Introduction
This is a Mini-history written for the information and delight of all ages. If the readers are not already interested in the history of Tallahassee, we hope that this thumbnail sketch will inspire them to become more interested, and share their enthusiasm with others.

Sparks From The Fires of History
In an early account "Tallahassee Country" was described as a "place entirely unlike any part of the United States; so near the seaboard yet it resembles the high land above the falls of the rivers in the Atlantic States. The natural groves of oak and magnolias, hickory and beech, surpass in magnificence the proudest parks of English nobility." The plains of Florida roll northward into a sudden rhythm of hills in Tallahassee. This land of quiet springs and flowers was known to Europeans one hundred years before Jamestown or the other English colonies.

The Apalachee Indians of Muskhogean ancestry whose language resembled that of the Choctaw were the earliest recorded inhabitants. Their name was derived from the Choctaw "Ap'palahi" meaning the people on the other side. But archaeological research shows that the Apalachee Creeks and Seminole Indians were only the last of a long line of Indians. The Indian history of Tallahassee has been traced back 10,000 years. These early Indians were hunters, fishermen, and gathers of roots, nuts, and berries. Later when the Spanish explorers reached the Apalachee region, they found the Indians wearing brief clothing made from Spanish moss. During cold weather the Indians added more clothing made from tanned animal hides (mainly deer). The earliest Indians did not make pottery nor did they have a bow. Instead they used for hunting animals a weapon which they called a throwing stock. The throwing stick had a hook-shaped tool on one end in which the butt of a spear was placed and the other end was held in the hand. This tool could be thrown with great force.

Panphilo de Narvaez, known as Florida's first Governor, sailed from Spain June 17, 1527, with 400 men aboard the ship. Accompanied by Cabeza de Vaca, who was Treasurer of the Royal Purse, Narvaez marched to the land of Apalachee from Tampa Bay where he had hoped to find wealth but found only a good harbor and little else. De Vaca wrote that they were told by Indians at Tampa Bay of a northern province called Apalachen which had much gold and a lot of the things that they all cared for. With this note of encouragement they set out to seek gold in the Tallahassee area. Disappointed in not finding any gold, and having experienced bloody skirmishes with the Apalachee Indians, Narvaez turned southward toward St. Marks where he constructed his ships for his expedition to Mexico. Cabeza de Vaca, along with three other Spaniards and one Negro survived the hardships of the Mexican trip and came back to befriend the Indians of Apalachee. The Spaniards administered to sick Indians by making the sign of the cross, blowing on them and then saying a prayer.

Cabeza de Vaca was a colorful figure in Florida history and the story of how he received his name was absurd but interesting. During the wars of La Reconquista the Christian Army who were pushing the Moors southward reached the Sierra Morena Mountains, north of Seville. The Moorish army was holding the mountain pass and the Christian offensive commanders were about to order a retreat when suddenly a peasant named Martin Alhaja presented himself to King Sancho of Navarra and offered to show an unguarded pass from which the Christians could attack the Moors from the rear. He had marked the entrance with a "cow's skull." The Christians surprised their enemy and destroyed their power in one of the most decisive battles in the history of Spain. To compensate the peasant Martin Alhaja and his descendents for his valuable service he ennobled them with the name Cabeza de Vaca which means "skull of the cow."

De Vaca's diary is universally known for its accounts for the happenings of the Spanish era. In his account of Apalachen he describes the town, now called Tallahassee, as having "40 small houses, low and of thatch, immense trees and open woods, many lakes, great and small, maize fields, deer, royal ducks, night herons, and partridges surrounding the town."

Hernando DeSoto also was interested in the mythical wealth in the land of the Apalachen which account for his march to the area after landing in southwest Florida. DeSoto spent several months in Apalachen and it is believed by historians that he held the first Christmas Mass in Tallahassee on the Indian Mounds near Lake Jackson. Accounts of his landing in the United States vary. The city of Bradenton celebrates DeSoto's landing in March of each year with a DeSoto Festival commemorating his landing in their area. The Bradenton DeSoto Krewe started a tradition of participating in Springtime Tallahassee festivities in 1969 and have kept up the tradition. Each year the Bradenton Krewe invites Andrew Jackson and his staff from Tallahassee to participate in their parade.

Historian John Parris reported that the Appalachian Mountains were named after Tallahassee's Apalachee Indians. He noted that DeSoto misnamed the Appalachians after spending the winter of 1539-40 in Apalachen on the assumption that his later travels into the mountains were still in the Apalachee's province.

After the Spanish explorers came, the Franciscan Friars, by 1674, had managed to establish thirteen missions in Apalachee concentrated in the most part around present-day Tallahassee. Their main objective was to Christianize the Apalachee Indians. The most important mission and the one that we are most familiar with was the San Luis Mission which was located in the rear of what is now known as the Messer Plantation on Mission Road. The Indian villages around the mission were located in the area now called San Luis Ridge. The mission was known in those days as San Luis de Talimale.

The Spanish missions flourished until 1704 when the English and their Creek Indian allies led by Governor James Moore of Carolina made retaliatory raids into Florida bringing Indian warriors from Macon, Georgia, with him. Governor Moore was afraid that the Apalachee Indians, encouraged by the Spanish, would extend their raids to his territory; so he laid waste the land of the Apalachee. The missions from St. Augustine to Tallahassee were destroyed except for the San Luis Mission, which was spared because that mission paid a ransom. However, since it was constructed of such perishable materials as small sticks and mud there are no visible remains of the mission era today. The State Government Archives under the Secretary of State have pictures of all the missions of early Florida that have been found and hope to reconstruct them in the future. During the last half of the seventeenth century the Apalachee Indians had their own worshipping place and were protected by a garrison of Spanish soldiers.

The oldest written church parish records, dating back to 1594, are still kept in Florida. One of the earliest marriages shown in the record is Vincent Solana to Maria Vincente. They are the oldest surviving Spanish family in the United States. One of the descendents of this family lives in Tallahassee today and the name can be found on the main street leading in to San Luis Ridge subdivision off Mission Road.

It has been reported that the Spanish did not abandon Apalachee. In fact in 1716 a Spaniard advocated the moving of the Florida Capital from Pensacola to Tallahassee—"that area where the land is fertile, food plentiful, and harbors broad and deep." So the Spanish also favored this area for the capital.

Among some of the traditions that the Spaniards brought to Florida was the custom of Mummering (acting in masked costumes). This tradition was observed from Christmas until Lent when costumed and masked merrymakers visited from house to house, acting playlets, singing, and dancing. The Mardi Gras festivities are a remnant of Christmas Mummering.

According to Spanish tradition the New Year's Eve party was a gay occasion for the young people who danced, flirted, and observed many frivolous and delightful customs in honor of the New Year. On this night partners were matched, not only for the party, but for the entire year. The highlight of the occasion was the striking of the clock at midnight. Everybody rushed out at midnight to hear the great clock. Each merrymaker attempted to accompany the twelve strokes of the clock by swallowing twelve grapes! The day following the New Year was spent in church-going and in feasting in the homes, not to mention the playful observance of the old superstition that the luck of the next twelve months depended on what you do the first day of the year.

For thirty years the country around Tallahassee was almost totally abandoned after James Moore entered Apalachee in 1704, but slowly the land began to fill with people. In 1735 the lower Creeks and the Seminoles began to reenter the countryside of their forefathers, the area known as OLD FIELDS in the Indian language. Because it was said that one could hear the cocks crow from one Indian village to another, villages soon were known as "Fowltowns."

In 1763, after two centuries of settlement, Spanish Florida consisted of St. Augustine, the garrison at St. Marks and Pensacola. That same year in the Treaty of Paris England took over Florida. Spain exchanged Florida for Havana, Cuba, thus ending the Spanish rule in Florida until 1783 when England ceded Florida back to Spain.

In 1818, General Andrew Jackson, who was 51 years old, took just as many provisions as he and his men could carry on their backs and set eastward from the Apalachicola River toward ‘Miccosuki.' His Scouts wore hunting shirts of buckskin or homespun wolfskin and coonskin caps. Jackson's column of militia numbered one thousand. When he entered Tallahassee, all the Indians had abandoned it shortly before his arrival. While the Indians were still in sight, Jackson burned it to the ground. St. Marks was taken over by General Jackson on April 6, 1818, on the grounds of controlling the Indians. The long line of INDIAN, SPANISH, and ENGLISH RULE ended on Jackson's arrival. The war seemed to be over until Jackson learned that hostile Indians were gathering at Pensacola and that the Spanish governor there was interfering with the transportation of army property. Upon a show of force by Jackson, the Spaniards surrendered and Jackson concluded the military phases of the First Seminole War.

The failure of Congress to make provisions for a permanent seat of government after Florida was transferred to the U. S. was fortunate for Tallahassee since it gave Tallahassee the opportunity to become the capital of the state.

General Andrew Jackson was appointed military governor of Florida in 1821. He arrived in Tallahassee with a camp chest which contained a treasured memento. It was a black candle that was found in the tent of British General Cornwallis after his surrender of British forces at Yorktown, Virginia, to General George Washington, a climax that brought the Revolutionary War to a close. Jackson was asked to light the black candle every year on January 6, which was the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans. Jackson was unhappy in his role of governor and resigned seven months later. Rachel, his wife, who enjoyed the pleasure of her pipe in public as well as in private, was not too popular with the ladies of Tallahassee.

The Legislature held its sessions alternately between St. Augustine and Pensacola every other year. The Council was weary of taking the papers and records of government back and forth over 400 miles so the decision was made to centralize the capital. Central and south Florida were not considered since there was little or no population in those areas, so they decided to place the capital between the east and the west.

In 1823 William P. Duval, the first territorial governor who succeeded Jackson appointed two commissioners, John Lee Williams, a prominent lawyer from Pensacola and Dr. William H. Simmons of St. Augustine, a physician, to locate a central location for a capital. The commissioners, with William Ellis as their guide, met with Neamathla, the most important chief in the area of the "new Tallahassee." Neamathla was disturbed when he learned of the nature of the commissioners' visit. The next day they visited "old Tallahassee" where Chifixico was the chief. The chief picked up a handful of dirt, held it out and angrily declared that this was his land.

Simmons represented the east Floridians and he was anxious to choose a site near St. Augustine but Williams was enchanted with the beauty of the Cascades and the surrounding forests and hills. He describes the Cascades as "a deep gulf which had been scooped out by a stream entering the Earth . . . a hole fourteen feet deep. . . The stream which falls into this gulf over a bank twenty or thirty feet in height, is sufficiently large to turn an overshot mill."

The setting which attracted the commissioners to choose the "Old Fields" of Tallahassee as the capital also has spurred the citizens, beginning in the 1970's, to promote the restoration of the Cascades in the area east and south of the Capitol building.

After choosing the site for the capital overlooking the Cascades on March 4, 1824, Governor Duval issued a proclamation stating that the commissioners had selected a site "about a mile southwest from the old deserted fields of Tallahassee and about a half a mile south of the Oke-lock-o-ny and Tallahassee tail, at the point where the old Spanish Road is intersected by a small trail running southwardly." On May 24 of that year an Act of Congress set aside a quarter section of land for the capital and three more quarter-sections in reserve. Shortly thereafter Duval left St. Augustine for St. Marks. Governor Duval administered the affairs of the government from a boat at St. Marks until a log cabin was built for the Capitol. A replica, built for the Sesquicentennial celebration at the Capitol in 1974 is now located at the entrance of the Junior Museum.

In the absence of Duval, who was in St. Marks tending to Indian business, Colonel George Walton, territorial secretary and acting governor, chose the exact location for the first quarter section that was to be called Tallahassee. This was to be the point from which all future surveys in Florida were to be taken. This point was named the Prime Meridian.

The Prime Meridian marker located in the area of the restoration of the Cascades is recognized in the public records and official correspondence as the original point of beginning for all the land surveys in Florida. The first city engineer ran test surveys in 1923 from Surveyor General Slocum's Prime Meridian marker (which remains today) and found that the lines did not lead to any recognized boundaries or streets in Tallahassee. By unearthing several known markers and surveying backward he located the lightwood stake apparently put down by Surveyor General Butler more than 100 years earlier where two Indians trails met. However, the mistake in placing the Prime Meridian is not serious since survey are made from the nearest previously established point. The late Judge Ben Meginniss once said that he heard the reason the stone was about 10 feet short of the point that Slocum had re-established in 1892 was that the wagon brining the two-thousand-pound stone from Wakulla county bogged down a few feet short and was unloaded there. Butler had used a lightwood stake since no stones were available, but the Legislature had authorized a stone marker with a bronze inscription in 1853 and no action was taken until 1891.

Tallahassee, using the Prime Meridian as a starting point, was laid out in Squares, which surrounded the Capitol building. All that remains of the names of the Squares around the Capitol today is the building on Calhoun Street called the Washington Square Building. The other Squares were Wayne, Green, and Jackson. Park Avenue which extended about 4 blocks was called 200 Foot Street and was the northern boundary of early Tallahassee.

Why do so many of Tallahassee's old families have ancestors from Virginia and North Carolina and so few from Georgia and South Carolina? This is a result of an order by the U. S. Secretary of the Treasury when the land around Tallahassee was auctioned off by Federal agents in 1825 to raise money to establish the town of Tallahassee and to build a permanent Capitol building. By the Secretary's order the land agents couldn't accept Georgia and South Carolina banknotes at the sales which was a political maneuver. This resulted in the sale of the land at the minimum price of $1.25 per acre, and some very, very mad Georgians and South Carolinans went home in disgust.

Bertram Groene writes, "Slowly but surely the town of Tallahassee moved through its cycles of progress and backwardness, its bad times and its good times from the frontier town toward the sophistication of city life. Schools developed from the early private ones to a system of public education for all, while institutions of higher learning gradually came into being. Newspapers proliferated in Tallahassee during the 37 years preceding the Civil War. There were weekly newspapers bearing 13 different names. No other city in the territory or state had as many newspapers, and few had the quality of the two leading papers—the Sentinel and the Floridian and Journal."

By 1834 Tallahassee was settled by many of the prominent families of the upper south. Some of their descendents are still living in Tallahassee today. Many of our streets are named after these prominent families.

Tallahassee was no different from other frontiers. It had its ruffians as well as its gentry. The duels, brawls and violence might well have made the wild, wild west of later years look tame.

As one rides down Monroe Street today, it is hard to believe that at one time it was a race track which had become a haven for undesirable elements. Francis Eppes, son of Thomas Jefferson's daughter, Maria, bought a plantation in Leon County called L'Eau Noir. In 1835 he moved his family to Tallahassee and they were among the most prominent citizens. Eppes was the first reform mayor. He immediately started with a program of law and order and the elimination of the race track. In 1843 after an epidemic of yellow fever which took its toll, fire swept away most of the hurriedly-erected frame buildings. Eppes then initiated new codes which required masonry reconstruction of buildings downtown.

The wealthy planters who came to Tallahassee to settle bought large tracts of land and planted cotton. Twelve miles of cotton fields stretched from Chaires all the way to Tallahassee. Some of the families living in Chaires today remember the cotton fields. Two of the planters who were close friends of Andrew Jackson were Richard Keith Call and Robert Butler, the Surveyor-General. Call became a governor twice and had two plantation, one on Lake Jackson named Orchard Pond and the other, a town manor located next to the present day Governor's mansion. This home, called The Grove, is still used and has remained in the family.

A dramatic growth took place in Tallahassee the first half of 1825. The Pensacola Gazette announced that the new village of Tallahassee had, in addition to the businesses already established a church, school, seven stores, an apothecary shop, two shoemakers, two blacksmiths, three carpenters, a tailor, and three brickyards. The Methodist church, first to be organized, was followed by St. John's Episcopal, the First Presbyterian, the Catholic on Monroe Street and the First Baptist Church in 1840. Tallahassee's religion history in 1842 and 1843 was notable for the extensive religious "revivals" when the city "got religion."

Back in the 1840's Pisgah Methodist Church, 10 miles north of town on Centerville Road, played a big part in the social life of the surrounding community. It had to hold services under armed guards. Men with shotguns and rifles were stationed outside the church to guard against Indian attacks, which occurred in that area rather often. A few of the local citizens have struggled to keep its door open and a service is held each Sunday. To this day the first Sunday in May each year is celebrated by a worship service and picnic for all the members and friends.

Leon county's worst Indian massacre took place near Lake Lafayette at the Green Hill Chaires Plantation in 1838. Many different stores have been told about how the Chaires house was burned. One published story at the time suggests that the attack by the Indians was provoked when Mr. Chaires slapped an Indian who strayed on to his land (and wandered away). The same report suggested that the Indian was the Seminole leader, Tiger Tail. Whoever fired the shot, he killed Mrs. Chaires and then set the house afire. Mr. Chaires found his wife and ten year old daughter burned to death.

There were several Chaires brothers and they all owned thousands of acres of land. Benjamin Chaires owned 9000 acres with a three-story brick mansion on it when he died. Most of the land east of Tallahassee from what is now the Apalachee Parkway northward to Miccousukee Road was once owned by the Chaires family. A portion of the Chaires plantation located on Miles Johnson Road later belong to George Proctor, and his house still stands, the only freed slave who lived in the area. Proctor was the son of Antonio Proctor who came from the Bahamas and served as a guide to both Indians and whites. He was fluent in several languages and proved invaluable to the community. Antonio and George Proctor established themselves as a friend to all. Proctor, who was a contractor, built the Tallahassee Garden Center on North Calhoun Street.

William Williams, whose nickname was "Money" Williams, opened the Bank of Florida. The city commissioners were so desirous of a bank that they sold "Money" Williams the corner of Adams and 200-Foot Street (E. Park Avenue) for $5.00. (E. C. Allen Christian Life Center stands there today). Williams had the Columns and the Union Bank building built around 1830. Benjamin Chaires was given the contract for building the Columns but it is believed that he sub-contracted it to George Proctor. The Columns building was moved and is now used by the Chamber of Commerce on Duval Street. The little Union Bank was later moved to Apalachee Parkway in front of the Capitol.

The Tallahassee scene in the early days was one of "the gay life," especially on the plantations.

Prince Achille Murat, nephew of Napoleon, a most colorful and eccentric character, was one of Tallahassee's earliest and most notable citizens. Prince Murat observed, "The first indication of regular society is generally public holidays. The 4th of July, Independence Day, Washington's birthday, and the 6th of January which was the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans." The first recorded 4th of July celebrated in Tallahassee was in 1826. The Declaration of Independence was read followed by an oration and toasts. The ceremony was followed by a barbecue. On the 4th of July each year the Bradford brothers held a big barbecue for all the workers on their adjoining plantations. Many days before, huge pits were dug and oak fires were burned until the pits were half full of glowing coals. Green hickory poles were put across and on those were laid whole cows and fat hogs with mouths held open by a sweet potato. Each plantation had a head cook who directed the seasoning—pepper, mustard, and vinegar were put on at the time the meat was turned. The women baked bread, roasted potatoes, and made coffee. The most popular form of entertainment after the meal was an afternoon nap, and then came the watermelon! The last big celebration of the 4th of July was in 1856 when tension began to rise between the Southern and Northern states.

[end of transcription - there are another 15 pages dealing with more current history of Tallahassee]

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