Forgotten Florida by Clarissa Thomasson

FORGOTTEN FLORIDA, tells the story of the Florida peninsula from the Adams-Onis Treaty in 1819 up to the beginning of the Second Seminole War in 1835. The story is told from the perspective of well-documented men who took part in the development of the Gulf coastal areas from Pensacola to Key West and include Commodore David Porter, Colonel James Gadsden, Colonel George Brooke, Colonel Duncan Clinch, and Major Francis Dade as well as Captain William Bunce of the Aristocrat and Captain Fred Tresca of the Margaret Ann—both of whom sailed the Gulf coast from Key West to Pensacola and served to connect the various settlements. The book begins with the New York lawyer, Richard Hackley, who had been a consul in Cadiz, Spain, and had—purchased the entire west side of Florida from the Spanish Duke Alagon, who had received it as a gift from King Ferdinand of Spain before the peninsula had been given to the United States.