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Published
in Pioneers of the First Coast II September 2006 Numerous reasons and circumstances
prompted the journeys of pre-statehood families to Florida.
Some were sent from Spain to colonize the first permanent European
settlement on the mainland of what is now the United States and stayed
on through 20 years of British possession and 36 years of Spanish
repossession before Florida became a permanent possession of the United
States in 1819. Some came to populate the new
British provinces of East and West Florida with English speaking people
after Spain relinquished ownership in 1763 to Great Britain. Many Greek, Italian, and Spanish
families, seeking to break the bonds of poverty, accompanied Dr. Andrew
Turnbull to New Smyrna as indentured servants in 1768. The Revolution sent numerous
Loyalists and their families scurrying from the colonies, most of them
from Georgia, to the safety of the British controlled provinces of East
and West Florida. Loyalists families who were willing to pledge loyalty
to Spain for grants of land remained after Great Britain ceded Florida
back to Spain in 1783. And for countless others, Florida
was the last leg of long treks from northern climes down waterways and
overland roads, along which they left remnants of kin strewn through the
Carolinas and Georgia, in their quest for a place
in the sun. Incredibly, the loss of an ear set
in motion a chain of events that culminated in the arrival of one family
whose ancestors had already left their mark on Florida history and whose
multitudinous descendants today contribute considerably to the
population of practically every county of the state and have spilled
over into many other states, a family which has produced leaders in
practically every field of endeavor. In April, 1731, Juan de Leon
Fandino, a captain in the Spanish coast guard, boarded suspected
smuggling ship Rebecca and cut off the ear of her captain, Robert
Jenkins. Eight and a half years later, in October 1739, display of the
ear in the British Parliament prompted Great Britain to declare against
Spain the war that is popularly known as the War of Jenkin’s Ear. General James Oglethorpe, political
and military leader of Georgia, wishing to stop once and for all the
frequent raiding forays into the lower British colonies by the Spanish
of St. Augustine, forged the chain's next link when in the early summer
of 1740 he lead an unsuccessful expedition against the “Castle” at
St. Augustine. His failed attempt served only to intensify the
determination of the Spanish to rid the Southeastern coast, an area they
strongly considered to be rightfully theirs, of the lower English
colonies. They immediately increased hostile activities against their
unwelcome neighbors, especially on the high seas. Another link, in the form of the
merchant ship Ancona, entered
Charles Town harbor August 16, 1740 from Cowes, England, where she had
delivered barrels of Carolina Gold
(rice). Aboard her was David Cutler Braddock. It was not by the smile of
Lady Luck that the 24 year old of Long Island, New York had the
responsible position of ship’s mate on a merchant ship at such a young
age. His grandfather, John Braddick I, was a sea captain from England
who had settled in America in the mid-1600’s. David’s father, John
Braddick II, had also been a sea captain who sailed commercially between
Long Island and colonial and foreign ports. During Queen Anne’s War
Captain Braddick II served with distinction at Fort William Henry on
Long Island and later delivered a shipload of bread to Connecticut
“for the subsistence of the men belonging to this colony, now going
against Canada, &c.” In 1721 he rescued a slave boy from a
“piratical ship” and landed him in New London. He lived by the sea
and died by the sea: Peter Zenger’s February 18, 1734 issue of the New
York Weekly Journal reported, “Braddock, Capt. and son killed on
board ship by an Indian.” The son killed was David’s younger brother
Peter. David’s older half-brother John
Braddick III was a ship captain as was his son, John Braddick IV, who
delivered supplies to Continental ships in New England waters during the
Revolution, including the Alfred, John
Paul Jones’s ship before the Bohomme
Richard. Although not a man of the sea,
David’s maternal grandfather, John Cutler, who had changed his name
from Johannes DeMesmaker to its English equivalent when he arrived in
Hingham, Massachusetts from his native Holland in the mid-1600’s,
contributed even more fortitude in the face of danger to his
grandson’s genes. He served as a surgeon attached to the Massachusetts
regiment in the colony’s great battle with the Narragansett’s in
King Philip's War. Dr. Cutler’s great-grandson, Benjamin Clarke
Cutler, married the niece of General Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox.
Their granddaughter, Julia Ward Howe, wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic. The Ancona sailed from Charles Town in November, 1740, her holds bulging
with barrels of rice. Whatever her intended destination, she did not
make it. A Spanish privateer sloop commanded by Captain Hosea captured
her and took her and her crew into St. Augustine. By January 31, 1741,
David had escaped and made his way a hundred miles northward to Georgia
to Oglethorpe’s headquarters at Fort Frederica on St. Simon’s and
had written a deposition of his experience: Deposition of David
Cutler Braddock Mate of the Ancona
Merchant & taken Prisoner on board the Same by a
Spanish Privateer sloop from St. Augustine
commanded by Capt. Hosea. This Deponent being examined under oath declares that on
his first being carried into Augustin & having the Liberty of going
about the sd Town & free Liberty of talking to the Inhabitants
there, he heard from several persons but more especially from John
Delorem who was born in Italy, and speaks English, Spanish, and French,
that at the latter end of the siege commanded by General Oglethorpe the
Soldiers were so reduced that for want of Provisions they were forced to
kill and eat Catts, & that if they had not received Provisions by
certain Vessells getting in safe at ye latter end of ye sd Siege,
they wo'd have been obliged through want to have surrendered up ye
town and Castle to General Oglethorpe in a very little time, for
that when the sd Vessels arrived they had such numbers of Indians,
Negroes Women and Children in ye Town that they had not Provisions
enough in Town and Castle to keep them alive one week. This Deponent farther says that ye Mate of the Privateer
Sloop which took him Prisoner was an Irishman called Augustus Barrington
who told this Deponent yt they came from Campeachy to ye Havannah where
they got a Commission from
the Govr. who put Provs. on board them for Augustine,
&c sent her as a Guard Sloop to several other Vessels loaded
wth. Provs. for the Relief of the
garrison of Augustine, and
that they, with the other vessells arrived at ye Musquetoes, and after
they were got safe in there, they saw an Englishman of War cruizing that
Bar for 2 to 3 Days, & that the Galleys and other Boats helped to
unload them & they got into Augustine safe with all the Provisions,
The said Augustus Barrington said that their Sloop lay Guard Sloop out
ward most at ye Musquetoes, & that he ran away with intent to get to
General Oglethorpe but he was retaken by the Spands. & threatened to
be shott. He said, If he
co'd. have got to General Oglethorpe and have given notice where they
lay so as to stop the Provisions from
getting in,
the Spaniards
Necessity at Augustine was so
great that they must have surrendered in a weeks time.
And all the People and Soldiers that this deponent conversed with
at Augustine, confirmed ye accots. of their being drove to the last
necessity at the time that the said Vessels arrived, And that to his own
they had eaten up ye Prov'isns. then received and again were drove to
great want, about a week before he made his Escape.
He often heard the people Say that during the siege and even all
the while that he was Prisoner there that they durst not go abroad to
get any Provisions from the Land Side, and were obliged to depend on
Provisions brought by Sea. He further says that whilst he was there was a Mutiny
amongst those men which were called Watchinungoes who are condemned Men,
or Transports for a time, chiefly from New Spain, and that they
attempted to take the Castle but that they were discovered &
prevented, & they
confessed yt if they had succeeded, their Intention was to send to
General Oglethorpe. He further says that the Castle is garrisond by 35 men
only, w'ch. is a Guard commanded by a Sergeant and who relieves every
day; and that there is a Lieutent. of the Castle and a Gunner who
constantly reside there that the rest of the garrison is quartered in
Barracks at a distance and in the Town.
And that the Watchimimgoes said that if they had taken the
Castle, they thought they could have defended it till they could have
got Succors from General Oglethorpe.
David
Cutler Braddock Sworn
to before me this 31st. day ofJanuary1741
(Endorsed) John
Calwell
in
Mr. Oglethorpe's Letter to A. S.
Apparently impressed by the pluck of
the young mariner, Oglethorpe sent him to Charles Town to pick up the
schooner Norfolk, outfit her
as a privateer, and enlist a crew for her. By early spring of 1742, he
had her ready enough to sail with a party of Indians to the vicinity of
St Augustine “to get some prisoners for intelligence.” He returned
shortly with six Spaniards and three scalps. David and the Norfolk
were in Charles Town June 22, 1742 when a Spanish fleet suddenly
appeared off St. Simon’s and proceeded to disembark a force of
invading soldiers. He and a small flotilla of South Carolina vessels,
delayed by Lieutenant Governor Bull’s difficulty in rounding up
sufficient crewmen, arrived off St. Simon’s just in time to chase the
retreating Spanish ships bearing the soundly defeated army back to St.
Augustine and lob a few nine-pound shot at the “Castle.” A year and a half earlier the South
Carolina government had ordered that two half-galleys of a draft capable
of pursuing raiding Spanish galleys through the shallows of the
colony’s coastal waters be built. The first, the Charles
Town, was completed in time to be in the flotilla sent to
Oglethorpe’s aid. She was under the capable command of Captain William
Lyford, Sr. He also had overall command of South Carolina’s provincial
navy consisting of, in addition to the Charles
Town, the second half-galley Beaufort
and two scout boats. It was old sea dogs like Lyford who gave truth to
the first half of the aphorism, “In the olden days, they had wooden
ships and iron men, today we have wooden men and iron ships.” A
commercial mariner from Jamaica, he had met and married the daughter of
William Spatches, a well-to-do ship owner who was at one time president
of the Bahamas, and had settled on New Providence Island. Captured by
Spanish privateers in 1726 and taken into Havana, Lyford escaped and
made his way back to the Bahamas in a dugout. After his wife’s death
in 1728, he moved his commercial maritime venture to Beaufort, South
Carolina. Prior to being placed in charge of the provincial navy, he had
commanded Fort Frederick, South Carolina’s southernmost outpost
against Spanish invasions and Indian uprisings. Lyford, like Oglethorpe, was
impressed with David and placed him in command of the Beaufort. David married Lyford’s daughter and the couple added a
new and important link to the chain with the birth of their son, John
Cutler Braddock. For the next year the two captains, Lyford and
Braddock,
routinely cruised the coast to St. Augustine and beyond, monitoring
Spanish military activities. Then in September, 1743, based on the
damning testimony of some of his crew, Lyford was charged with trading
with the enemy while on a prisoner swapping mission to St. Augustine. He
would have been sent to England to be tried for treason had it not been
for the intervention of the commander of the largest British man-of war
on the American station who wrote a letter to the South Carolina
government: His
Honour also communicated to your Honours the following letters he had
received from Capt. Utting Commander of His Majesty's Ship
Loo. vizt. Sir
Loo Port Royal Harbour
Dec
10, 1743 Being
informed by Mr. Lyford
Pilot of his Majesty's Ship Loo,
under my command, your Honour has granted a warrant for apprehending
him, for trading with the Spaniards, I think it a duty incumbent on me,
as it is for his Majesty's Service, to acquaint your Honour and His
Majesty's Council, that he is actually Pilot of His Majesty's Ship Loo,
and that there is no man in the Country that knows anything of the Bar
or Harbour of Port Royal and His Majesty's Ship Loo
under my command is fit for Sea, and am well assured that there will be
a 40 or 50 Gun ship from England for that place very soon, that cannot
properly get in without some able Pilot, to carry her, & also to
carry the Loo out, and to be continued at that Port, for want of which His
Majesty's Service, and also the Service of this Province must greatly
suffer, there being no other person in the Province capable of taking
charge of any of His Majesty's Ships of that rate for that Port for
which reason I, in duty to His Majesty's Service must beg your Honour
& His Majesty's Council will be pleased to take it into
consideration, and if his Crime is not so bad but if on his proper
conceptions and his going bail for his future Conduct, your Honour &
his Majesty's honourable Council will be pleased to release him, it
being intirely for his Majesty's Service in this Province.
I am &c
Ashby Utting
Utting’s
intercession prevailed: His
Honour the Lt. Govr having asked the advice and opinion of the Board
though it was the opinion of his Majesty's Council that a legal warrant
having gone out, in due manner against the saidLyford
for high Treason, the Law should take its course, But lest his
Majesty's Service suffer, as represented by Capt. Utting, and as this
was the first accusation of any being committed by the said Lyford , and
as the general tension of his Life and Conversation in this Province
hath been a good and faithful Subject to his Majesty, ought to be, and
in particular in giving information, in the beginning of the year 1738,
of a Spanish Squadron off St. Augustine, intended as it was supposed
against this Province, or the colony of Georgia, it was the advice of
his Majesty's Council to his Honour the Lt. Govr. to represent the case
of the said Lyford to his Majesty's Secretary of State together with the
said letter of Capt. Utting in order to obtain his Majesty's directions
thereupon. Apparently his Majesty’s
directions thereupon was to do nothing further than remove Lyford from
his command in the South Carolina provincial navy. However, Utting
retained him as pilot of the Loo, and Lyford was aboard her on
February 5, 1744, when she ran aground on a Florida key known since as
Looe Key. David continued cruising the coast;
however, the Commons House of Assembly relocated the Beaufort’s
station to a cove near the southern point of Hilton Head so “. . . that
she may be able to discover the Approach of an Enemy, and give such
Intelligence to the Inhabitants as may enable them to provide for their
Security.” The point and the cove still bear David’s name. In May,
1745 he nearly suffered the same fate as his father-in-law had earlier,
and without a Captain Utting to bail him out. Colonel William Horton,
who succeeded Oglethorpe as military leader of Georgia and whose house
still stands on Jekyll Island, at least the tabby walls of it, on mere
suspicion accused him of conspiring to trade with the Spanish at St.
Augustine. The testimony of David's entire crew before the Governor's
Council quickly exonerated him. He was not so fortunate the
following year. On June 13, 1746, despite testimony that the Beaufort
had suffered a split foremast, Governor James Glen dismissed him from
provincial service after receiving complaints from merchant ship owners
that he had kept their hastily borrowed crew members, most of whom had
been bailed out of the workhouse for the purpose, beyond the agreed time
while in pursuit of a Spanish privateer which had appeared off the South
Carolina coast. Undaunted, David registered two
schooners, the John and Mary
and the Pickpocket, three days
later and embarked on a career of commercial shipping ventures. And
exactly one year after his dismissal he received a 500 acre grant on the
Ogeechee River and created a key link in the chain of events by moving
his family to Georgia.
After the loss of the H.M.S.
Loo, David’s father-in-law, William Lyford, had returned to the
Bahamas where he was placed in command of the privateer Isabella
by Governor John
Tinker and had promptly sailed out into the Gulf of Mexico to capture
the Nefra Seignora de la Luz
containing a cargo valued at £52,500. Undoubtedly enticed by word from
his father-in-law of the rich harvest of Spanish vessels awaiting daring
mariners in the Caribbean, David sailed to the Bahamas in late summer of
1747 and took command of the privateer galley Viper.
After taking three prizes, the Nuestra
Senora de Bagona, the Bardera,
and the La Fama Vante with a
total appraisal value of £13,550, he returned home to Georgia long
enough to purchase 400 acres adjoining his property on the Ogeechee,
then returned to the prowl within three months. This time, while at the
helm of his father-in-law’s old privateer, the Isabella,
he captured the French vessel Florifaunt
carrying a cargo of indigo, sugar, and cotton
with an appraisal value of £15,000. In the summer of 1752 he
received a healthy dose of his own medicine when his privateer was
captured by a Spanish privateer and taken into Havana. Released along
with other prisoners by the Spanish and placed aboard an England-bound
British man-of-war, David suffered the further humiliation of being
given a rowboat in 13 fathoms of water off the coast of Georgia by the
vessel’s captain, who refused to veer any further off his course, and
told to row himself the rest of the way home. Having lost his privateer to the
Spanish, he returned to his shipping and other maritime enterprises
until he could procure another vessel worthy of committing legalized
piracy on the high seas, which was what privateering amounted to. The
regard with which he was viewed in maritime matters by leaders in his
home port of Savannah is apparent in a letter written by James Habersham
to Georgia Trustee secretary Benjamin Martyn in England concerning
navigation problems in the Savannah River. Habersham, after detailing
the problems, wrote, “Capt. David Cutler Braddock, who I mentioned in
my Journal of the 21st November last to be sailed for New
England, is proposed to accompany the Surveyors in this Enquiry, when he
arrives here. He is allowed to be an excellent Seaman, and to be well
acquainted with this River . . . .” With the War of Jenkin’s Ear over
and the Seven Years' War going on, French vessels, which were not as
plentiful off the southeast coast as Spanish galleons had been, became
the prey. However, before David could sail his newly fitted-out
privateer, Cockspur, across
the bar on her maiden voyage, he captured the French vessel Les
Deux Amis, disguised as a British merchant ship, in the Savannah
River in late summer of 1756. That same year, while on a privateering
expedition, he made a chart of uncanny accuracy of the Florida Keys,
which is now in the Library of Congress. Well-known colonial naturalist
and explorer Bernard Romans, in his book, A
Concise Natural History of East and West Florida, mentions another
nautical chart David made while on a privateering expedition along the
gulf coast. The chart, which is no longer in existence, was of Tampa Bay
and surrounding areas. Romans says, “. . . Capt. Braddock was
generally acknowledged the first Englishman who explored the bay.” A French vessel David pursued as prey in the
spring of 1757 off Santa Domingo turned out to be a privateer of
superior force. The Cockspur
was mauled beyond further use. Three of its crew were killed and many of
them wounded. By February 10, 1758, he had a new privateer and was ready
to sail out of the Savannah River with a letters of marque—a document
issued by a government allowing a private citizen to equip a ship with
arms in order to attack enemy ships—in hand: By Henry Ellis Esquire
Lieutenant
His expedition aboard the King
of Prussia, with which he had met with only moderate success, taking
and aiding in the taking of four minor French ships pretending to be
Danish, was his last venture as a privateer. However, it was not his
last as a mariner nor in facing peril. In addition to continuing his
commercial shipping business, he was appointed by Governor James Wright
as commander of Georgia’s scout boat in 1761, a position he held until
late 1768. Primary of his duties in this role was “. . . to see what
discovery he could make of any Vessel hovering about the Coast, and
should he on his Return report having seen any such Vessel, his Honour
then proposed to order an additional Number of Hands on Board the Scout
Boat, and also to man another small Vessel from hence, in Order to
pursue the Enemy; and to send an immediate express concerning it to
Charles Town that the Commanders of his Majesty's Ships there might have
Notice thereof.” Interestingly, David and the scout boat were sent to
seize a vessel which had been reported taking a cargo of hogs and other
provisions off Talbot Island, an island on which some of his descendants
would one day reside. On another occasion, he and his crew took the
scout boat up the Savannah River to Augusta and back, no small feat
considering the one way distance is over a hundred miles and they had to
row it both ways. He demonstrated the versatility of
his skills as a mariner when he saved the British man-of-war Epreuve
after it ran aground March 18, 1763 in the Savannah River after the
efforts of many others failed. The South
Carolina Gazette reported: The Georgia
Gazette of 14th of July, contains the following compliment to Capt.
Braddock, commander of the king's scout-boat, to whose skill and
uncommon perseverance is said to be principally owing the saving of his
majesty's ship the Epreuve,
after it was
thought by most people impossible.
“It is with
pleasure we acquaint the
public, that
the Epreuve
has safely come to her
moorings in this harbour, which
adds great honour to the merit and assiduity of Capt. David Cutler
Braddock, and plainly elucidates the experience and great abilities of
that gentleman.” In 1764, he was elected to colonial
Georgia’s Commons House of Assembly as a representative of Acton, a
village on the outskirts of Savannah. He was highly active in the
Assembly's affairs right up to his death in February, 1769, serving on
numerous committees. The goal of one committee on which he served was to
obtain a charter, land, and support to convert Bethesda, the orphanage
founded by George Whitefield, a central figure in the Great Awakening
religious revival of colonial America, into a college. The goal of
another was to appoint Benjamin Franklin Georgia’s agent in England. Since his birth was recorded in St.
Helena’s Parish Register in 1743, the name of David’s son, John
Cutler Braddock, appeared in public records only once—a petition for
250 acres on the Ogeechee River in December, 1764—until July 16, 1769.
On this date John added another significant link to the chain
when he married Lucia Cook in Jerusalem Church, now the oldest standing
public building in Georgia, in the German settlement of Ebenezer. Except
for another petition for land and sale of the granted land, public
records again fall silent on John until after the start of the
Revolution when Governor James Wright, in exile, wrote a lengthy memo
concerning what is now known as the Battle of Thomas Creek which
occurred in May, 1777. Wright mentions John as commander of one of the
three Georgia galleys bringing Continentals to a scheduled rendezvous
with a unit of Georgia militia commanded by Colonel John Baker and that
the galleys had run aground in Amelia Narrows, resulting in Baker’s
unit losing many men in ambush by Colonel Thomas Browne’s Florida
Rangers. In their next recorded encounter
with the enemy, the Georgia galleys and their commanders more than
redeemed themselves. The South
Carolina and American General Gazette ran the following article:
C H A R L E S T O W N, April
23, This afternoon an express arrived here from Savannah, by the whom the
following advices were received. Copy of a Letter from Col. Elbert to Major General Howe,
at Savannah. Dear General,
Frederica, April 19, 1778 I have the happiness to inform
you that about 10 o'clock this afternoon, the Brigantine
Hinchinbrooke, the
Sloop Rebecca,
and a prize brig, all
struck the British Tyrant's colors and surrendered to the American arms.
Having received intelligence that the above vessels were at this
place, I put about three hundred men, by detachment from the troops
under my command at Fort Howe, on board the three
gallies—the Washington,
Capt. Hardy; the Lee,
Capt Braddock; and the Bulloch,
Capt. Hatcher; and a detachment of artillery with a field piece, under
Capt. Young, I put on board
a boat. With this little
army, we embarked at Darien, and last evening effected a landing at a
bluff about a mile below the town; leaving Col. White on board the Lee,
Capt. Melvin on board the Washington,
and Lieut. Petty on board the Bulloch,
each with a sufficient party of troops.
Immediately on Landing, I dispatched Lieut. Col. Ray and Major
Roberts, with about 100 men, who marched directly up to the town, and
made prisoners three marines and two sailors belonging to the Hinchinbrooke. It being
late, the gallies did not engage until this morning.
You must imagine what my feelings were, to see our three little
men of war going to the attack of these three vessels, who have spread
terror on our coast, and who were drawn up in order of battle; but the
weight of our metal soon damped the courage of these heroes, who soon
took to their boats; and, as many as could, abandoned the vessels with
everything on board, of which we immediately took possession.
What is extraordinary,
we have not one man hurt. Capt.
Ellis [ of the Hinchinbrooke]
is drowned, and Capt. Mowbry [of the Rebecca]
made his escape. As soon as
I see Col. White, who has not yet come to us with his prizes, I shall
consult with him, the other
three officers, and the
commanding officers of the galleys, on the expediency of attacking the Galatea
now lying off Jekyll. I send
you this by Brigade Major Habersham, who will inform you of the other
particulars. I am. &c.
SAMUEL ELBERT, Col. Commandant After Savannah and control of
coastal Georgia fell to the British in late 1779, the Georgia royal
assembly convened the following May and by July had hammered out acts
designed to punish Georgians who had taken part in "the Bloody
Rebellion." The Georgia
Treason Act and The British
Disqualifying Act named names, 114 on the first act and 151 on the
second. John, who now commanded 348 seamen a few miles away across the
waterways at Fort Lyttleton near Beaufort, SC, had the honor of being on
both lists. His name also appeared on a list compiled by Loyalist Thomas
Flyming, ". . . who being duly Sworn Saith, that to his certain
knowledge the following persons underwritten were all of them very
active in Rebellion against His majesty in this Province." John was
in noble company; biographies of 23 of the 79 men on Flyming's list are
recorded in the first volume of Men
of Mark in Georgia. With only two newspapers in the
southern colonies during the Revolution, one in Charleston, the other in
Savannah, and long before instantaneous communication facilities and
embedded newsmen, only a few of the many exploits of combat that surely
must have occurred, considering the intensity of the war in the South,
made it into print. Those that did gave only sparse details. One of the
more detailed ones, which appeared in the September 27, 1781 issue of
the British controlled Royal
Georgia Gazette and, naturally, had a British slant to it, gave
clear indication that John's fervor for the cause of Liberty was not
daunted by the legal death threat hanging over his head: Last
Tuesday fe'nnight as the brigantine Dunmore,
Captain Caldeleugh, of 6 three pounders,
and having 12 men on board, was going from Sunbury in order to
proceed on her voyage to Jamaica, she was attacked by two Rebel gallies,
schooner rigged, at ten o'clock in the forenoon
the largest, commanded by John Braddock,
mounted two carriage
guns and a number of swivels, had upwards of
50 men, is about 60 feet long, and rows with 26 oars the other
also mounted some swivels; they kept about
her till two in the afternoon, and were prepared for boarding,
but the brisk fire from the brigantine then obliged them to sheer off.
During the engagement the
Dunmore ran them both aground, but
they both got off again; she received no damage, but it's imagined the
largest galley lost some of their men, as several
holes were perceived in her sails,
and the grape shot was seen to light on each side of her. The
brigantine, after getting about 60 leagues out to sea, sprang a leak,
which obliged her to put back, and she arrived at Tybee on Wednesday
evening the 18th inst. with six feet water in her hold.
In coming in she again fell in
with her antagonists, but a few shot fired at them
immediately compelled them to beat away.
The Dunmore's leak being stopt, she is again ready to proceed on her
voyage. John's naval exploits did not end
with the surrender of the British in October, 1781. His uncle, Captain
William Lyford, Jr., who had been "Pilot for the Bar and Port of
Savannah" for ten years, had declared himself a Loyalist at the
War's outbreak and had fled to St. Augustine. From there he had spent
the war serving as pilot on British men-of-war along the Southern coast.
In April 1783, he and several other military-minded men sat in a
meeting in St. Augustine with 25 year old Colonel Andrew Deveaux, a
notorious Loyalist from South Carolina, laying plans to drive the
Spanish from Nassau, Bahamas. The plan needing boats and skilled
mariners, Lyford enlisted his nephew's experience and vessel to play a
role in the successful raid. According to Bahamas Register
General Department of Land Grants, Book C-1, Lyford, Deveaux, and
John Braddock received royal grants within four days of each other,
presumably for their parts in driving out the Spanish. John's grant was
on Long Island, where he was later given another grant. Lyford's was on
Cat Island at the spot where it was thought until 1926 that Columbus had
first landed in the New World. Lyford also received a substantial grant
on New Providence Island for his war services. Exclusive residential
resort Lyford Cay, where the likes of internationally famous novelist
Arthur Hailey and actor Sean Connery live, stands on the site of that
grant. Ironically, with Braddock Point on Hilton Head Island, the tips
of two of the better known resorts islands in Southeastern waters bear
the names of brothers-in-law. John also received two grants from
the new State of Georgia for his services as galley commander in the
Revolution, one of 500 acres in Camden County on the Great Satilla
River, the other for 100 acres in Glynn County on St. Simons Island.
Settling on St. Simons, he embarked, as his father had when his
sea-fighting days were over, on a life of public service. He served in
numerous appointed and elected offices in and for Glynn County: justice
of peace, county commissioner with power to sell lands confiscated from
Loyalists, commissioner for the Port of Brunswick, commissioner for the
town of Brunswick, road commissioner for St. Simons, justice of inferior
court, and two terms as the county’s representative to the Georgia
House of Assembly. He also served as an officer in the Glynn County
Regiment of Militia, formed to protect residents of the still
frontier-like area from Indian raids, and later commanded the unit’s
Volunteer Troop of Horse. His death in early April, 1794 created another
link. His widow, Lucia, forged the final
link by moving with the four of their children who were still unmarried
to Amelia Island sometime between his death and July 20, 1796, the date
she signed a Spanish oath of allegiance. The real reason for
her decision to relocate from Georgia to East Florida is not
known. The move may have been prompted by one or more of the following
circumstance: back taxes were owed on the land her late husband had been
granted, the Spanish were
offering grants of land to anyone willing to sign an oath of allegiance,
and her oldest daughter Ann and her husband, John Edwards, already
resided in the vicinity of Amelia Island. Soon after arrival, Lucia married
William Alexander Fitzgerald, a native of Virginia who lived on Amelia.
Ironically, their plantation, Black Hammock, overlooked Sawpit Bluff
where the galley of her late husband, John Braddock, and two other
vessels loaded with Continentals were to rendezvous with Col. John Baker
and his company of militia in 1777, had the galleys not run aground on
Amelia Narrows. With four marriageable and
soon-to-be marriageable children, Lucia could not have picked a more
promising locale in which to settle. Neighbor Spicer Christopher, who
had arrived in East Florida from Maryland during the British possession,
was already ensconced on a generous grant of land on nearby Big Talbot
Island. He was known far and wide for raising and training Arabian
horses, for lush orange groves, and for his hospitality to passersby on
the King’s Highway, which ran through his property and which he helped
maintain. In addition to Talbot, he had several other grants of land in
the area. And, most importantly, he had several marriageable and
soon-to-be marriageable children. In time, three of his offspring,
Martha, Charlotte, and John, would marry three of the Braddock siblings,
John David, William, and Hester. And to further intertwine the Braddock
and Christopher lines and pull in the Edwards line at the same time, two
daughters of Ann and John Edwards married sons of Spicer. Another neighbor, John Carroll
Houston II, further convoluted family lines by marrying the daughter of
John David Braddock and Martha Christopher after his first wife, the
youngest daughter of Spicer Christopher, died. And if that did not
complicate entanglements of the four families enough, one of the
daughters of the Houston/Braddock union married a son of William
Braddock, and a son of that union married first a granddaughter of John
David Braddock and then a granddaughter of Ann and John Edwards who was
also a great-granddaughter of Spicer Christopher. In all, the two Braddock brothers,
John David and William, sired 19 children. Three of their children and
nine of their children's 122 children married offspring of the eleven
children of Revolutionary War soldier Burroughs Higginbotham, who had
migrated from Georgia into Nassau County. When
not farming the lands granted them and siring and raising children to
help farm them, John David and William, like their father and
grandfather, appear from the scant mentions of them that can be gleaned
from The East Florida Papers and Florida Territorial Papers to have had a
natural propensity for being involved in public affairs. Record of the
extent of their involvement in early Nassau County was lost when the
Nassau County courthouse burned in 1839. On March 17, 1812, a small army
calling themselves the "Patriots" invaded Amelia Island. Both
brothers, along with Patriot leader John Houston McIntosh, their
brother-in-law William G. Christopher, John C. Houston, and Zephaniah
Kingsley, were among the 14 delegates who on July 17, 1812 drew up and
signed what would have been the constitution of a non-Spanish East
Florida had the goal of the invaders succeeded. The War of 1812 started
in between those two dates. Prompted by a fear that the British would
attempt an invasion of Florida, U. S. Army troops were sent to East
Florida. After
the war ended and the two invading forces departed, William Braddock had
the audacity to file a $10,235 suit for property damages against the
United States government, claiming, ". . . that this part of the
country was in possession of the United States Troops and Patriots from
the time of their arriving into it till the time of the evacuation in
1813, some time in May of that year. This allied army of occupation
continued during all the period scouring the country for forage and
subsistence and some of them, or its followers, plundered anything that
was valuable in their way . . ." His brother, John David, one of
his two witnesses, was as audacious in testifying he ". . . was
with the Patriots by compulsion." The ink had hardly dried on the
document making Florida a territory of the United States in 1822 when
many of the same men who had signed the memorial complaining about not
having a municipality signed one dated November 25, 1822 addressed to
the President and Congress of the United States complaining that the
taxes to be imposed on them for maintaining some of the necessities of a
municipality—an inferior court and county regulations—was more than
they could bear. In December, 1823, John David
Braddock sat on the first grand jury ever impaneled in Jacksonville.
Traveling from his home at Evergreen on the Little St. Marys, a trip he
probably made by boat, he was reimbursed for 124 miles at 5¢ a mile.
Citizens of Fernandina, that same month, sent a flurry of memorials
“To the Honourable the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States in Congress assembled.” One requested that legislation
be considered for requiring wreckers (salvagers of wrecked ships) to
bring their salvage into a port in Florida, and that Fernandina be
designated that port. Another asked that Fernandina “. . . be made a
port of entry, with equal footing with ports in the States in foreign
trade.” And the third requested that the
land the Spanish had reserved around the town's flagpole and the town's
public lots be declared the property of the town.
John David signed all three memorials. William Braddock was elected a
legislative councilor in 1828 and 1829, and he and a son and a nephew
signed a memorial in 1831 “. . . praying for the reappointment of
Judge Joseph L. Smith.” Two years later, Governor William DuVal
appointed John David and William justices of the peace for Nassau
County, and William as an appraiser for Union Bank. John David was again
appointed justice of the peace the following year. The second generation of Florida
Braddocks began coming of age and following in their fathers' footsteps
in public service. In 1835, when the Nassau County seat was moved from
Fernandina to Evergreen, Spicer, son of John David, was appointed
postmaster. James Aldridge and Alexander, sons of William, were among
those who marched 70 miles in 1837 to enroll in the First Regiment of
Florida Volunteers to serve in the second Seminole War. In 1839 John
David and William and five of their offspring were among the 400 East
Floridians signing a memorial protesting the federal government’s plan
of admitting Florida into the Union as one state rather than two, East
and West Florida. Through the ensuing years, numerous
other limbs became attached to the Braddock tree, including such Florida
pioneer families as Mizell, Colson, Vanzant, Haddock, Wilds, Hodges,
Stokes, Owens, Wingate, Libby, Pickett, Ogilvie, Bessant, Jones, Connor,
Griffin, Sauls, Johnson, Huntley, Wilson, Vaughan, Hagan, Geiger, and
Kirkland. The complexity of intermarriages with some of these families
coupled with those of the earlier mentioned ones make the lines on a
Braddock genealogy chart look for the world like a web spun by a drunken
spider. As the Seminoles were moved out,
many of the second and third generation of Braddock descendants, like
their forebears, became pioneers and migrated westward and southward
into the frontiers of the state. Subsequent generations continued the
migration, gradually spreading like kudzu runners gone wild. Because of
the heavy intermarriage of Braddocks with other families—strenuous and
ongoing family research by several family members has, so far, turned up
fellow-descendants bearing 350 other surnames—determining how far they
have spread is next to
impossible. And census records of recent years are not yet available for
determining the exact extent of proliferation of just those who bear the
Braddock surname. However, phone company records give a reasonable
picture of their meandering. Current Florida phonebooks list Braddocks
in 99 of the state's communities and 38 of its 67 counties. Based on the
penchant for seeking their fortunes elsewhere of just the one surname,
it is reasonable to assume that those of the other 350 have saturated
the peninsula. Keeping in mind that all but a
handful of Florida Braddocks are descended from just two men, phone
records also reveal the prolific effect of their finding their place in
the Florida sun compared to Braddocks who found theirs in other states.
Nationally, 1641 residential phones are listed for the name Braddock,
the 7043rd most common name in the United States, Smith being
number one. The largest number of these, 241, are in Florida. Only
Texas, which is five times larger in area than Florida and has five
million more people, comes close with a mere 210. No other state comes
close, including New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia,
states into which the four main clans of Braddocks coming from England
in colonial days settled. And it all began with the cutting
off of an ear.
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