, remnants of which still exist today, not only brought water to dry fields but also served to drain excess water from them during usual rainy season and when tropical storms brought flooding rains. Cash crops were productive, although monies derived from the sale of these products did not cover the costs of operating the colony, and Turnbull found that his investors in Great Britain were becoming less and less willing to cover these costs.

Many of the projects undertaken by Turnbull required the efforts of colonists working as gang laborers under the supervision of overseers. The harsh treatments meted out by these overseers created a growing sense of resentment on the part of the 600 or so colonists who were left from the original 1,500 who had first arrived at New Smyrna. In 1776, these resentments turned to action when three of the Minorcan colonists made their way to St. Augustine and appealed to Governor Tonyn for help. Tonyn—engaged in an ongoing dispute with Turnbull over a proposed treaty to purchase Indian lands along the St. Johns that Turnbull had been instrumental in negotiating privately—immediately seized the opportunity to inflict a mortal economic blow on his adversary. He sided with the Minorcans in their complaints against Turnbull and his overseers, revoked the indenture agreements that bound them to him and offered them sanctuary in St. Augustine. Once word reached the New Smyrna colony of Tonyn’s actions, the Minorcans fled as a group to St. Augustine. The departure of Minorcans spelled the end of the New Smyrna experiment.

Excavation of the Turnbull sink exposed the natural rock walls. Eventually, the sinkhole became filled with trash and the debris of adjacent human occupations and was abandoned as a source of water. Courtesy of Dorothy Moore and Roger T. Grange.

The Tonyn-Turnbull conflict continued. Tonyn accused Turnbull of trying to defraud his investors, briefly imprisoned him and accused him of disloyalty to the British government. The American Revolution, which had been going full bore since 1776, certainly had an influence on the disputes between the two men. Turnbull’s friends included several planters with strong ties to the Revolution, while Tonyn was a strong advocate of British rule, going so far as to invite Loyalists from other British colonies to move to Florida as refugees. Turnbull was a loyal British subject, but that counted for little when the governor disparaged him in letters to British officials. Bolstered by Lieutenant Governor John Moultrie’s continued dislike for Turnbull, Tonyn’s enmity for him grew apace.

A trivial cause, perhaps, but one that certainly had a negative impact on the relations between the two men was the fact that Turnbull was a social creature. Tonyn, on the other hand, was a vain individual who reacted strongly to real or imagined insults, as revealed in this comment he made in a letter to Turnbull: “If to this Moment I have not shown you marks of Civilization and Attention, it is owing to yourself, as you have not done me the favour of calling upon me, on the several Times you have been lately in Town.” For a prominent resident like Turnbull to ignore paying his respects to the king’s governor was, in Tonyn’s eyes, unforgiveable.

His colony in ruins, his financial prospects bleak and his future in doubt, Turnbull, upon his release from imprisonment in 1781, decided to leave Florida to seek new opportunities in South Carolina. The grand experiment was dead.

Was the New Smyrna colony a utopian community? Perhaps not, at least in a strictly twenty-first-century definition of the term, but in the framework of a changing society in the eighteenth century, it was. The fertile lands of British Florida offered the opportunity for landless and penniless persons—such as the Italian, Greek and Minorcan colonists who came to New Smyrna—the chance to acquire their own land. Turnbull and his investors provided the monies to fund their opportunities, asking only labor in return. The same investors provided funding for the construction of homes, monies for constructing factories in the colony, funds for planting crops and sustenance for the colonists until they were self-sufficient. Yet these contributions were not enough to ensure success.

Why, then, did New Smyrna fail? First, the colony failed because of the attempt to use indentured laborers as workers on a large scale. Overseers who were accustomed to driving African slaves used the same methods to direct the activities of the colonists, who regarded these methods as oppression. Second, the mixture of colonists from different cultures, who spoke different languages and whose religious beliefs differed from the British, presented obstacles that could not be overcome. In an era of strong nationalism and international rivalries, such differences were stark. There were other conflicts, of course, such as the growing discontent between American colonists and the British over trade policies, which, when coupled with a growing demand for self-rule, resulted in revolution. Perhaps the final reason for the failure of Turnbull’s colony was the persistent clash of strong personalities. Accommodation and understanding went out the window when real and perceived insults were part of virtually every dialogue between Turnbull, Moultrie, Tonyn and the supporters and opponents of each man.

Nevertheless, the New Smyrna experiment should be judged for its promise, not its results.