The city was not formally incorporated until December 1825, with the first municipal elections being held in January 1826. In 1824, the City of Tallahassee, the county seat and only incorporated city in Leon County, was established following a decision by the state legislature to locate the capital of the new Florida Territory midway between the population centers of St. In both spots the water is plenty and good. old fields, or on a fine high lawn about a mile W. Simmons has agreed that the Site should be fixed near the old fields abandoned by the Indians after Jackson's invasion, but has not yet determined whether between the. On November 1, 1823, John Lee Williams wrote to Florida congressional delegate (and later governor) Richard Keith Call about the location of the capital:ĭoct. Florida did not become a state, however, until 1845 (Tebeau:122). In March of the following year it was formally proclaimed the capital. DuVal illegally deposed Neamathla as head of the Seminoles, and ordered the Indians to a reservation near Tampa." : 144 Army soldiers, met with Neamathla and his 600 warriors. A year later, Neamathla threatened to make the streets of Tallahassee "run red with blood," unless the white settlers left. Neamathla objected but gave his grudging approval with the stipulation they not tell other Seminoles of his consent. In October 1823, Williams and Simmons met with Neamathla to tell him of the new territory's plan to locate its capital in Tallahassee. Neamathla, a Creek chief, was living there in a new town called Cohowofooche. Their decision was also based on its elevation and location near a beautiful waterfall, now part of Cascades Park, and the old capital of the Apalachee chiefdom, Anhaica, burned by Andrew Jackson in 1818. Augustine selected the former Indian settlement of Tallahassee, roughly midway between the two cities, as a suitable place. In October 1823, John Lee Williams of Pensacola and Dr. Augustine and Pensacola, the two largest cities in the territory at the time (the Spaniards had built a road), led territorial governor William Pope Duval to appoint two commissioners to establish a more central meeting place. A territorial government was established, but the impracticalities of alternately meeting in St. In 1821, Florida was ceded by Spain to the United States. The founding of Tallahassee was largely a matter of convenience. It was burned on March 31, 1818, by General Andrew Jackson, at the onset of the First Seminole War. Calvin Jones.Īnhaica, in the early period of Spanish colonization, was the capital of the Apalachee Province (of Spanish Florida). The site of Anhaica, near present-day Myers Park, was located in 1987 by Florida archaeologist B. De Soto's brutal treatment of the natives was fiercely resisted, and by the following spring De Soto was eager to move on. The Spanish explorer, Hernando de Soto spent the winter of 1538-1539 encamped at the Apalachee village of Anhaica, which he had taken by force. The Spanish missionaries were not the first Europeans to visit Tallahassee, however.
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