page_title: Original Town of Fernandina Historic Site
section_title: "New Settlement"
hierarchical_section_title: Original Town of Fernandina Historic Site / History / "New Settlement"
caption_attribution_description: English: "Plan of Amelia Island in East Florida, north point of Amelia Island lyes in 30:55 north latitude 80:23 w. longitude from London, taken from De Brahm's Map of South Caroline &amp; Georgia. A chart of the entrance into St. Mary's River..." From W. Faden's The North American atlas. 1777.
context_page_description: The Original Town of Fernandina Historic Site, also known as "Old Town", is a historic site in Fernandina Beach, Florida, located on Amelia Island. It is roughly bounded by Towngate Street, Bosque Bello Cemetery, Nassau, Marine, and Ladies Streets. On January 29, 1990, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places as a historic site. Lying north of the Fernandina Beach Historic District, it is accessible from North 14th Street.
  Prior to the arrival of Europeans on what is now Amelia Island, the Old Town site was home to Native Americans. The French, English, and Spanish all maintained a presence on Amelia Island at various times during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, but the Spanish established Fernandina. Old Town, the original location of the town of Fernandina, has the distinction of being the last Spanish city platted in the Western Hemisphere, in 1811. The plat is based on the 1573 Law of the Indies, a document utilized by the Spanish to organize new towns established during their explorations.
  The area within Old Town known as Plaza San Carlos was the plaza ground in front of the Spanish Fort San Carlos, which is no longer in existence.
context_section_description: Oglethorpe withdrew his troops in 1742, and the area became a buffer zone between the English and Spanish colonies until the signing of the  Treaty of Paris in 1763, when Spain traded Florida to Great Britain for control of Havana, Cuba. During the early period of British rule, the island was known as Egmont Isle, after Lord Egmont who had a 10,000 acre estate there, almost the entire island. The so-called "New Settlement" (present-day Old Town), on the south side of the mouth of Egan's Creek adjoining the Amelia River, was presumably its headquarters. A map of the new settlement shown in charts drawn by Capt. John Fuller and mapped by cartographer Thomas Jefferys in 1770 depicts houses and streets laid out from "Anderson's Creek" (present-day Egan's Creek) south toward Morriss Bluff. Egmont had only recently begun his development of the island in 1770 when Gerard de Brahm prepared his map, the "Plan of Amelia, Now Egmont Island", which depicted most of the planned development at the north end. Egmont died in December 1770, whereupon his widow, Lady Egmont, assumed control of his vast Florida estates. She persisted in development of the plantation and made Stephen Egan her agent to manage it. He was able to grow profitable indigo crops there until it was destroyed by rebel troops from Georgia in 1776.
  In the late 1770s and early 1780s, British loyalists fleeing Charleston and Savannah hastily erected new buildings at the settlement, calling their impromptu town Hillsborough. When Spain regained possession of Florida in 1783, the Amelia harbor served as an embarkation point for loyalists abandoning the colony who tore down the buildings and took the lumber with them. In June 1785, former British governor Patrick Tonyn moved his command to Hillsborough town, from whence he sailed to England later that year.
  After the British evacuation, Mary Mattair, her children, and a farmhand were the sole occupants left on Amelia island. She had received a grant from Governor Tonyn of the property on the bluff overlooking the Amelia River. Following the exchange of flags in 1784, the Spanish Crown allowed Mattair to remain on the island. In trade for the earlier British grant, the Spanish authorities awarded her 150 acres within the present-day city limits of Fernandina Beach. The site of Mattair's initial grant is today's Old Town Fernandina.
  In December 1793, Mary Mattair's daughter Maria married Domingo Fernandez. Fernandez had arrived in St. Augustine from Galicia, Spain about 1786. He worked for the Spanish government as captain of a gunboat and a harbor pilot at Amelia Island until 1800, when he retired to become a full-time planter.
  In June 1795, American rebel marauders led by Richard Lang attacked the Spanish garrison on Amelia Island. Colonel Charles Howard, an officer in the Spanish military, discovered that the rebels had built a battery and were flying the French flag. On August 2, he raised a sizable Spanish force, sailed up Sisters Creek and the Nassau River, and attacked them. The rebels fled across the St. Marys to Georgia.
  The passage of the U.S. Embargo Act of 1807, which closed all United States ports to trade with Europe, and the abolition of the American slave trade, made the town a haven for smuggling slaves, liquor and foreign luxury goods. Situated on a peninsula, it was defended by two blockhouses and a detachment of soldiers surrounding the settlement.
caption: Plan of Amelia Island. 1770 (1777)
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