- [Narrator 1] This original WSRE presentation is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Back in time, connecting Spanish West Florida in 1821 to our diverse and welcoming modern community, the 1821 Sampler will be linking past to present that's up next on this edition of inStudio.

(upbeat music) The Pensacola sampler project is an endeavor to take us back to Spanish West Florida in 1821.

The goal is for us in modern times to understand and connect with those who came before us.

Erin Renfroe is a researcher with the West Florida Genealogical Society.

She created the 1821 database and Virginia Shelby has been researching genealogy since she was 15.

She's also with the West Florida Genealogical Society and assisted Erin in the Pensacola sampler project.

And also Margo Stringfield joins us.

She's an archeologist at the University of West Florida.

Now much of her research focuses on historic cemetery preservation and conservation.

She's also an expert on Pensacola's colonial British second Spanish and early American periods.

We welcome all of you to our program.

This has just been so exciting.

You've all worked together on, the two of you on the research and you've worked with Margo as part of the big commemoration of the bicentennial.

You wanna touch on that just a bit?

- I will touch on it.

I think one of the goals that we have within our community, is to look at the community as a whole.

We are a wonderfully diverse community today, and we were a wonderfully diverse community 200 years ago.

When the Americans exchanged flags with the Spanish in 1821, we did not say the Spanish just go away with all their culture, they stayed put, but the Americans float in and we saw a real joining together of both Spanish and French, free people of color.

enslaved people, and even people from Italy that were here that all brought together a whole new dynamic and we became Florida.

We became, it was the beginning of the territory of Florida.

And so, in looking at how we might shine a light on what was going on as we became part of the United States, one of the things we wanted to do was to look at who was here, and we had some wonderful resources to help us, archeologists and historians rely heavily on Historian William Coker and his work.

He was a Spanish borderland scholar at the University of West Florida.

And he compiled from the Spanish archives, the list of citizens that were here in 1820, everyone that was had a foot on the ground in 1820.

And so we work closely with that document and it would seem likely that we could have used that as a foundation for then taking a deeper look at who was here in 1821, and who came in, in 1821.

And to that end, a request was made to the West Florida Genealogical Society, if they might be able to assist in helping us identify the people of 1821, and they took up the gauntlet with enthusiasm and what has come out of this is a truly marvelous product that we think we're unsure if this is going to be a unique product, but it's pretty close to it, Sherri.

And so I'll let them talk a bit about what they do as an organization and their research on this project.

- [Sherri] So what makes this a unique project?

I'll start with you, Erin.

- Well I think because we are not focusing on one family or even one particular community, we are trying to integrate as many different areas of West Florida as we can from all different ethnic and national backgrounds and try to put them together in context, what were they doing in 1820, 1821?

How was the transition affecting them?

So we have people like Charles Evans.

He was Carlos Evans in the 1820 census.

He was a child in the census, but that's just the snapshot of where he was in 1820.

He did become mayor of Pensacola twice in the future.

So you get to see, you know, Pensacola's past at that point in time and what was happening in the city as the Americans began to come in.

- Virginia, you've done this for a long time.

You've been very interested.

How did you get interested and how did it lead to where you sit today?

- There was an article that came out years ago in the Pensacola news journal of a picture of the family tree.

It was on a Sunday edition.

We went to my grandmother's for lunch for Sunday dinner.

So we were able to fill out a lot of that.

My great-grandmother walked in at the time, got her information, went that afternoon to another great grandparent's house, got their information so before I knew it, I was way back before the civil war, because my great grandparents were born in the 1880s.

So they knew their grandparents, so it was fascinating.

And then when you start learning that your family was a part of this history, that they fought in these wars, that they were here at the changing of the flag, that they were here at other important events, it makes history come alive.

- It really does, and with so many resources out there for people these days to be able to identify more and more where they've come from, I would imagine it's made your organization, a pretty popular place these days.

- It is, yes and I actually one of the things I do for the society is volunteer at the West Florida Genealogy Branch Library.

And that is just so much fun.

I never get tired of introducing people to genealogy and we do use a lot of the electronic resources that are available, but we also have a lot of things that are only available on paper so it's a good mix.

- Well, and Virginia, you were talking about your ancestors, were they here in Pensacola?

- Yes they were.

- Yes.

Yes, so you grew up here as did most of your ancestors?

- I did, we were here as early as 1815.

So we were here a little bit before the changing of the flag, several branches of my family.

And it's been exciting to be a part of this, when Margo invited me to join this project, I was so excited to honor, not only the people of Pensacola, but you know, family members as well.

- So talk about your work together.

What has that been like?

- Well, we did start with the census and they did a census of the Spanish citizens, the citizens that were in the Plaza of Pensacola, they also did a census of the Escambia River District.

And those were the Anglo American settlers.

They were more agricultural families who were coming in, technically illegally because they were in Spanish territory without permission, but they were providing a lot of produce to the Spanish City so they let them stay.

But the census for that area is not terribly informative.

There's usually the name of the husband and the wife, and then things like three children from the ages of 4 to 10.

Well, she was able to fill in those three children from the ages of 4 to 10 in many of the families, because her ancestors came from several different families in that area.

So she really- - What is this book that we're looking at?

- This is the Spanish census that we started out with, from William Coker that Margo was talking about earlier.

And that was our starting point.

From there we went to voters list, deeds, court records, probate records, all kinds of other records that were available to us.

And I think we had some issues that some records were not available because they were in civil Spain and some of the, you know, older Spanish records and whatever.

So that was a little bit of challenge and with COVID and whatever we had to depend on a lot of online records, rather than being able to touch the records as much.

- [Sherri] And the records we're seeing right now, how would, can you see what we're showing on the screen right here?

How would something like that factor into your research?

- [Erin] That is a master roll from the fourth infantry regiment.

They were stationed here in Pensacola during the changing of the flags and those are available online.

It is only list the officers.

It doesn't have all of the enlisted men, but it was a lot of names that we didn't have any other way.

So that is one of the records we looked at, were military.

- [Sherri] Okay, and I've heard so many varying numbers because I haven't been as intimately involved in this as you have.

I'm seeing a lot of names on this list that we would recognize a lot of Francisco's weren't there.

- [Erin] Yes.

- [Sherri] But names that we would all recognize from 1821 to now.

And we're looking at, what would this be right here?

- That is a will.

It is in French.

That is Joseph Gomera's will.

And it's in the Escambia county deed records.

They were writing wills in Spanish and French long after the changing of the flags.

- So have you had a lot of aha moments among yourselves, for instance when you say, "Okay, I just found the names of the three kids."

- Very much so I think.

The more we found, the more excited we got, I think when this project started, we were kind of hoping to find, you know, maybe 500 names, we're well over 2300 names that we have identified, names and some unnamed individuals like the military that Erin was just talking about, that we know the privates for here and how many there were, but maybe not their names.

- So 2300 have been identified, Dr. Coker's book, how many did he initially have from that census?

Did I hear 800 or something?

- Yeah, I think that's about right.

- Because I've heard just varying numbers.

So I would imagine this is still a work in progress.

- Very much so.

We keep finding new people all the time that we're adding to our database and doing very research on it.

Cause they're not just names, they're people, they have a story to tell, and we want those stories out there.

- So somebody that might be watching this program say, and you know, maybe in 2022, they might log on to your websites and find that things are completely fluid and changing, and as you learn more and more.

- That is the case.

And in fact, on the West Florida Genealogical Society website, I've kept the information in an Excel spreadsheet, so that researchers who might want to be able to sort them by whether they were enslaved or free or where they were born, whether they were European or American and that sort of thing, you can manipulate the data and that will be updated as we find out more and more.

- How important is this research Margo?

- Well, I think it's vitally important on several levels.

People, you know a lot of people enjoy looking at where they came from.

Some people don't have that luxury.

And I think one of the things about this project, it is going to layer in some information for people that are unable to find a path further back, and in particular, I'm speaking to people of color and people who were enslaved, because often you do not get a last name.

You may get a family they're associated with, but often it's just a number and or a gender.

And this project is delving as deeply as it can go, into actually identifying and placing people in a parameter whereby someone can do additional research.

Erin, you've done a lot with that.

Would you talk to that a little bit?

- Sure.

Most of the enslaved people are unnamed.

There's about 480 total and there are 72 that actually have names.

And the number comes from an 1819 census where they did just count how many people were here.

There was no names, there was just numbers of their race and their age group.

So we took that number and I'm going through now able to take a deeper dive into things like the deed records that recorded the sales of enslaved people or the menu missions, and every time I find a new name, I get to strike off unnamed and put in a new name, and it's really a thrilling moment.

- I would imagine so.

Now the people that came here, I understand and correct me if I'm wrong, because everything I've heard has been through family lore and that kind of thing, but that people came from Spain with indentured people and were told to set up the area.

Is this a correct assessment or not?

- A lot of Pensacola was military about this time.

So a lot of the citizens in Pensacola would have been associated in some way with the military or with the civil service, the administration of the colony, but they, yes, they had families with them.

They had enslaved people.

They had indentured servants.

There were a lot of free people of color who had made their way down.

So it really was a mix by the time we get to 1821.

- [Sherri] So the general public being interested in this sampler project, what do they do?

- [Erin] I believe that Joe has the website name, it's a short little forum, 1821.

- So we'll be talking to him.

- [Erin] Where people can go in and send in their picture and answer a few about who they might wanna be associated with.

- But if they want the raw database, they're able to access that through the society website.

And I found one of the other things that I found fascinating about this is the fact that we're able to identify native American ancestry through this.

And where are you standing on that right now, Erin?

- Well, unfortunately there's not a lot of hard documentation on individual native Americans, but we do have a few Mestizos.

And Mestizo is a Spanish term that indicates someone who is of mixed blood.

And it could have been Indian and White or Indian and Black.

So anytime Indian blood comes into the picture, they would have been called a Mestizo, and we have one family, the, the Prietto family, he was a Spanish soldier who was married to a Mestiza woman, and they had two children.

Am I remembering correctly?

Her name was Anna, Anna Gree Shea Prieto.

And I've just found another woman through the deeds in the last couple of days, that was also of Mestiza heritage.

So that's been very exciting and that's one of those that we're gonna keep picking out until we find just absolutely as many as we can, because there is a dearth of information.

- Virginia, do you have any favorite stories of some of the people that were here in 1821?

- Oh, very much so.

The Rozmandos were from Italy.

They came in, they had quite a bit of land down on Government Street.

He bought and sold land very frequently and whatever.

He actually married Maria Greenwood's daughter or Maria Luxembourg Greenwood, who her father was a British sea captain.

He died before 1821, but Maria and John Rozmando were living here in Pensacola with Maria's mother, Maria Luxenberg Greenwood.

So it was very exciting to have that.

The Torres' was another family that was here.

The Cobbes, I think we have a photo of Nancy Cobbe.

She was two years old during the changing of the flag, her grandparents Esaekiel Cobbe and Ysabel Patience Jones, came here about 1810, and it's stories like that that make it wonderful.

And through the database, we would love to see people look at the database and write stories about their families.

- [Sherri] That's Ms. Cobbe, I believe.

- [Virginia] Yes, that's Nancy Cobbe.

She later married a Dixon, but she was two years old at the time.

- [Sherri] Wow, and do you encourage area residents to, as you say, tell their stories and send you pictures and here's some stats on um- - [Virginia] Yeah, that was her uncle actually so.

- I don't know how you keep it all straight.

Good thing we have computers right?

- [Virginia] Right.

- Yeah, so Margo, the committee came and asked them to do this research.

And again, it's just such an important piece of this whole celebration that we're looking at.

- Well, it is.

And another why we looked at this, both in working with the genealogical society and with the commission and with all the partners that have engaged in bringing awareness of 200 years of Florida being part of America.

It was again, another way that we could connect people to the past during a time when we were not necessarily outgoing anywhere, that we were going to come out of this with a product that would give people a sense of where they came from, what path they were walking down, that other people walked down 200 years ago.

And it seemed a way to really look at bringing history to life.

And it certainly has exceeded all of our wildest expectations with what we've been able to come up with, because everyone does call and say, "Hey, I saw something, it may work."

You to look at it and see, and of course they do.

And so every little layer that we put in tells us just a little bit more about who we were and where we came from.

And with the census here, one of the things that's quite exciting in my field is that it appears that they recorded people by street, but in the same way they did in later years.

So once you get the Rosetta stone of where they've started and where they're going, you're actually able to look at the old maps and that show the lots defined on them and you're able to actually create neighborhoods and you're able to place people on the landscape and where they themselves were on their porch, in their yard, walking out their gate.

And so that is a, one of the exciting things about the 1820 census is just how firmly it connects us to the landscape.

- And I'll bet these ancestors of ours never thought that we would be sitting here, we would have access to computers and smartphones and records and deeds in the way that we have, we've come a long way.

- [Erin] Yes we have.

- What kinds of additional resources have you seen through the years?

Because I would imagine, I know when I started in school, we had an encyclopedia.

And has modern technology made this an easier task for you?

- Oh, very much so I remember when I started, we would have census books that you would go look at the census in a book, and now everything is online for census records.

So it's so easy to go look at them, and cross-reference them with, you know, neighborhoods or other counties and whatever.

So that's made it so much easier and then all the probate records that's out there, the land records, the deeds, things like that, it's just been fascinating.

- You know in Texas, I know there's an area where a lot of German people landed, got family in that area, but here, it seems like we have a lot, a lot so it's hard, you can't just say, well, this is just a, this is a German town, or this is, would you say Florida is you make in the aspect of all of the diverse people that were here in 1821 and continue to be?

- I think so, because you saw the Atlantic seaboard populated more by a, an Anglo population that was flowing in, and of course they brought enslaved people with them.

They also mingled in with native populations that were there.

In Florida, the two areas of population were Pensacola and St. Augustine.

And, that was pretty much it, it was a very sparsely populated area.

And so, and what you saw in both of these communities were Spanish, French, free people of color, enslaved people, and you might have a few people thrown in from other ethnicities, but it was primarily that up until the time we see the Americanization come in, and this of course is the transition from second Spanish because we were always upon on the European stage.

So we were Spanish, French for a teeny weeny little sliver.

We were back to Spanish, we were British, we were Spanish and then finally we were Americans.

And so we have been a revolving door here, but the transition from our second Spanish into our American period really saw a very big blending of community.

- Well, I'm biased, but I happen to think we have one of the more interesting backgrounds.

Speaking of that, do you have a favorite person who may have been here in 1821?

Is that a fair question?

- Yeah, that's hard to choose.

I think the people that fascinate me the most are the ones that really would have been living in two different worlds.

I think of Adele Noriega, who was eventually a free woman of color, but she was born into slavery.

She was a quadroon in Victoire Assasie's household, but so she would have been straddling the worlds of the two ethnicities and then she went through the changing of the flags.

We find her name in the 1840s when the guardianship laws came in, when free people of color had to have a white guardian.

So she, all the way through this period was just moving from world to world and I would just love to know what her life was like, when she was having all these different experiences.

- Be able to talk to her.

- Mm hm.

What about you, Virginia?

- Oh, well, I think, like I said, the ones I've mentioned before my directness, then that was Alondra McCurdy.

And he was here in 1815 after the war of 1812.

He settled here, he served five years during that time.

And he settled around Santa Rosa county around Chumuckla area.

So I would have to say, you know, I relate to them more than anyone.

- What would the ceremony have been like?

What kind, how many people would have been there at that time at that?

- Well, I think everybody would have been there.

I think if you were in Pensacola, you would have been there.

It was a small community.

You had a large influx of the military that came in, you would have had Spanish military, American military.

You had the Hornet, the Navy shift out in the bay.

You had two other ships that were there to transport people that were leaving the Spanish officials that were leaving and others that chose to leave.

Some of whom immediately came back.

And then you had the people that were firmly rooted in Pensacola, plus the newcomers.

Everyone would have come down to watch the exchange of flags, because it would have been an exciting day.

There was music.

I think to me, one of the most exciting things is that likely the first time "The Star-Spangled Banner" was played in Florida as an American territory was in Pensacola.

The first time I think the song had been written just maybe six or seven years before.

So it was relatively new at that time.

So when the musicians of the Hornet and of the, the fourth regiment, when they started playing "The Star-Spangled Banner", for many people in Pensacola, in the Plaza that day, it was the first time they had heard what would be the national Anthem of their new country.

And so I find that to be quite stirring.

I think people were probably eating, I think they were visiting.

I think they had parasols.

In fact I know they had parasols, and that were shading their faces, I think they would have been dressed in their nicest clothes to come to this.

Beforehand, I think they had breakfast, certainly Andrew Jackson had breakfast.

And so, you know, having breakfast is a great idea to start your day on any day, much less on the day that you change country affiliations.

And then, they would have, you know, spent a day mixing and mingling in their downtown area.

So I think it would have been pretty exciting.

And we laugh and look back at the commemoration, for the 150th anniversary of the territorial period.

And again, it was a big hurrah in Pensacola, a lot's going on.

And so it's, you know, it's a nice way to celebrate who you are without leaving out the things that were not so good about that period.

And I think it's good to touch on that.

This was not a great time for native people.

This was not their, not a great time.

You know, they, when Europeans began to step on our shores, it was hard, on native people all the way down the line.

And the fact that native people have retained their culture and are able to actually live and celebrate their culture is a wonderful thing.

And part of this commemoration that we're doing is to celebrate everybody.

Everybody has a voice, everybody has a story.

And Andrew Jackson was certainly here as was Rachel.

And, but they are not the big story.

The big battles and the big story are not the big story.

It's the people.

- Yeah, absolutely and you have certainly researched them.

And we're just about out of time, if people wanna know about their own heritage or more about the people that were here in 1821, what should they do?

- Well they can certainly go to the West Florida Genealogical Society website, wfgs.org.

We have an entire section on the 200th anniversary, but we also have just local resources, some of which we used in our research for this database.

- Wonderful, wonderful.

Virginia, thank you for being with us.

We're gonna bring on the web designer next.

And so, we'll take a short break and we'll return right after this.

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So this will help them learn and keep them engaged.

- I especially liked the, there were the storyboard feature where I can have the kids go through a sequence.

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- It is a great partnership with WSRE and Gulfarium to have the same mission, and we hope they take these resources, share them with their students, and they become great stewards of our oceans.

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(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - This is inStudio on WSRE TV.

We are discussing the 1821 project.

Erin Renfroe is a researcher with the West Florida Genealogical Society and the creator of the 1821 database.

And she remains with us.

Margo Stringfield remains with us as well.

And we're also being joined by Joe Vinson.

He is the web designer for the project.

Joe is also the founder of the website, Pensapedia.

So welcome Joe to our round table discussion about all of these exciting events in Pensacola.

- Thank you very much, it's great to be here.

- Yeah, we're so glad to have you.

So, Erin created the database, and then you took it and put it out there for the world, is that how this works?

- Basically Margo gave me a call and described kind of the, the vision that she had for the project using the database that the West Florida Genealogical Society people had put together.

And based on her description, I kind of sketched a little draft of, you know, the idea of having this mosaic of tiles with faces and how that might look when it was merged with the data that we have here and then submissions of photos from the community.

And now the site is live and we're very excited about it.

- That is very exciting, and you have quite the background with history is my understanding.

I mean Pensapedia, really?

- Yeah, so I'm a Pensacola native and I caught the history bug so to speak from John Appleyard when I was working at the Appleyard Agency.

And that inspired me to create Pensapedia, which is the local history Wiki.

And I just love the idea of using technology to make this information available in hopefully a user-friendly intuitive way.

And I think that's, this project is a great extension of that philosophy.

- Well we just had a glance at what we might see when we log on to the website.

So for somebody that doesn't know what we're talking about, we're talking about the 1821 Sampler, which is all of the people that were here in 1821, right?

So now you've taken that and you've done what?

- So we imported the database of names, and in many cases, people who were not named, whose names were not preserved in the historical record, and we have a tile, a mosaic of tiles where those names are represented by avatars, cartoon faces representing man, woman, child et cetera.

And people can go and click that and read the stories that we have.

And if there's not already a face associated with that person, they can click a button that says, "I'd like to represent this person."

And so our goal is to have members of the modern day community represent all 2300 or so people from the 1821 community that we know about.

And so at the end, we'll have a mosaic of 2300 faces from the water community representing all of those individuals.

- [Erin] And this will be such a resource for people in the future.

- [Joe] It's a really engaging public history project because it allows members of the community to get involved in a way that I think is fun and engaging and allows them to make a personal connection to someone hundreds of years ago.

- [Sherri] We're scrolling through it right now.

And so do you find that there are certain people that more people are wanting to be, or are you finding that there are people that want to represent someone unnamed?

What are you finding there?

- [Joe] Well, there are certainly a handful of people that were in high demand and were claimed very quickly.

A lot of people in the forum, we have options where you can, instead of choosing a specific individual, you can choose to represent a characteristic, a black person, native American, a woman, a child, someone in the military, and you select the characteristics that you wanna represent and submit it.

And we'll try to match you with someone meeting those characteristics.

So beyond that, almost half of the people in the database are actually unnamed.

And so at a certain point, we will in theory, run out of named individuals in the database.

And our hope is that people will be just as excited about representing these unnamed individuals as they are about representing some of the better known names.

Because every one of these people, even if we don't know their name, has a rich history, you know, they lived a complex life.

They had all sorts of issues that are probably similar to the issues we have today.

And we wanna make sure that the spirit of the project is that everyone is represented.

- [Sherri] I love that.

The thought of, and Margo, did you represent an unnamed person?

Did I hear that or did I make that up?

- [Margo] Erin?

I believe is an unnamed person.

- Oh, okay, okay.

- [Erin] I'm an unnamed Spanish, civil servant.

- [Sherri] Oh, and how did you land on that?

- [Erin] Oh, I just asked for a random assignment.

- [Sherri] And that's what you got, so people can do that?

They can just ask for a random assignment?

- [Joe] Yep.

- And what an amazing thing to get to do.

So I logged on to it to see what I could do, but I don't think I don't think I did it right.

So I managed, I put my name in and I picked a person, but I didn't see a list of people.

So is this pretty full proof?

Can anybody log on and figure it out other than me?

- Well, I guess I won't know if I don't receive the submission, but so far I think we've done pretty well.

The forum that people can go to is, is pretty straight forward.

If you're on your phone and you tap the upload photo button, then it gives you the option not only to choose something from your phone, you know, albums, but also to take a selfie right there.

- [Sherri] Oh wow.

- And so it's, I think it's pretty user-friendly.

And again, you have the option to choose these characteristics.

You can let us know if you wanna use your real name or not.

Some people may not be comfortable having their real name attached to it.

You can just put your first name, there's all sorts of options there.

And yeah, we're just really excited to get the whole community's involvement.

- It seemed very, very user-friendly.

And I did manage to upload a photo and I did, but I just wasn't sure who I was representing.

So just to be clear on that, so maybe you'll find that out and- - If you didn't give any preferences, then we'll just assign you to somebody.

- You'll find somebody that you'll assign me.

So how have you two worked together quite a lot?

- We've ended up working together more than I think either one of us expected to mostly because I kept finding more people and had to keep sending him revised spreadsheets to put in there, but we've also put our heads together when somebody has asked for someone who has either already been claimed, and we have to find the next best person to suit the characteristics they're looking for.

Or if someone has given us an ethnicity or national origin, and we kind of have to figure out who would fit, fit the brief for them.

So, yeah, we've ended up doing some of that.

- [Sherri] This just humanizes the whole project.

- I think it does, and that's really what we were looking for was the connection and frankly, I hope everybody smiles when they do this.

I mean, this is just, it's a good way to welcome people to our community.

It's a good way to say, "Hey, come see us today, come see who we were and come see us today."

And so whether you're visiting or whether you're here full time, it's a wonderful way to be part of the history of Pensacola and Escambia County, part of our history.

- [Sherri] Be nice to have it linked with lots of visit Pensacola sites.

So people might actually get to know us a little bit more before they come, would that be a thought?

- It would be, and that everything is linking through the visit Pensacola website, and also it's on the Escambia County website.

And with the city of Pensacola, you can access this, but there's been a series of newspaper articles running in Pensacola News Journal, and those run every Monday on different topics.

Carter Keener was just talking about the architecture of the period in Monday's newspaper.

And these you can open up online and read at the news journal or through visit Pensacola.

So all of the public products are really public products.

They're out there in every way we can put them out there for people to be able to enjoy.

- Joe, you caught the history bug.

You mentioned earlier, you were what, 10 years at Appleyard, everybody knows Mr. Appleyard's name.

Talk about your experiences with him and how this has led to where you are today.

- Well, John Appleyard was an absolute treasure for the community, is an absolute treasure for the community.

And it was a joy to work at the Appleyard Agency, and to hear him clacking away on his manual typewriter every morning with his cup of McDonald's coffee next to him.

And I'll just treasure the time that that I had with him to learn and to be inspired by his love of storytelling and communicating history to the people of a community.

- So he was on a typewriter and you're on a computer these days.

And you're encouraging people to go in and explore the website.

What is the very best way to do that?

- So there's a few different ways to explore the website.

If you load the website 1821sampler.com, the first view you're gonna get is the mosaic.

And depending on what device size you're on, mobile device, tablet, laptop, larger computer, you'll get a grid of different faces, a number of rows, a number of columns per row, rather, and you can scroll down and these are in randomized order.

And so you can visit it one day and you'll see a certain order visit the next day, if the cache is refreshed, you'll see a different order.

And so the idea is that you're not seeing the same faces every time, but you're gonna see the people who have been claimed by individuals from the modern community first.

And then after we get through all of them, you'll see the people who have not been claimed yet.

And so then if you're inspired and you wanna get involved, you might pick one of those names, click through to their full entry, and then there's a button that says, "Represent this individual."

And so if you click that, it takes you to the forum.

And it actually, pre-populates the field saying that I wanna represent this individual with the name of the person whose entry you clicked from.

So that's one way that you can get involved.

There's also a list view.

So this is right underneath the mosaic view.

There's a list view, and this is more of a table format.

And these have columns for the names for, you know, sex, marital status, race, occupation, their age, and these are, these are sortable columns.

So if you want to see all the people who were, you know, army privates, you can click the occupation and sort by alphabetical order there and find all the people who were on the USS Hornet or so forth.

So there's a few different ways that you can view this information and we're also going to be adding other ways, other visualizations, ways of exploring the data, different pie charts and ways of thinking about the information that we've collected because 2300 names, there's a lot of ways of kind of viewing this data in aggregate.

- [Sherri] Talk about some of the different ways of viewing the data.

- [Erin] Well, a few of the things we tried to highlight of course, was where people's ethnicity, their occupations, where they were from.

I also added markers for whether they were buried in St. Michael's cemetery, whether they were a veteran of the war of 1812, whether they were affiliated with the Spanish military or one of the US army regiments that was in town or on the USS Hornet.

So there's a lot of different ways you can look to find information that might not even really be in the immediate description.

I did try to put in the descriptions, you know, whether they had served in the war of 1812, and whether they were eventually buried in St. Michael's cemetery, but there's quick ways to get to that information too.

- [Sherri] Well, I think about just the massive amount of information that's available, is that something that both of you have put your hands on and actually done?

I'll let you each take that question.

- I'm gonna preempt what Erin might say and give her all of the credit.

The narratives, I mean all of the data is amazing, but I think one of the things that makes us so amazing to interact with is the biographical narratives that are associated with every person.

And Erin has taken the raw information and woven it into a story for each person.

And it really gives you a sense of having a better idea of who they were.

And it lets us know the areas where we don't have information.

And it's so fun to read between the lines.

You know, it might say this person was a seamstress and she was a widow and she lived with her two children.

And there was also these other people who lived in the household and we don't really know why, but there's just so much information here and where possible we've linked from each biography to the biographies, you know, of someone's spouse or someone's child or someone's mother.

And so it allows you to kind of take each individual entry as a jumping off point to explore further.

- Wow, how do you even say, "Yeah sure, I'll document 2300 people in Pensacola."

I can't, I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around that.

What kind of superhuman are you?

- Oh, I have to interject here and say superhuman.

And the reason I knew that they would be to do this is because Erin identified all of the people for the most part that were buried in the poor farm cemetery, in the paupers cemetery, that was formed in the later 1800s here.

We know where it is.

It's no longer marked and there are no markers there, but she was able to identify through her work, everyone that was buried there.

I found that to be an absolutely extraordinary achievement.

And that's why this did not seem like a leap to us that this could happen.

And you might want to talk a bit about how you did identify the poor farm inhabitants.

- Well, I can't by any stretch say that I've identified all of them, but I think 1200 and something names, and it's gonna be strange to say, but I'm really good at Drudge work.

Just having a pile of records and just going through them and extracting information for some reason, that's my wheelhouse so.

- That's your area.

- [Erin] Yeah.

- But I think that's illustrative of the fact that these are people that are typically not known in the historic record to any degree.

These are people that they did have a story, and they are part of our story, but they are pretty much lost in the narrative.

And so I was very impressed with being able to give voice to the people that were in a position to be buried at the poor farm, the paupers farm.

And so, it was a short leap from knowing that and seeing the research done there over to this project.

- My hat's just really off to all of you, when you talk about, there are no markers, there are no ways of people to be able to go visit these sites, is that right?

Or, I mean, there's literally people all around us, is that correct?

There are, and it's a bit of a tragedy.

It became a little bit of a mission with the poor farm to, to recover the names, because these are people who were ending their lives in poverty very often at the poor farm itself.

So they had been, they were on their last legs and there's a great dearth of information on their death records because nobody knew who they were, you know they might have a name and they might have that they were retired farmer and their cause of death.

There's nothing about where they were from or who their parents were.

And so yeah, I kind of had a mission in my mind when I was recovering their names that, you know, that they would be again lifted up into memory.

- [Sherri] That's what she wanted to do for them.

We're looking at something here about what this is all a part of Margo.

- And well, part of our look at Florida becoming an American territory is to look at different ways that we can all come together as community.

And this was certainly one of the projects that we had where we all come together as community.

And so we will be having different activities throughout the course of 2021, which is the 200 year mark, that we'll be able, that the public will be able to participate in and one of those will be on the actual date of the flag exchange on July 17th, down in historic Pensacola village in Museum Plaza.

And that will, gives people a sense of what the day would have been like with the speeches and, but with, the music that would have gone on and the food that would have gone on and the role of the keel boat, as it brought vegetables down the river from other upper Escambia parked down there talking about the role of that specific vessel in 1821.

And I think most to me, one of the most important parts of the day begins at sunrise.

And that is when we have the traditional Creek blessing of the day.

And it's a really a big honor that the Santa Rosa Creek tribe will be at daybreak blessing what we all view as a big day in our history.

And they are celebrating as Americans and they are celebrating in a way that really shines a light on their culture.

And so the public is invited to that sunrise on the 17th.

And I do want to stress, there will be no photography, no recording.

This is an intimate setting and people that come are privileged to be there, to witness it, but not record it in any way, shape or form.

And so, then they should go to breakfast because you got to think about Andrew Jackson and his fine breakfast and go eat breakfast, and then come back at 10:00 and join everyone as we drift together as community, on the same landscape that people drifted on in 1821.

- People will be talking about this event and we talked about it.

And after 150 years, we're talking about 200 years.

So these events will live on in our minds and our hearts.

We talked just a little bit about, I believe there were 16 different ways or more to identify people.

- So yeah, during the Spanish colonial period, they had what was called the Costa system.

And that was a way of kind of sorting people into groups based on their ethnicity.

And at the height of the Spanish empire, there were at least 16 different ways of categorizing people based on how much of their blood was European or African or Indian.

And what we can see in the data is by the time of the 1820 Spanish census, which is where a lot of this data comes from for our project, is that there are a handful of people who are identified as Mestizo or Mestiza, lots of people who are identified as black or European, but a lot of the other differences have kind of been merged together as Pardo or Parda, which is kind of a catch all term, probably predates the word Creole, or is used interchangeably as Creole as just meaning of mixed blood.

And so a lot of people who have requested native American people, because again, we don't, we don't have in our data, specific records about people who only identified as native American, but a lot of the people who are identified as Pardo or Parda would have had some native American blood.

And so that's one way that we are allowing people to represent that characteristic in this project.

- I think it's so great that we have been such a melting pot that we, it's hard to discern the different characteristics, right?

- Well it is.

I think one of the things that's actually so much fun about this, people have crossed gender to represent someone, they have crossed ethnicity, and so it's, to me what a great community builder.

Everyone is just honoring someone from our past and they're doing so in a manner that pulls us all together, so.

- Well, and we've talked also about how the big headline is Andrew Jackson, but that's not all there was.

- Right, so we, there are lots of names of, in our streets today have named after Jackson or other people who were here in 1821, Berula, De Villiers, Guillemard, I used to live on Guillemard Street.

And there's lots of very interesting stories about where those people got streets named after them because of the Vidala fair and some diplomatic disasters honestly, that happened right around the time of the transfer.

But I think the, the really beautiful thing about this project is that we're treating everyone that we know about the same.

Everyone's gonna have one person to represent them, and we hope that everyone who represents a person from the 1821 community, whether they're Andrew Jackson or another, you know, well-known name or an unnamed person, whether it's an unnamed enslaved person or a member of the US military, that they are proud of that.

And they share it on their social media channels and say, "Look, I'm representing this person."

because that's really the heart of this project is that we're representing everyone.

- And are you encouraging people to share on social media?

- Absolutely, and on every entry, when you find yourself in the project, there are buttons that say, you can tweet this, share it on Facebook, email it.

So there's lots of ways, hopefully that people will, will be able to, to spread the word.

- Special hashtags?

- [Joe] Not yet, but that's a great idea.

- Well, I, you know, I need one of those, right?

So we can do that, so, and speaking of eating, and there's a story out there somewhere about a soup terrain that apparently Andrew Jackson ate from, and it was at the Delarue property of which I have sent association.

- There is the story about the soup terrain and supposedly one of your ancestors gave it to what was then the historical society, Pensacola Historical Society.

And I think there has been a search on for years to find that terrain.

And I have always wanted to know what was in that terrain.

There's a description from George McCall, who was a young officer here, and he writes about the beautiful repast that he enjoyed and describes the grounds and the flowering trees and the boat ride up the bay, and then the wonderful food on the table.

He didn't say what the wonderful food was on the table, but I've often wonder what was in the terrain, and I'm betting that it was a gumbo of some sort that would have been in there, or perhaps another soup that would have been a family favorite.

- I would like to know about that too.

So we'll all keep our eyes and ears out for the soup terrain.

- Keep your eyes and ears out for that terrain.

- Yeah, we need that.

So just one of the stories among many, your takeaways from what you've done and what you want Pensacolians to know about this.

- Well, I'm actually a relative newcomer to Pensacola.

I've only lived here for about six years.

And so this was new territory for me going in, and I've learned all about some of the, the old families and the names that a lot of people will know, but I, I really did not understand just how many different cultures came together in this one place in 1821.

That was really the turning point for the Anglo-Americans, the Scots Irish to meet the Spanish, to meet the New Orleans French, to meet the Caribbean enslaved people.

I mean so many cultures all at once, and it gave me just a new found respect and admiration and awe for this city, because there's so much of it we can still feel in the air around us.

- Isn't that the truth.

And how grateful are we all to you for doing that, and Joe for making this assessable to everyone, what are your takeaways?

We're about out of time.

- Yeah, I just think it's really great.

I mean everyone who has submitted a photo has brought a different aspect to this.

Some people have relatives, you know, who were here in 1821 or earlier.

And they say, please find me someone with this last name or this last name and that's amazing, but also there are people who are, you know, first or second generation Pensacolians and just wanna be a part of it.

And I think that's also valid and that's wonderful that we can represent all those members of the community from 1821.

- That's great that you don't have to have had really deep roots to be a really strong part of this community.

We're almost out of time.

Final thoughts, Margo.

- Well my final thought is we are all Floridians and it doesn't matter when you came and it doesn't matter when you floated through here, you have become part of the history of our community, anyone that has been in Pensacola and our historic city.

And we welcome everyone.

- Thank you for bringing that to life.

Thank you to each of you and we encourage our viewers to check out your websites and continue their own journeys with genealogy and with history and all of the above.

Thank you.

A special thank you to our guests, Erin Renfroe, Virginia Shelby, who was on earlier, Joe Vinson and Margo Stringfield, all working in conjunction with the West Florida Genealogical Society and with the commission and the commemorative events to help take us back in time and understand more about those who came before us.

This program will be available soon online at wsre.org, as well as on YouTube, please feel free to share it.

I'm Sherry Hemminghaus Weeks, thank you so much for watching.

We'll see you again, very soon.

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