Pinellas County Historical SocietyHeritage VillageP.O. Box 4862Seminole, Florida 33775

Heritage Village is a collection of 28 historic structures and features moved here to create a 21-acre living history museum.Explore the history of the Pinellas Peninsula as you wander the winding paths through the native pine and palmetto landscape.

Non-Profit Org.U.S. Postage

PAIDPermit No. 8076

St. Petersburg, FL

Ellen BabbMuseum Operations Manager

727-582-2127

Paige NoelLiving History Interpreter

727-582-2125

Marcella PinieroMuseum Collections Custodian

Be sure to visit Heritage Village’s affiliate museums!

Pinellas County complies with theAmericans with Disabilities Act. To

obtain accessible formats of thisdocument, please contact the

Communications Department at(727) 464-4600/ TDD (727) 464-4431.

Funding for this newsletter wasprovided by the Pinellas County

Historical Society. 425 copies wereprinted at a cost of $481.00 or

$1.13 each. Produced in cooperationwith Heritage Village - A Pinellas County

Government Program.

North PinellasHistorical Museum

2043 Curlew RoadPalm Harbor, FL 34683(727) 724-3054

The Gulf BeachesHistorical Museum

115-10th AvenueSt. Pete BeachFL 33706(727) 552-1610

Museum Staff

Cuba, Mexico or South America. The British divided Florida in two.

The peninsula was called East Florida,and its capital was at St. Augustine.West Florida, with its capital atPensacola, stretched all the way fromthe Apalachicola River to theMississippi River and included theFlorida panhandle, as well as parts ofpresent-day Alabama, Mississippi andLouisiana.

What is now Pinellas County waslargely uninhabited during the Englishperiod. But a few Spanish fishermenestablished winter fish camps on thebarrier islands, where they caught andsalted fish to take back to Cuba.

“On the Mullet Keys are huts builtby the Spaniards who resort here forthe purpose of fishing,” cartographerBernard Romans wrote in 1769.

That alarmedsome British officialsin St. Augustine, whofeared that thefishermen might betrying to recruitIndians for a Spanishplot to retake Florida.They urged MajorGen. James F. Grant,governor of EastFlorida, to send anexpedition to oust thesquatters, but Granthad other priorities.

During the American Revolution,Loyalists flocked to British Florida toescape the fighting and the wrath oftheir Patriot neighbors. But Britain lostthe war, and the peace treaty returnedFlorida to America’s ally, Spain.

Spain didn’t reciprocate thereligious tolerance England hadshown its Florida colonists 20 yearsearlier. Catholicism was the onlyreligion allowed in its colonies, somost Loyalists left for the Bahamas,Canada or England.

But a few die-hard Tories decidedto stay in Florida and hatch a fantasticplot. They’d establish a Loyalist colonyon the shores of Tampa Bay, one ofFlorida’s best natural harbors.

There, protected by Britishwarships, they’d hold out until Britaincould trade Gibraltar, which Spain had

long coveted, forFlorida. But their planfell apart when theBritish governmentdecided that Gibraltar,which controlled theentrance to theMediterranean Sea, wasworth far more thanFlorida would ever beworth.

The Heritage Village Museum Newsletter - compliments of the Pinellas County Historical Society

Fall 2012 / Winter 2013

By Lester DaileyPCHS member

Several years ago, a co-worker ofmine visited Colonial Williamsburgand mentioned that she was fromFlorida. A costumed docentproceeded to tell her that in the 1770s,the era he was portraying, Florida wasa Spanish colony, and Floridians wereenemies of the English colonists inVirginia.

Wrong! For 20 years, from 1763 to1783, Florida was as English as tea andcrumpets. In fact, there were twoFloridas in those days, and they wereboth English.

In the conflict known in thiscountry as the French and Indian War,and globally as the Seven Years’ War,England had captured Havana, Spain’sprincipal seaport in the Americas.Spain wanted the city back, andoffered its 200-year-old Florida colonyin exchange. The British didn’tespecially want Florida, which theyvariously described as a “sandy desert”and a “peat bog.” But Spanish troops inFlorida were a threat to the Englishcolonies in Georgia and the Carolinasso, in the 1763 Treaty of Paris, theyagreed to the trade.

The Anglican British promisedreligious tolerance to Florida’s Catholicinhabitants, but the inhabitants didn’ttrust the Brits. Most of them fled to

11909 125th Street North, Largo, FL 33774www.pinellascounty.org/heritage • (727) 582-2123

Hours: Wednesday–Saturday 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Sunday 1 p.m.–4 p.m.Closed Monday, Tuesday and County holidays.

Who says Florida was never an English colony?

Major General James F. Grant

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