Brown, Canter Jr.. Ossian Bingley Hart. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press,.
As the nineteenth century opened, William Hart needed opportunity and a new beginning. Pennsylvania-born in 1756, he had moved to New Jersey and then to Loudoun County, Virginia. There in 1779 he married ninteen-year-old Elizabeth Streetman, also born in Pennsylvania but raised in New Jersey. William made his living as a saddler. The calling was honorable, but it was not one likely to lead to affluence. Nonetheless, he pursued prosperity from Virginia down the Piedmont to Burke County, Georgia. Along the way Elizabeth by 1801 had borne eleven children, eight of whom still survived. Those living were William, Rebecca, Pamela, Daniel, Isaiah, Samuel, Charlotte, and Rachel.
my note: (Rebecca married Jean Baptiste (William) Richard, son of Louis Joseph Francois Richard. Isaiah's son, Ossian Bingley was the first native born governor of Florida.)
As a saddler with Hart's talents normally might have provided financial security for himself and his family. Unfortunately, the times offered little encouragement. The Revolution's final years had been contested hotly in the South, and much of the area had been devastated. Even the land offered poor opportunities. Earlier arrivals had taken the best acreage, immigration had driven up prices, and the frontier was rife with corrupt speculation and conflict. In the circumstances East Florida loomed large as an answer to Hart's frustrations. Coincidentally, as southeastern population pressures built, the colony's officially Roman Catholic governemnt permitted Protestants to settle. The new program offered land grants as an inducement, and its benefits proved irresistible in the 1790's to a score or more of families from the United States.
Whether a specific event prompted Hart's Florida move is not known, but in the winter of 1801 he set out to begin life anew. Likely the party traveled overland in wagons. At the Altamaha River it joined the graded King's Road, which ran to King's Fery on the St. Marys, then south to St. Augustine. The journey was one of the mind as welll as one of the road. As a visitor recalled, "Florida was, for the most part, a howling wilderness, and indescribable in its wild yet horrible and beautiful grandure."
Many trvelers found their first view of the St. Johns River particularly breathtaking "The finest and most magnificent river of Florida" an onlooker called it...William claimed a grant of 640 acres located just to the north of the Cowford on Moncrief and Trout Creeks. At Moncrief Creek's mouth he built a home where the Harts remained for eleven years.
The Hart homestead was a frontier one. In 1787 twenty-two families lived on the Spanish side of the St. Marys. The twenty-eight families on the St. Johns were for the most part concentrated in the Cowford's vicinity. While the St. Johns area's population had increased by 1801, it remained only sparsely inhabited. Given the proximity of Indian lands, residents lived in "constant fear of attack."
During the American Revolution, East Florida had been a British possession and had served as a refuge for thousands of Loyalists. Fifty or more families chose to remain after Spain reasumed control in 1784. Many believed that the United States would either fall or lose control over portions of its territory, permitting the Loyalists to regain their property. In 1801 resentments still ran high. As many Loyalists lived near the Cowford, Hart found himself surrounded by potentially hostile neighbors, or, as family memory had it, "William Hart was a Whig, and in Florida found many old Tories, who were always unfriendly to him"...William Hart and his sons William (called Billy), Dan, and Isaiah served in the Spanish militia.
The proximity of armed runaway slaves, the nature of slavery in florida, and the social position of free blacks likely shocked William Hart. Used to the relatively more formal racial patterns that existed in the Piedmont area stretching from Virginia to Georgia, he probably was wary, if not disdainful, of the more easygoing nature and institutions of the Spanish culture.
During the early 1800's, many settlers along the St. Marys River evidenced "no great attachment" to Spain or the United States. Meanwhile, and despite a Spanish attempt to close the border in 1804, more families made their way to East Florida from the southern states. The mostly "poor piney-woods people" were contemptuous of Spain' s halting attempts at governance, gave little or no thought to allegiance to the Spanish Crown, and looked to the day when Florida would become U.S. terrority. Their enthusiasm came to be shared by the St. Marys settlers and, eventually, by many of those who lived on the St. Johns.
The situation resulted in the Patriot War, which officially got underway when an "army" of seventy Georgians and a few Floridians assembled at the St. Marys River in March, 1812, where their leaders proclaimed East Florida's independence. The force occupied Fernandina with assistance from the U.S. Navy. Enhanced by recruits, the army then overcame Fort San Nicolas and laid siege to St. Augustine's Castillo de San Marcos. The affair dragged on until summer when Indians and blacks launched attacks upon Patriot forces and upon frontier farms. Thereafter, many Patriots fled St. Augustine to protect families and possessions. In August the siege was lifted, and the army's remnants retreated, eventually assembling near the Cowford. Among those who fled to the St. Johns were Billy, Isaiah, and Dan Hart. The Spanish believed William Hart also a rebel, but "age, his infirmities, and his Dispoition towards peace and tranquility" kept him out of the fray.
The Patriot cause waxed and waned until February, 1813, when Congress refused to provide support. The Spanish governor offered amnesty, and most Patriots with Florida residence acepted it. The disaffected Patriots gathered in late summer at St Marys. Before long they had concentrated a fifty-six man force at William Hart's Moncrief home and were planning to occupy Alachua. Billy and Isaiah Hart joined the expedition, but the settlement lasted only a short time.
The Patriot War devastated East Florida, and most Patriots faced a dilemma. "Unwanted in Georgia, except by the police, and condemned by Spain, the former Patriots became wanderers." A friend recalled that the war "ruined " William Hart. He and Elizabeth returned to the St. Marys farm where they had refuged in 1812. When Spain sold Florida to the U.S. in 1819, they at least could look forward to the prospect of living again as American citizens. William died, apparently by accident, on March 29, 1821. The American flag did not yet fly over Spanish East Florida.
William's son, Isaiah David Hart, had emerged from the war as a hardened veteran of conflict. His prospects were few, though, and he lived for several years with his parents on the St. Marys River...At first, his principal opportunity lay in raiding for slaves and cattle. From camps below the St Mary River robber bands operated freely and supplied by friends in St. Marys (Georgia), they plundered East Florida plantations. White, mulatto, black - no one was secure. Negroes were saleable in Georgia. Isaiah and his friends could not pass up such rewards.
The actions of raiders such as Hart enraged most East Floridians, and their opposition - combined with continued political and social turmoil in northeast Florida and other factors - soon drove Isaiah out of the business. During that year Isaiah married . He had met Nancy Nelson at the St. Marys River. She had been born about 1800 in South Carolina. Her parents, it was said"claimed near relationship to Lord Nelson." Since Nancy and Isaiah were Protestant and non-Roman Catholic marriage was difficult in Florida, they likey were united in Georgia.
my note: (Nancy Nelson and Joseph Louis Richard (Francis II) were godparents to two of Reuban Hogans' children)
East Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821...excitement filled the air as Florida's colonal era neared its end. Sensing opportunities for huge profits, American speculators and prospective settlers hurried to East Florida. As expectations grew, Isaiah watched from near King's Ferry as travelers on the King's Road made their way to St. Augustine. The old graded way yet offered the only reliable overland access to the new territory. Isaiah realized the potential this traffic spelled for the Cowford, where his father had wanted to homestead.
Isaiah could not long resist the opportunity. He purchased land on May 12, 1821. The tract comprised eighteen acres situated along the St. John's northern banks to the west of present-day Market Street. DuVal County was created in 1822...Conceiving his said tract of eighteen acres to be well located for a town of some importance, he did, during the year 1822, in concert with John Brady, who was then the proprietor of lands here, cause to be appointed divers commissioners... for the purpose of laying out a town on the lands belonging to him and the said John Brady...for the purpose of laying out the said town, then called Jackson but has since acquired the name of Jacksonville. Thus, by the summer of 1822 Isaiah Hart had transformed himself from a marauder to a town founder and businessman, based upon the spoils of slave raiding.