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Fifth Generation
Richard Lang Letter #1
Richard Lang Letter #2
Richard Lang Letter #3
5. Richard LANG (Robert-4, Robert-3, Nathaniel-2, Robert-1) was born in 1755 in South Carolina . He died in 1817 in South Carolina.
The following excerpt from "Men Without God or King: Rural setlers of East Florida , 1784-1790." UF Dissertation by Susan R. Parker. 1990.
By 1788 the residents apparently turned their anger and frustrations on each other, for internal distrubances now appeared. At a time when unity among the river residents was so essential, personal jealousies erupted. In the spring of 1788, Richard Lang spearheaded complaints to the governor about O'Neill's administration of justice on the St. Marys. Soon afterward, O'Neill was shot in the leg while at Cumberland Island. Amputation of the limb came too late, and within a few days the “judge” was dead. Margaret O'Neill suspected Lang of complicity in the deed, saying that on his deathbed her husband had “laid the blame to two or three men on this side of the St. Marys” as much as to the man jailed in Georgia for the crime. The governor, however, appointed Lang to replace O'Neill. By midsummer the body of another murdered resident was found lying on the north bank of the St. Marys. Throughout that year the infamous bandit, Daniel McGirtt, who had plagued the countryside before the British evacuation, was back in East Florida. With antics and pronouncements befitting the protagonist of a ballad, Dan McGirtt appeased his appetite for other people's horses and kept the region astir. The possee that assembled to capture him eventually succeeded, but brought almost as much havoc to the region as did their prey. The relationship between Lang's activities and subsequent appointment, McGirtt's appearance, and the killings, is difficult to assess, but cannnot be dismissed as merely coincidental .
With Richard Lang the “judgeship” took on a venal character. Lang thought that his position should enjoy more perquisites than the Spanish government provided. He repeatedly requested that the governor award him a portion of stolen or contrraband items that he recovered. Denied official consent, he presumed to reward himself. He also appropriated property of incoming refugees for “safekeeping,” and was much less discriminating that O'Neill about the actual admission of refugee Georgians or their cattle. For a price, Lang frequently delayed informing the governor of a refugee's presence until some period of time had passed. Lang's actions, in practice, nullified royal orders, and new settlers who did not readily qualify to immigrate entered East Florida with their possessions. Although Zespedes chastized Lang for being “remiss,” the governor did not replace him. P34-36
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From Florida's "French" Revolution
Richard Lang had come to Florida without benefit of Spain’s 1790 invitation. The records show that the Executive Council of Georgia discovered that on 18 June 1784 Lang was in jail in Savannah, charged with committing a felony in South Carolina, and on that date he was ordered removed to Charleston to stand trial. He escaped and promptly went to Florida. He may have arrived just before governor Vincent Manuel de Zespedes, who did not take over the reins of governemnt from the British until 27 June 1784. Lang had probably visited Florida before his imprisonment in Savannah. By 1786 he had acquired land on the south side of the St. Marys, and his name appears in a 1787 Florida census.
Governor Zespedes considered Lang a troublemaker, along with an associate of his in the same neighborhood, Daniel McGirtt…
paragraph below is shortened from of one above
Toward the end of 1787 Richard Lang was a candidate to supplant Henry O’Neill, a former British officer, as the Spanish magistrate for the St. Marys River valley. Eighteen men on the border submitted a petition endorsing Lang’s candidacy. O’Neill was murdered in May 1788; the Spanish suspected followers of Lang and McGirtt of being the felons. Nevertheless, the governor uneasily appointed Lang to the position he had sought.
Lang’s principal place of residence in Florida was called Casa Blanca, a 400-acre plantation on the south bank of the St. Marys River at Mill’s Ferry (now King’s Ferry). It was an important frontier location, for even during the American Revolution the ferry was the northern Florida terminus of a trail or crude road from St. Augustine to Georgia. On the road the Battle of Alligator Bridge had taken place in 1778…Lang also owned Florida land on Pigeon Creek five miles werst of Coleraine.
The Spanish authorities gave Lang the title of “justice of the peace” and “commander of the militia” in the region lying between the St. Marys and Nassau rivers. Originally his jurisdiction extended to the St. Johns; but Carlos Howard was later given the superior military command of all of the northern frontier, with a military command post at St. Johns Bluff (called San Vicente Ferrer by the Spanish). P14-15
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