page_title: George J. F. Clarke
section_title: Service to the Spanish province of East Florida
hierarchical_section_title: George J. F. Clarke / Service to the Spanish province of East Florida
caption_attribution_description: English: Town Plat of Fernandina, Florida from 1811 until 1821
context_page_description: George J. F. Clarke was one of the most prominent and active men of East Florida during the Second Spanish Period. As a friend and trusted advisor of the Spanish governors of the province from 1811 to 1821, he was appointed to several public offices under the colonial regime, including that of surveyor general.
  Clarke served in the Spanish militia from 1800 to 1821, defending East Florida in the "Patriot War" of 1812 and leading militia forces against the freebooters Gregor MacGregor and Louis-Michel Aury in 1817. By the order of Governor Enrique White he platted the town of Fernandina in 1811 and oversaw the construction of new buildings there. He was a central figure in organizing a local government in the area between the St. Marys and St. Johns rivers, which brought a workable peace to that tumultuous section during the final years of Spanish rule.
  Clarke supervised every land survey made in East Florida between 1811 and 1821, and profited from the acquisition and resale of large tracts of land; his landholdings were among the largest in Florida. In his will he distributed more than 33,000 acres to his heirs, as well as several houses and scattered lots.
context_section_description: Clarke's first known public service outside the militia was as acting public surveyor in the absence of Juan Purcell.
  It is likely he had previously served as deputy surveyor; Purcell's absence was prolonged, and after three years, on May 8, 1811, acting Governor Estrada appointed Clarke Surveyor General of East Florida. There was little supervision from Spain, which was embroiled in the Napoleonic invasion, with its government in exile. Clarke was in complete control of the surveying of land grants in the province, and surveyed many land grants for free blacks and helped them document and retain these grants when the United States finally took over Florida in 1821. After the East Florida revolution of 1812, Fernandina was occupied by US troops and the Spanish citizenry fled; some, including Clarke, suffered damage to their homes and businesses in their absence.
  The United States Congress passed the Embargo Act of 1807, and prohibited the importation of slaves in 1808. That same year Fernandina was declared a free port; it began to ship great quantities of Florida cotton and lumber, and became a resort for the smuggling business and contraband slave trade. The town entered a boom period of extraordinary growth, with finer residences and crude shacks springing up next to each other. Vegetable gardens were planted haphazardly about, and the streets were little more than crooked paths. The unsightly and unsanitary condition of Fernandina disturbed Governor White, and on May 10, 1811, two days after Clarke's appointment as surveyor general, he instructed him to plat the town so that the streets were properly aligned and the lots were uniform.
  In the Patriot War of 1812 George J. F. Clarke and his brother Charles were among those who most actively opposed the American invaders and their raiding parties into the province. George was in command of one of the two Spanish entrenchments at Fernandina when on March 14 his brother Charles brought word that the rebels had gathered at Low's Plantation on Bell's River to raid Fernandina.
  On March 16, eight American gunboats under the command of Commodore Hugh Campbell formed a line in the harbor and aimed their guns at the town.  Clarke and George Atkinson were sent by Justo Lopez, Commandant of Fort San Carlos and Amelia Island, to meet Commodore Campbell on one of the gunboats anchored in the Amelia River and find out his intentions, but Campbell, uneasy about the turn of events, equivocated. General George Mathews, ensconced at Point Peter on the St. Marys in Georgia, ordered Colonel Lodowick Ashley to send a flag to Lopez, commandant of the fort and Amelia Island, and demand his surrender. Lopez acknowledged the superior force and ordered Clarke to go to John H. McIntosh and Col. Lodowick, "director" and military chief, respectively, of the putative "Republic of Florida", with a flag of surrender, thus turning over the port and the town to the Patriot forces. Along with Justo Lopez, George Atkinson, and Charles W. Clarke, George signed the articles of capitulation on March 17. American forces held Amelia Island "in trust for Spain" until the following spring, and shut off Fernandina harbor to foreign vessels in an attempt to throttle the port's infamous smuggling.
  Clarke's main business occupation following the Patriot War was buying and selling lots in Fernandina and lands in other parts of the province. He usually bought the land outright or secured it by grant, and then sought buyers. Sometimes he acted as agent, as he did in the sale of Fort George island in 1816 by John H. McIntosh to Zephaniah Kingsley.
  Clarke's last service for the Spanish Crown was as Deputy Governor of East Florida. The colonial administration in Florida had been unstable since the retrocession, due partly to events in Europe—the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian peninsula, and the revolutionary convulsions in Spain following the restoration of the Bourbons to the Spanish throne. The Spanish treasury was exhausted and the government demoralized. Conditions in the Floridas were unsettled as well with frequ
caption: Plat of Fernandina 1811–1821 showing Fort San Carlos
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image DateTime": "2013:05:02 15:53:03", "Image ExifOffset": "2142", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "96", "Thumbnail YResolution": "96", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4448", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "12694", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:11:06 01:27:47", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:11:06 01:27:47", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}