Guides @ UF: Guide to Researching in Florida's Colonial Papers: Online Sources for Undergraduate Research

Primary Sources and Collections

Florida History Online (UNF)
"Florida History Online" is the creation of Dr. Daniel Schafer, emeritus professor of history at the University of North Florida, author of "St. Augustine's British Years" (2001), and of major works on William Bartram, Zephaniah Kingsley, Anna Kingsley, and other colonial figures. The website features transcriptions of colonial documents and student projects; it is especially strong on the British Period and on John and William Bartram's travels through Florida.
Early Visions of Florida
A digital archive developed by Dr. Thomas Hallock, Professor of English at University of South Florida, and author of "A Road Course in Early American Literature" (2020). It contains excerpts from classic early works about Florida, with excellent introductions and background notes to each.
Cabeza de Vaca Chronicle Online
An eye-catching online version of the 1555 chronicle of Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, recounting the catastrophes of the ill-fated Panfilo de Narvaez expedition to Florida and the Gulf Coast in 1527-1528 The beginning of his account tells of the expedition in Florida. In 1528, he was shipwrecked on the Texas coast, and spent six years trying to return overland to Mexico. This edition is presented with the original 1555 edition on the left and a modern English translation of each page on the right. From the Wittliff Collection at Texas State University.
Index to the John Batterson Stetson Jr. Collection
The Stetson B. Stetson Jr. Collection contains copies of colonial documents for Spanish Florida held at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville. This index, which is arranged by year, provides English-language descriptions of the documents in the collection. Facsimiles of the originals are available on microfilm.
Index to the East Florida Papers
Created at the University of Florida, this is an English-language index to the 65,000 documents in the East Florida Papers at the Library of Congress. The East Florida Papers are the official records of the Spanish colonial government for the peninsula of Florida, 1784-1821. (The panhandle was in the colony of West Florida). Although these are only abstracts of the documents, they are a good guide to the original documents, which are housed on microfilm.
Florida Memory - Spanish Land Grants
The Spanish Land Grants were originally part of the East Florida Papers, but are now stored separately in Tallahassee. The State Archives of Florida has put the entire collection online. The grants provide maps and descriptions of the lands held by settlers in East Florida, 1784-1821.
Prof. John Worth's Guide to Spanish Colonial Florida (UWF)
One of Florida's leading archaeologists, and author of "Discovering Florida: First-contact Narratives from Spanish Expeditions along the Lower Gulf Coast" (2014), Dr. John Worth provides tips and leads to finding colonial resources online.
John H. Hann Collection of Colonial Records
The official historian for the San Luis de Apalachee mission site, Dr. John Hann's published works about the ceremonial ballgame of the Apalachee, a friar's shipwreck on the Georgia Coast, and histories of all the major indigenous people of sixteenth and seventeenth century Florida. Many of his translations of original documents are housed in this digital archive.
Unearthing St. Augustine's Colonial Heritage
Created by the University of Florida, this website features the holdings of the library at Governor's House, St. Augustine, a branch library of the university. Online source material includes abstracts of the parish records, maps, colonial census data, architectural renderings of historic buildings, and projects in historic preservation.
Castillo de San Marcos - People in Florida History
Provides short descriptions of people who were significant in the history of St. Augustine or associated with the Castillo.
Slave Society Digital Archive
Based at Vanderbilt University, and created and overseen by Dr. Jane Landers, professor of history and author of "Black Society in Spanish Florida" (1999), this site collects and preserves parish records and other fragile documents pertaining to both enslaved people and free people of color in the Spanish colonies.
Freedom on the Move
An online database of runaway slave ads, one of several databases now on the web. This one is at Cornell University. It includes accounts of fugitive slaves from Florida. Recommended texts on this subject are Dr. Larry E. Rivers' award-winning books "Slavery in Florida: Territorial Days to Emancipation" (2000) and "Rebels and Runaways : Slave Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Florida" (2012).
Artists and Naturalists in Florida
An online exhibit at the Florida Museum of Natural History featuring the Florida writings of naturalists William Bartram, Mark Catesby, and John James Audubon.
The Bartram Trail Conference
The official site of this annual Florida conference that highlights new studies on the writings and explorations of William Bartram.
Old Florida Maps
A good online introduction to early maps of Florida, with plenty of examples, and accompanying information about the history of each map.

Sources on the First and Second Seminole Wars

History of the Second Seminole War
A classic military history written by Prof. John K. Mahon, former chair of the History Department at the University of Florida, and the first book-length study of the conflict. Reprinted online by the University Press of Florida. For more recent assessments see: The Seminole Wars: America's longest Indian conflict by John Missall and Mary Lou Missall (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004) and The Second Seminole War and the Limits of American Aggression by C.S Monaco (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018).
The Exiles of Florida (1858) by Joshua Giddings
Gidding's early account of the First Seminole War and its meaning, particularly as a war against fugitive slaves and maroons, as well as against the Seminole. For modern accounts of the conflict, see Old Hickory's war: Andrew Jackson and the Quest for Empire by David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler (Mechanicsburg, PA Stackpole Books, 1996), generally considered the definitive narrative history of the war, and Florida's Seminole Wars, 1817-1858 by Joe Knetsch (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Pub. Co., 2003), which provides the most context to the war.
Pioneer Days in Florida
A digital archive of the nineteenth century manuscripts in the P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, with a good selection of original diaries, letters, and reports related to the Second Seminole War.
Goza/Mickler Index to Historic Newspaper Articles About Florida
This index contains abstracts of some 700 newspaper articles about the Second Seminole War (1835-1842). Abstracts give the name of the newspaper, the date, and the page number and column of the news article. The articles themselves can be searched and found in the database "Historic Newspaper Accounts of Florida."
Historic Newspaper Accounts of Florida
To be used in conjunction with the index above.
Army and Navy Chronicle (1838)
Harvard University's copy of the Army and Navy Chronicle for 1838, provided by Internet Archive; it contains many articles about the progress of the "Florida War," or Second Seminole War, during that year, the third year of the conflict.

Historiography

Historiographical Essays

Hoffman, Paul E. “The Historiography of Sixteenth-Century La Florida.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 91, no. 3, 2013, pp. 308–348. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43487512. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Landers, Jane. “Historiography of Seventeenth-Century La Florida.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 92, no. 3, 2014, pp. 470–479. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43487612. Accessed 4 July 2020.

McEwan, Bonnie G. “The Historical Archaeology of Seventeenth-Century La Florida.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 92, no. 3, 2014, pp. 491–523. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43487614. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Johnson, Sherry. “The Historiography of Eighteenth-Century Florida.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 93, no. 3, 2015, pp. 296–326. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43487692. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Cusick, James G. “Historiography of Nineteenth-Century Florida.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 94, no. 3, 2016, pp. 295–319., www.jstor.org/stable/24769274. Accessed 4 July 2020.

JSTOR
These essays are available in JSTOR via the University of Florida Library Catalog. You will need your 14-digit library card number (located under the barcode on your Gator 1 card, not including the dashes) to gain access.

Research Help

For research assistance with the colonial era, contact:

James G. Cusick

Curator, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History

George A Smathers Library

University of Florida

Gainesville FL 32611

jgcusick@ufl.edu

Cell/Text: 904-417-5801

Main website: https://pkyonge.uflib.ufl.edu/

Research Guide to the Collections: https://guides.uflib.ufl.edu/floridahistory/guide

Educational Sites and Historical Landmarks

St. Augustine: America's Ancient City
Designed by the Florida Museum of Natural History and featuring the work of Dr. Kathleen Deagan, professor emeritus of historical archaeology, this site describes the different colonial ears of St. Augustine, illustrated with artifacts from excavations and stories about the colonists who lived in the city.
La Florida: An Interactive Digital Archive
Developed by Dr. J. Michael Francis, professor of history at the University of South Florida, this site contains maps, biographies of early settlers, and other materials designed to bring the colonial period alive.
Tristan de Luna Archaeological Site
Featuring excavations at the founding site for Pensacola, this website, under the direction of Dr. John Worth, lead archaeologist, provides information about current excavations and finds from the de Luna expedition of 1559.
Santa Elena Archaeological Site
An introduction to "la Florida's" original capital of Santa Elena, founded in 1566 in what is now South Carolina - and a major archaeological project of the University of South Carolina.
San Luis de Apalachee Spanish Mission
This archaeological park is the single best representation of a seventeeth century Spanish mission in Florida. Its website covers the history of this important colonial community - equal in size to St. Augustine - the careful excavation of its buildings, and the reconstruction of what it looked like.
Castillo de San Marcos National Monument
An incredible example of imperial Spanish military fortification, the Castillo is Florida's oldest colonial-era structure, built between 1672 and 1695. It was instrumental in defending St. Augustine against three sieges (1702, 1740, and 1812).
Fort Mose Museum
Communicating the story of Florida's free black settlement, the museum covers the history of Spanish Florida as an early "underground railroad" and the stories of the free people of color who lived in Florida in the 1700s.
Colonial Research Associates
This website created by Dr. Roger Smith and Christina L. Smith features popular works on Florida in the British colonial era, Dr. Smith's specialty. His thesis and dissertation, both online, cover the period of the American Revolution in Florida and the British governorship of Patrick Tonyn.
St. Augustine Historical Society
Owners of the Gonzalez-Alvarez House, the Tovar House, and the Segui-Kirby Smith House in St. Augustine, and trustees of the Llambias House, the St. Augustine Historical Society is a steward of these colonial properties and manages a major research library dedicated to preserving the city's historic record.
Governor's House, St. Augustine
A reconstruction of the colonial government house, incorporating original foundations, the Governor's House holds many of the records of the former St. Augustine Historic Preservation Board and also curates a major exhibit on colonial St. Augustine.
Fort Foster (Second Seminole War Fort)
A reconstruction of one of the forts protecting the roads from Tampa Bay to locations further north, this 1836 fort was rebuilt according to a sketch of the original.
Fort King National Historic Landmark
Located just south of Gainesville in Ocala, Fort King was Ground Zero in the Second Seminole War, the place where Indian Agent Wiley Thompson threatened Osceola and paid for it with his life. A major preservation effort in Ocala has safeguarded the site for the future.
Negro Fort/Fort Gadsden
On land protected by the Forestry Service is the site of Fort Gadsden, built in 1818 by order of Andrew Jackson to serve as a supply depot during the First Seminole War. It is located on the grounds of the former "Negro fort," a stronghold of maroons and runaway slaves, which units of the U.S. army and navy attacked and destroyed in 1816.
USF Africana Heritage Project
Important resource on genealogy and also one of the first to document the search for the black community of Angola (1812-1821).

E-Books and Online Publications

Articles Available Online or as Downloadable PDFs in JSTOR

The following articles can be accessed electronically through the JSTOR link in the catalog of the University of Florida Libraries.

Lyon, Eugene. “The Enterprise of Florida.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 52, no. 4, 1974, pp. 411–422. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30145933. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Hann, John H. “Summary Guide to Spanish Florida Missions and Visitas. With Churches in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” The Americas, vol. 46, no. 4, 1990, pp. 417–513. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1006866. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Milanich, Jerald T. “Laboring in the Fields of the Lord.” Archaeology, vol. 49, no. 1, 1996, pp. 60–69. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41770988. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Blanton, Justin B. “The Role of Cattle Ranching in the 1656 Timucuan Rebellion: A Struggle for Land, Labor, and Chiefly Power.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 92, no. 4, 2014, pp. 667–684. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43488429. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Bushnell, Amy. “‘That Demonic Game’: The Campaign to Stop Indian Pelota Playing in Spanish Florida, 1675-1684.” The Americas, vol. 35, no. 1, 1978, pp. 1–19. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/980923. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Ferdinando, Peter. “A Translation History of Fontaneda.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 89, no. 2, 2010, pp. 210–251. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/29765167. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Bushnell, Amy Turner. “Escape of the Nickaleers: European-Indian Relations on the Wild Coast of Florida in 1696, from Jonathan Dickinson’s Journal.” Coastal Encounters: The Transformation of the Gulf South in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Richmond F. Brown, University of Nebraska Press, 2007, pp. 31–58. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1djmgs5.7. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Landers, Jane. “Gracia Real De Santa Teresa De Mose: A Free Black Town in Spanish Colonial Florida.” The American Historical Review, vol. 95, no. 1, 1990, pp. 9–30. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2162952. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Landers, Jane G. “Female Conflict and Its Resolution in Eighteenth-Century St. Augustine.” The Americas, vol. 54, no. 4, 1998, pp. 557–574. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1007775. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Parker, Susan Richbourg. “In My Mother’s House: Dowry Property and Female Inheritance Patterns in Spanish Florida.” Signposts: New Directions in Southern Legal History, edited by Sally E. Hadden and Patricia Hagler Minter, University of Georgia Press, 2013, pp. 19–44. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n9w1.6. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Cameron B. Strang. “Indian Storytelling, Scientific Knowledge, and Power in the Florida Borderlands.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 70, no. 4, 2013, pp. 671–700. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5309/willmaryquar.70.4.0671. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Bauer, Deborah L. “"... In a Strange Place...": The Experiences of British Women during the Colonization of East & West Florida.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 89, no. 2, 2010, pp. 145–185. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/29765165. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Schwartz, Susan. “James Grant, British East Florida, and the Impending Imperial Crisis, 1764-1771.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 93, no. 3, 2015, pp. 327–353. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43487693. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Smith, Roger. “The Failure of Great Britain's ‘Southern Expedition’ of 1776: Revisiting Southern Campaigns in the Early Years of the American Revolution, 1775-1779.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 93, no. 3, 2015, pp. 387–414. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43487695. Accessed 4 July 2020.

“His Finest Hour: Pensacola, ‘I Alone.’” Bernardo De Gálvez: Spanish Hero of the American Revolution, by Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2018, pp. 180–244. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469640815_quinterosaravia.10. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Porter, Kenneth Wiggins. “Negroes and the Seminole War, 1817-1818.” The Journal of Negro History, vol. 36, no. 3, 1951, pp. 249–280. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2715671. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Wright, J. Leitch. “A Note on the First Seminole War as Seen by the Indians, Negroes, and Their British Advisers.” The Journal of Southern History, vol. 34, no. 4, 1968, pp. 565–575. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2204387. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Millett, Nathaniel. “The Radicalism of the First Seminole War and its Consequences.” Warring for America: Cultural Contests in the Era of 1812, edited by Nicole Eustace and Frederika J. Teute, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2017, pp. 164–202. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469631769_eustace.10. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Howard, Rosalyn. “‘Looking For Angola’: An Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Search for a Nineteenth Century Florida Maroon Community and Its Caribbean Connections.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 92, no. 1, 2013, pp. 32–68. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43487549. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Rivers, Larry E. “Slavery in Microcosm: Leon County, Florida, 1824 to 1860.” The Journal of Negro History, vol. 66, no. 3, 1981, pp. 235–245. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2716918. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Schafer, Daniel L. “‘A Class of People Neither Freemen nor Slaves’: From Spanish to American Race Relations in Florida, 1821-1861.” Journal of Social History, vol. 26, no. 3, 1993, pp. 587–609. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3788628. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Denham, James M. “‘Some Prefer the Seminoles’: Violence and Disorder among Soldiers and Settlers in the Second Seminole War, 1835-1842.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 70, no. 1, 1991, pp. 38–54. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30148093. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Rizzi, Christine A. “‘The Indians Are Scattering, I Fear’: Mobility and Power in the Second Seminole War.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 94, no. 3, 2016, pp. 411–425., www.jstor.org/stable/24769277. Accessed 4 July 2020.

Monaco, C. S. “‘Wishing That Right May Prevail’: Ethan Allen Hitchcock and the Florida War.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 93, no. 2, 2014, pp. 167–194. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43487674. Accessed 4 July 2020.

JSTOR
These articles can be found in JSTOR via the University of Florida Library Catalog. You will need your 14-digit library card number (located under the barcode on your Gator 1 card, not including the dashes) to gain access.