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

(soft music) - Pensicola's starring role in the making of the state of Florida on this edition of inStudio.

(upbeat music) Florida's first place city played a crucial role in the sunshine state becoming what it is today.

Two centuries ago, Andrew Jackson came to Pensacola to raise the American flag and transfer west Florida from Spanish control.

Thus began the process of setting up a new government.

Florida became a US territory and Escambia became one of its two original counties.

On this edition of inStudio, we'll learn the details of what happened and how it ultimately affected the state of Florida and all of us.

In the first half hour, we are joined by two experienced archeologists who have extensively studied the history of west Florida.

Dr. Judy Bense is a historical archeologist specializing in the Spanish colonial archeology of west Florida between the years of 1698 and 1763.

She is the emeritus president of the University of West Florida and a professor of archeology.

Margo Stringfield is an archeologist at UWF.

Now much of her research focuses on historic cemetery preservation and conservation, as well as Pensacola's colonial British second Spanish and early American periods.

We wanna welcome both of you to the program.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- We're so glad you're here.

And this is really, really exciting stuff.

Let's start out by introducing what we're doing and why.

I understand you were contacted by the mayor and also by Escambia County to do something really significant.

- True, right after Grover Robinson was elected mayor of Pensacola, we belong to the same civic organizations and after one of our lunches, he cornered me and said he would like me to head up a historical something.

And I said, "Well sure Grover, I'd be happy to."

And the first thing that occurred is this bicentennial celebration becoming a US territory.

And we've kept him briefed.

And then of course, the county comes on board and they both gave us some funding, $25,000 each.

And then the legislative delegation to Tallahassee got on board and they matched our local.

And so it started with Mayor Robinson.

And I just gave one of our groups an update yesterday and he was very happy.

- I'll bet he was and then you knew to contact Margo and get her involved too, right?

- Begging is a better word.

But Margo is very experienced.

We've worked together on many projects and we have different strengths, different talents.

And I knew that this would be too much for just me and Margo is really good at getting people in the right place, doing the right thing.

- You've been very busy and I know everybody appreciates that very much.

- Well, I think one thing about this project is it's something that everyone can embrace.

We are all Floridians.

And this is a commemoration of how we came to be Floridians.

If things had not changed, we would still be Spanish.

At some point we probably would have been absorbed into the United States, but in 1821 we see the actual culmination of actions to bring us into the United States.

And so being able to look at us and our role, not only as Floridians but as Americans has been a really fulfilling endeavor with this project because it has involved so many people from different areas of our community, different ethnicities.

This is a people to people project.

And one of our first topics that we talked about was the fact that we wanted everyone to be invested in this.

Everyone should have a really tie in to what is going on because everyone led to what we have today.

Everyone in our past and everyone living today is also part of the history that is to come.

So this is a real buy-in to who we are as Floridians and as Americans.

- We were talking about how we really truly are quite a melting pot here.

Florida was a lot of things before it became part of the United States.

- Heavens it was a colony for over 300 years of Spain.

The French had us for three years, the British had us for 18.

But overall we were a colony of a European nation for actually 308 years longer than we've been part of the United States.

And so it is an interesting perspective and it was a huge change not just a political change, it was a cultural change.

The descriptions of second Spanish, the Spanish Pensacola.

And let's say 50 years later, very different groups of people, of course, a form of government and everybody spoke English by that time.

They didn't at the transition.

- Well, so we really are diverse.

And I think one of the things I've heard you talking about is that of sure the headline was that Andrew Jackson came to town and did this but it was the people, is that right?

- Well, it was the people.

Now, certainly Andrew Jackson was a moving force but he did not come into a void.

He came into a vibrant community.

- [Judy] That's a good way to put it.

- And so, there was a lot going on here.

And I think, if we look at it today, we look at our community as a whole.

We don't look at it as just one, two, three, five, 10 people that are our leadership roles.

And those are very important roles.

We look at everybody and what they bring to the table and how they add to who we are.

- So as part of this commemoration you have a lot of people working behind the scenes.

How did you put together the group of people?

- Well, we talked about this after Margo agreed to help and be co-chair.

The key word is diversity.

What Spanish Florida had was a big Spanish population lots of French people from Mobile and New Orleans came over.

For instance, Spain were allies most of the time not all the time.

And there were native Americans here alive and well.

There were Africans, either enslaved or free.

And there were people from many diverse countries.

And so diversity kind of is our sort of our theme, if you will.

And so we thought, well, we need on this commission to have representatives of all the diverse ethnic groups that were present at the time of the transition.

And so Hispanic, the native American, African-Americans and so on.

And Anglo-Saxons of course, that is really what we did.

And we have 13 members and they represent, there's one or more representatives of all the groups ethnic groups that were here.

And also we have some scholars.

We have real historians, we have real archeologists.

Unfortunately we had John Appleyard who was kind of a local folk historian and we miss him greatly.

But that was the kind of the organizing theme that we had.

And another thing is that we celebrated, the Pensacola celebrated the territorial 150th anniversary back in 1971.

And at that time, historians and archeologists were of the big man theory.

We looked at history, Napoleon and the Kings and the Queens, and of course Andrew Jackson.

Things have changed.

And Andrew Jackson like Margo said is absolutely an important part but there were other important parts too.

And we wanted to be much more inclusive in the modern view and appreciation of history and our current culture.

- Everything that's going on, it's just wonderful.

And as part of this you're putting together quite a few products.

I mean, you're doing this right.

- Well, Like I said, we have some funding and we're using it.

For example, we have an article, the Florida Humanities puts out a magazine periodically.

And the June issue is devoted to our celebration of the territorial bicentennial in the magazine.

I just looked at some Preuss day and it's beautiful.

We kind of have short-term products and long lasting products, and that's one of them.

Another one people probably have been aware that we arrange, Margo really has done the heavy lifting on this, the news journal articles in the news journal every week for 23 weeks or more.

And getting people to write within the parameters in our time.

Their deadlines are real at any rate.

Those are gonna come out in two issues done by the Florida Trust of the Pensacola history illustrated.

So there will be a hard copy version and we've spruced them up with more illustrations and some further readings that they can have.

So those are the kinds of products that we want to last behind this.

And also the fun celebration on the actual day is gonna be so great.

- [Moderator] Tell us about that Margo?

- We are very pleased to think that we're going to be able to do this in public.

And I think people are so looking forward to being out.

And having something that is nothing but celebratory and catches everyone's eye.

So that day there will be a blessing at dawn by the Santa Rosa Creek tribe.

And everyone is invited to that.

That will be a privilege for us to be invited to that.

And there will be no filming or recording in any way.

We will be participating in an intimate ceremony.

And then of course, after that, we encourage everyone to go eat breakfast.

Andrew Jackson certainly did go eat breakfast.

And at 10 o'clock, then we will all gather in museum Plaza and historic Pensacola village.

And from there, we will have music, the music they were playing in 1821, UWF bands are providing that.

We have honor guards from the United States Navy that will be participating.

We of course will have some speakers that will address the audience.

We also have at that time mariachi bands strolling through the village, historic Pensacola village will be open that day at no charge.

And so you'll be able to visit all of the facilities within the historic village.

You will be walking on colonial Pensacola, an early territorial Pensacola.

The Pensacola Archeological Society along with the Archeology Institute will be talking about the archeology is there in the Plaza and about what we do downtown and how we bring what's underground to the public.

So they understand the many layers of Pensacola's history and archeology.

There will also be dancers.

We are going to have Hispanic dancers.

We come out of Spanish tradition and that tradition today has a slight twist to it.

And you'll be reading in the newspaper in one of our upcoming articles about the modern Hispanic community in Pensacola as it related to the Spanish community of 1821.

And so we have that going on.

The public's invited to contribute to a time capsule.

So nobody needs to send in a mask, we're gonna have a mask.

So you'd be thinking outside the box, so to speak and think about something that represents our 2021 community that will go in the time capsule to commemorate this event.

There will be booths that will be set up.

They're gonna be food trucks.

There will be just a number of reenactments.

We have a keel boat coming down from Ohio and this would have been what the vegetables flowed down from the upper reaches of the Escambia River and the farms there into Pensacola with their produce.

So people will be able to actually visit a working keel boat with its crew.

And that this was a mode of transportation that was in use here in Pensacola at that time.

And they will also be able to see military reenactors.

So during the programming formal programming, you will see reenactors also throughout both on Friday and on Saturday, there will be reenactments going on down in the village.

You will see people cooking food of the period in the kitchens down there.

And you will say demonstrations of games, there will be children's games.

The Fiesta is organizing a historic scavenger hunt for history and archeology.

So come with your family and participate in learning about the history and archeology through a scavenger hunt in the village that day.

We are doing things that we want to engage the public and in a lot of different ways.

Those are just a few of the things going on.

I personally am wanting everyone to purchase a parasol that day, because that's been one of the most charming aspects of one of the businesses in town is that someone was selling parasols.

And so you can have a parasol over your head as you stroll through the village and listen to the music.

It's going to be hot.

But what we're looking at doing are things that we could actually organize and pull off in the midst of a pandemic.

And look to the future with what we would have for a product.

And of course, the documentary, which you all are making WSRE, will be folding along with the programs that we are doing here.

And different spots that will be on WSRE at the end of this, there will be a documentary that looks at the year, the whole year of 2021 and 1821.

So it will be a quite comprehensive product.

And that is a product that we're very pleased to be partnering, the commission is with WSRE on producing.

And then of course we have the 1821 sampler very interactive project.

And we have the walking tour of St. Michael's Cemetery that you can look at on your phone or visit the cemetery and track.

So, a lot of people have been involved in bringing things to the public that we might not have been able to do or even thought about doing if we had been in any kind of a regular pre pandemic mode.

I mean, you can listen to the lectures for the Pensacola archeological society.

There are many things that you can do that will loop you in to what was going on in 1821 and what's going to be going on in 2021.

- And don't forget the fly over.

- Oh the fly over, yes.

There will be a fly over.

It will fly right over our heads.

- And the flag raising where the Spanish flag comes down and the American flag goes up.

- That's true, part of the programming will be the recreation of the raising and lowering of the flag and the raising of the American flag.

And we have special music that we will be having over the course of the event.

And I will tell you now having witnessed this, it will raise chill bumps and make you make you have a real sense of who you are as an American and where we all come from, beautiful music - Well, Dr. Bense, when I hear all these things going on, I hear the word that all, all are invited.

So people that are watching this isn't like for students or certain people.

I mean, can we fit the whole community down there?

- Yes we can.

Because we're gonna have the whole historic district.

And I hope that we need to find extra chairs for the program.

One of the things that everybody enjoys about being together are the booths for the different organizations.

Like the West Florida Genealogical Society has done a ton of work.

They have identified more than 2000 residents at Pensacola at the transition into the territorial period.

And have data on them, who they were, what they did, where they lived, how many children they had and so on.

There's this kind of personal public touch.

And that's what we wanted to get at.

That this is not for just historians.

It's not for archeologists.

It's not for just VIPs.

It is really for the community and the community is gonna have a good time.

And there'll be lots of booths and many organizations that haven't put up their booth in a year and a half or two.

And I think it's gonna be a very enjoyable for little kids and for grandma and grandpa and mom and dad.

There'll really be something for everybody and it's absolutely free.

- It sounds huge and I'm just thinking I'm sure all the restaurants will be open, but I'm also thinking, bring a picnic, get your parasol, right?

- Yeah, bring a picnic.

There will be food there and of course the downtown improvement board, they are wrapping all of the utility boxes out in garden street with really beautiful graphics that talk about the history of our community.

And they will be having the farmer's market that morning.

So people could even go early to the farmer's market and then come on down into the village.

This is an event that really takes in our whole downtown historic area.

And we do want people to come.

This has been a year of trial for so many people both in their personal and professional lives.

For our restaurants, for our businesses.

This is an opportunity for us to say, come back, come back and come see us.

And so we are very much looking at this as a way to get our residents out and to bring visitors to our community see the wonderful things we have to offer.

- Everything is handicap accessible, all the museums and all the park and the booths and things like that.

The only thing we're worried about is rain.

And if it rains, we'll be in the museum of commerce across the street.

And it's a great big room, we'll squeeze them in.

- Well, and if it does rain, it'll just be another part of history because you're literally making history with this project, I believe.

- That's true, it's very different than what they did 50 years ago and we like that.

It'll be different 50 years from now.

- And when you talk about differences, touch just a little bit on what Pensacola was like pre flag raising and what it became.

What sort are the big differences there?

- Well, I think the big difference is cultural and political.

Politically, it had been under a king and still is, Spain has a king and royalty.

And it was authoritarian autocracy which is what monarchies are.

And so that's all these people all of them, the French, the Spanish, the British they all were under that form of government.

So, the transition to democracy was, first of all people didn't speak English very much.

And an interesting thing about the change in government is that people in general didn't know what democracy meant.

And so the US government and Andrew Jackson said we're only going to appoint officials for one year.

The governor, he was governor for one year, the sheriff, the mayor, the county commission, the judges, all of that one year.

Because in the United States, we elect our leaders.

So we're gonna have an election in one year.

And so during that year, they educated people about voting, about how government works.

They had them English lessons to speak English.

And it was really a conversion of political but culturally, it was very different.

There weren't many Anglo-Saxons, there were people from foreign countries and they had different values.

While there were African-American slaves, there were also free people and they were integrated.

We would use that word today.

The community was integrated.

And so there were people that have different ethnicities but they mixed and mingled with each other.

- That's good.

- They did, it was a slower pace under the Spanish much slower pace, but the Americans came in and shook it up and shook it up.

And so everyone pretty much got with the plan over time.

So you see, as Judy said, by the time we get maybe 10 or 15 years into the American period people are speaking English as their language of choice in their commerce.

And they are still speaking their native language in their home and with their friends, but you're seeing a real shift there.

And you're also seeing a shift in the food ways.

And I think food unites us all the way down the line, but you're seeing a lot of different cultural traits that are joined together.

People come with what's comfortable for them and what they're used to.

- And religion, you know.

- And religious we see- - The Protestants came in and the first church was the first Methodist church.

A missionary came from New Orleans, I think, I don't know where, but came in and established this church, the first Protestant church.

It was very different.

It wasn't better or worse.

It was just different.

And like we say, 15, 20 years later it had made the transition, yeah.

- And I think on the religious front one of the most interesting things is the church here was the Catholic church.

It was St Michael's, the parish of St. Michael's.

And when the Americans came in, they went to St. Michael's.

They might not have understood one thing about what was happening in the service but that is where they went to church initially.

And then they began to develop small groups of meetings.

And then of course, more formal religion for the Protestant population developed.

But the Catholic church was very welcoming to everyone and they all went.

And then afterwards, they were amazed at what happened on the Sabbath in Pensacola, after everyone attended mass.

So the Spanish were welcoming.

And on every front we see a welcoming Spanish community and we see the Americans coming in as well to blend these two together and then they all start marrying each other.

And so we see an explosion in the blending of families between- - You can describe the territorial period as one of transition.

Because in 1845, we became a state, the 27th state in the United States.

We were American, we were owned by them.

We had their form of government but it was sort of in the early stages.

And by the time 1845 rolls around, they're ready to become a state.

- I love what you've been doing in this community both of you.

We're going to talk in another segment a little bit more about St Michael's and a little bit more about the food and some of the different aspects of the people, some of the things we've been talking about.

But what's interesting to me is that this whole celebration, this whole time people will be walking pretty much on hallowed ground.

Is that a fair assessment?

- It's one of Pensacola's absolutely most significant resources are the remains of the people in the cemeteries.

And also all of the material that is buried a foot underground.

And Pensacola is low in terms of elevation.

And they were always bringing in filter which is marvelous to protect the archeological deposits.

Nobody was more surprised than I at its great preservation.

- That's wonderful, we're getting a little bit short on time.

I wanna make sure that we get everything in this segment that we want to say.

I know you've got some signage that's gonna be... You're just doing everything just right.

- We're gonna leave behind signs that are both a state historical marker official, went through the process.

And also local signs that we already have some around town.

There's a maritime trail.

And that will focus on important places during the territorial, the second Spanish in the territorial period.

- Any final thoughts on these items we've been discussing?

- For everyone that's worked on this project, it has been very fulfilling and it's been a service to community and it is for the community.

- We are so grateful and we're so honored to have you come on.

And we look forward to the documentary and all of the great products that you're doing and all of the work and the history that you're making right now.

Thank you for being here.

- Thank you for having us Sherri.

- Absolutely, when we come back, Margo will stay with us and we'll bring on some more guests.

We'll also learn how the Spanish and American blend led to a new west Florida.

You're watching a studio on WSRE TV, PBS for the Gulf Coast.

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Based on the video, they said roughly 10 days.

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(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Welcome back to inStudio as we continue our discussion about Pensacola's role in the making of Florida.

UWF archeologist, Margo Stringfield stays with us and we are now joined by Dr. Brian Rucker, professor of history at Pensacola State College and Deb Mullins, who is a historical archeologist.

And we are so pleased to have you with us.

I'll start with Deb, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got involved in this?

- Okay, well, I've been doing historical archeology since the '90s.

Started over in St. Augustine and then worked my way around the Southeast, the Caribbean, Mexico but with an emphasis on Spanish colonial archeology.

- Okay, and Dr. Rucker, how about you?

- Well, I've been teaching at PSE since the 1990s as well.

And I also do Florida history and Panhandle history at UWF.

- And are we still calling this area the Panhandle, I've heard it go through a lot of different names?

We've had Northwest Florida, the Panhandle.

- [Brian] Whatever you wanna call it.

You can call it whatever you want, right?

You're just studying the history.

Let's talk a little bit about that.

Who was here and how did things look in 1821?

- Okay, well, I mean, one of the things that's good to talk about for a moment is what is the second Spanish period?

And it is a term that we read about in the paper or maybe study in class a little bit here if we grow up here.

And a lot of people don't know what it means.

The second Spanish period was the twilight years of the Spanish colonial rule in Florida.

The English had held Florida for about two decades.

The Spanish got Florida back.

And so those twilight decades leading up to the Americans coming in in 1821 is what the second Spanish period means when we talk about it like that.

So Pensacola of course, was a very small border land community.

There was a specific reason that it came into being in 1698 and stayed through hundreds of years.

And that was to protect Spain's more prosperous colonies elsewhere.

We're part of a border land system that they installed early on in the colonial period.

But despite that, despite its sort of military foundation it was a community on its own.

It had to be self-sufficient because it was so isolated and because Spain in Florida was surrounded by her European enemies as well, and also had many issues with native Americans.

They had to learn to negotiate with their European neighbors with native Americans.

And it was a very diverse small town in those last decades of Spanish colonial role.

- So, the first decades or the first time of Spanish being here, were they largely different than that second?

- Yes, it was very different.

During that time period it was much more strictly a military presidio, it was called.

And of course, Dr. Judith Bense and other archeologists at UWF have studied those presidios extensively all around Pensacola out on Santa Rosa island.

But the second Spanish period, although it was military focused and dominated, there were a whole officer regiment here and everything.

It had much more of a civilian feel to it.

So that is a big difference between that and the first Spanish period.

- [Sherri] And we're looking at a map here, is this how we looked at that time?

- Well, that to me is classic what second Spanish period Pensacola looks like when I think of it.

And that is a map that was drawn by Vincent Pintado.

He was the Spanish surveyor in that time period.

And he spent several years in Pensacola with a team of people mapping out west Florida, the city, all kinds of tracks of land, whether they be for sale, whether they were inherited through families.

So we have hundreds of Pintado maps but this is the classic image of downtown Pensacola.

He came through and he was actually ordered here to reorganize the downtown.

So when we look at downtown today, thank you Pintado.

- [Sherri] Big influence- - Aha, because Ferdinand and all the familiar streets that you know when you go downtown, those were formalized in that time period.

- He mapped it out.

Brian, let's talk a little bit about the role of native Americans during this second Spanish timeframe.

- Very key, the Creek Indians in particular that tribe and in the late 1800s, one of the biggest export I know from Pensacola and the west Florida area were deer skins over to England and European countries.

'Cause industrial revolutions going on there and they need cheap leather for belts and pulleys for all the textile factories.

And so they're reliant on the white tail deer of the Southeast.

So you can actually say that England's industrial revolution was powered by the white tail deer of the Southeast.

The native Americans, the creeks in particular in Georgia, Alabama, in Florida were the ones that hunted the deer and they brought them to Pensacola and other port cities.

Pensacola was a big shipping area.

You had the Panton, Leslie Traded Company that was working with the Spanish and they were the big suppliers.

And there was a relationship.

The Creeks would barter for goods, powder, blankets, whatever they needed.

But unfortunately they got into debt and sort of down here we call it Visa discover MasterCard.

And so they were beginning to have to trade some of their lands to get rid of the debts.

Now, this is what really starts a downward spiral for Spain's fortunes in Florida and the cause of creeks.

They had a liaison in the early days with the Panton, Leslie and Company, Alexander McGillivray, who was a half Scottish, half Creek.

He watched out for the interests of the Creeks, but he died in the 1790s.

And after his death, there's no one really speaking for the interest of the Creek Indians.

So they're losing land, they're getting into debt and they're blaming Spain, they're blaming everyone.

And so this is a bad situation that just go spiral further and further into the early 1800s.

- [Sherri] And we're looking at a picture here right now, I guess a render- - [Brian] Alexander McGillivray.

- [Sherri] And who was this?

- [Brian] He was the liaison between the Panton and Leslie Traded Company and the Creeks 'cause he was half Scottish, half Creek.

But his death in the 1790s really triggered a series of misfortunes that would just ultimately be the perfect storm for Spain.

- [Sherri] And this picture that we're looking at here.

- That's on the original Panton, Leslie Trading Company buildings that was in downtown Pensacola survive up to the early 1900s.

That's where the people came to do the trading and they were shipped off deer skins by shiploads.

- [Sherri] And where was that located in downtown?

- Near the judicial center.

- Okay, okay, so everything was pretty close to the water front, wasn't it?

- And there is a replica of it.

Most people know it as the doll house downtown.

- Okay, so, all right.

So we can still look at something that looks very similar to that.

When I hear the two of you talking, it feels like it was a very tumultuous time, am I getting that correct?

Or were people pretty well entrenched in the community and knew their places and their roles?

- I think that it was both.

I think that always on the geopolitical scale on a larger scale, it was a period of dramatic change all across the Southeast.

But people were living their daily lives here and going about their business and making plans for the future.

And I think that as Anglo Americans, a lot of us are taught the idea of manifest destiny of the United States.

But that is not how the people who lived here saw things.

They did not think about their fortunes and futures in that way.

They were planning for themselves and their families as part of a Spanish colony under the Spanish king.

And so there were set roles here, but yes on a larger scale, major things were happening.

- What are your thoughts on that?

- Definitely, I think that people here in Pensacola in the town itself had a sense of security.

But outside the city limits, it was the wild frontier.

There was hardly anyone between here and Tallahassee St. Marks.

You've got the Americans on the border, you got the Creeks on the border.

It was a border land struggle.

And you've got all these people trying to play ponds off of each other.

You got the British involved, you've got the Spanish involved.

You've got the Americans.

You've got the creeks involved.

All these little power struggles are going on in the late 1700s and early 1800S.

- Wow, and then so now who were the first non-Spanish inhabitants coming into west Florida?

You may have already covered that but I wanna make sure we let people know about that.

- Deb would say that this goes back to the first Spanish period because the second Spanish period beginnings, you got all Cosmopolitan people.

You got people from the Caribbean, you got French, it's a port city.

You're gonna have a lot of different people from other countries.

So Pensacola has always been cosmopolitan for the colonial period to the day.

And the first people really coming down from the early 1800s are a lot of scotch Irish from the Alabama area from Georgia.

Some of them were running away and they were indentured servants trying to find a better life.

They're going into the Spanish Florida.

There were basically squatters and they lived up on the north Escambia River on both sides of Santa Rosa and Escambia counties today.

They're sort of quietly farming, living out little lives.

And the Spanish knew they were there but didn't really complain because they knew they could be shipping down potatoes and corn and stuff to the people in Pensacola which prevented them having to go to Havana for everything they needed.

So that would supply them with food to the people, the Hispanic population in Pensacola.

So it was like, okay, we know you're up there illegally but we appreciate what you're doing.

- And one of the things that changed in this time period was Spain's approach to interlopers, as we could call them.

Because before they wouldn't have tolerated it but they had no choice now because they were surrounded on all sides by European enemies and now America.

And trying to understand what is this America?

You know, what does that mean?

So they chose instead to take the route that Brian is describing.

And they would have sent priests among them.

They wanted them to swear fealty to the king.

They wanted them to convert to Catholicism but they took a different approach to it.

They weren't trying to run them out.

They needed the stability, they needed the goods that they could bring in especially through agriculture ventures.

But by this time period too, it is important to remember that there was already two and three generations just in the short time period of Spaniards, French Creoles, Spanish Creoles, free black people who were residents here and black Creoles here as well.

And they all had businesses and investments in the community and they wanted it to succeed.

- And did those influences carry over from 1821 into 2021?

I'd like for both of you to answer that question.

- They definitely did.

Because many of the Creole families aside from a lot of the black Creoles chose to stay when Florida became a US territory, because they were so invested.

And as Brian mentioned, previously, security is local and they were secure here with their families and their community.

They felt like they could take a chance so they decided to stay.

But things did start shifting as has been alluded to.

The dominant form of government shifted.

The dominant form of religion started to shift, not within those families necessarily, but you know they had to get along.

And you can see this reflected, it's quite interesting when you go through the historical documents that our newspapers, our first new newspaper here started right away in 1821.

So we have really great records showing there was a balance, there were still, the more wealthy families were advertising in for tutors to teach French and Spanish to their children.

They wanted to keep their traditions alive for different culinary lessons and musical lessons and things like that.

But they were adapting at the same time.

- And you were talking about some of the different families.

We just had a picture pulled up now.

What are we looking at here?

- Well, I mean, when we talk about the late Spanish colonial period there are some families that people in Pensacola recognized their family names.

This is a part of the Gonzalez family.

This is Pauline Gonzalez and she was actually the daughter in law of Manuel Gonzalez who was the first Gonzalez in the territory.

This was the wife of his first son, Celostino, and he died quite young but she lived into her 90s.

They're both buried together and St. Michael's Cemetery as Margo can attest.

And I've been studying this family in particular for a long time and I feel like we are cousins sort of it.

- [Sherri] You get to know people.

- Yeah, whenever I meet a Gonzalez around town, it makes me happy.

But yeah, so a lot of the Dayla Roulas, the Bonifaz, the Gonzalez, a lot of those families still here and have a proud heritage - Very proud, my grandfather, Dr. Maxwell Dayla Roula, he was very fond of talking about the family's history and he was very, very proud of that.

And it does date back as you will know, back to Francisco coming, I guess, in the late 1700s.

I believe he's buried in New Orleans.

So we had quite a lot to do with New Orleans during those time periods.

- Well, the woman that was just shown, Pauline Gonzalez she was actually from New Orleans.

Her father was a native of Spain.

He came here and married a Creole in Louisiana and there was much going on back and forth between Pensacola and New Orleans.

And when I talk about Pensacola culture, I mean Gulf coast culture.

We are included in this sphere, the orbit of New Orleans, a lot of times.

So a lot of those cultural traditions are still here and it's very different from even the rest of Florida which is what makes Pensacola and the Panhandle so interesting.

- We love that you're here, we were talking about the differences of the people and we're gonna go through some more pictures too in just a moment.

But the differences or the way things have stayed similar to 1821 and 2021 with the people.

- There are still connections.

And that territorial period, you still have enormous amounts of trade going on shipping between Pensacola and New Orleans, Mobile, Pascagoula, Galveston.

It's just amazing to see the interconnections in the territorial period.

That's what we built on for the next 200 years.

- Yeah, let's pull up some more similar of those pictures if you don't mind, Ted and we'll have Deb walk us through some of the images that she provided for us if we could do that.

Where do you get all your images, here's one.

- Well, this I wanted to show because if I'm talking about Creoles especially the black Creole community here, I like to include her because she actually is an early author.

She's a Creole from Pensacola, her family is from here.

And her work was largely overlooked for a long time but it was recently republished and has been being built on by other scholars in the area.

So she's one of the first to write a master's thesis on what is the Creole community here in Pensacola.

So I liked to include her.

And then when I'm talking about Creoles, I mean, just like one of the projects related to the anniversary celebrations of pairing people's photos who are citizens of Pensacola now with a biographical portrait of someone who lived here in the colonial or early American period, I like to always try to find images to show what they looked like because they had a different look.

The Creoles in Pensacola were a mix of French, Spanish, African, native American.

And they did not look like me.

They did not look like Anglo.

The photos and portraits are hard to come by especially for men.

They're hard to access.

There was fewer of them painted.

But these are from a private collection in New Orleans of miniatures.

One of them was actually painted by an artist who was a free black Creole in New Orleans so it makes it special.

And the art has sort of it's starting to get unearthed.

And so it has become a valuable focus for collectors and that gives us access through their online publications, auctions.

And then of course our wonderful archives here that we have.

And I'm always looking because it's important to look at their faces and recognize who they are.

- So people I imagine could find you somewhere on the web and get information to you if they have, information on that as well.

Brian, if you were telling somebody that didn't know anything about Pensacola, Pensacola's history and this great celebration that we have in 2021.

Where are the places you would tell them to be sure to look in Pensacola to find the most rich history information?

- Well, there was Florida Collection.

The basement of the John C.P's library UWF is the largest depository of west Florida information by none.

And so we've got a wonderful, wonderful resource right here locally.

It's great material.

- And then obviously St. Michael's Cemetery.

- There's a good bit of information available there.

Fortunately, there was a survey that was done in the 1930s avocational survey, and it's been a great help to us in identifying what has been lost and also in helping to read degraded sites.

And then of course, we have a geographic information system for the cemetery.

And this is tied into all of the archeology work we do in the downtown area.

And so you're able to navigate online in a pretty effective manner with what's going on.

- And now we can get out and about, you can go on an archeological walking tour of downtown Pensacola.

And a lot of what you'll be looking at is the landscape that was standing in the second Spanish period.

And there are still several buildings, original homes, things like that.

There's recreation's including one of the most important social spots of the time period, the Tivoli House, which is actually based on a Tivoli house in New Orleans.

And it was a gathering place, it was a dance hall.

It was used as a theater, they had Oprah there, all kinds of plays.

Pensacola was very cultured compared to what you were gonna get almost anywhere else around.

And in the second Spanish period theater companies would come through here and spend several months rehearsing plays and doing runs of plays before they went on to New Orleans or the sort of B team actors would come over here to get more experience, but it doesn't matter.

It was always a packed house.

And there's a story.

that the first theater started in Pensacola and was named the Jacksonian theater but that is simply not true.

They just renamed it for him for a little while and then went back.

And there was theater here throughout the late colonial period.

They loved a good tune.

There were many bands, there were many social clubs and bars.

Many of them are run by women, small business owners of all stripes and backgrounds were women in the late colonial periods.

So the more you dig literally and in the historical documents, the more addictive it is because there's so many stories to tell.

- Wow, and Pensacola still loves it's theater and culture and music.

- When you think about a town of this size that has our own ballet company, our own opera theater, that's our roots.

Those are our roots, and they have stayed alive.

They were founded in the late colonial period and they have stayed with us, it's important.

- [Sherri] Another map here.

- [Deborah] Yeah, that's another Pintado beautiful creation.

And I like it because it just shows the greater area around Pensacola.

And I know that Brian has gone through a lot of these maps extensively because it's neat looking at them because it really is an insight into a lot of the different economy activities.

- [Sherri] Brian, what do you teach your students about that?

- I love maps.

I think maps are highly underrated.

They're so filled with wonderful historical things.

And so many people, I don't know how to read a map.

I got GPS, but we learned so much.

And what's amazing is there's so many new old historical artifacts still come into light.

Just, we thought like we'd seen, all, here comes a treasure trove of materials that someone had in an attic and suddenly it's available to us.

- And I think that's only going to continue because there is a resurgence of interest in Creole identity in the United States.

There's many different forms of Creole identity.

And so some of the families that maybe buried it for a long time, because I was not advantageous to their family, especially in the American territory period it started tightening down on black Creoles and that history was buried within families for a long time but it starting to come out again.

And it's gonna be fascinating to see what the next few decades of research brings out.

- A resurgence of pride, if you will it sounds like.

- I do not think the family's ever lost pride.

I think that they had to keep it quiet and keep it within their own communities because there was a lot of stigma attached to it.

- It's a shame and you can start seeing it right away.

Even in simple things like the directories in Pensacola.

In the early 1820s if you were Creole, you were listed in the white section and there would be a separate notation for Creole.

While by the late 1820s, if you were Creole, it was listed in the black section and then it was listed as Creole.

And so there was a lot of controversy and people had to decide and were forced to decide what track they were gonna take.

And so, yes, a lot of family history has got buried because it was not advantageous to their families and their interests.

And people will always choose to protect their families when they need to.

- [Sherri] Sure, and a resurgence- - And I hope so, I hope more and more of it comes out.

- And talking about things that come out we've got a photo of some artifacts that- - [Deborah] I wanted to just throw up some photos.

A lot of these are very much relevant to some of the things we've been talking about because it wasn't just all business.

And like we touched on with the theater and arts that were so important, you know, like I said there were many bars here.

In fact, Rachel Jackson and her short stay in Pensacola did nonstop complaining about all the parties and dancing and good times.

- [Sherri] I heard about that.

- [Deborah] Now, these are the types of artifacts we might dig up downtown.

And another interesting ephemera that I hope will start to appear for Pensacola, these sorts of flyers would have been on the walls in bars.

And it was sort of like a way for popular music to travel from community to community.

And they would have all kinds of songs, ballads, funny songs, political in nature, things like that.

So just touching on some of the historical and archeological products, this is actually a Creole band that was in Pensacola and it's from the 1870s.

And they were widely popular for many years.

Like I said, the Creole community didn't go anywhere.

- [Sherri] Wonderful to have these images.

And this is?

- [Deborah] I wanted to touch on that because I think it's important.

It dates to 1846 and it's actually one of your ancestors is listed on the petition, as well as the family I mentioned before.

The Bonifaz, the Gonzalez.

This is actually a petition by the white citizens of Pensacola to the Florida government and Tallahassee asking for the special taxes that have been levied against Pensacolians of color in particular black Creoles and free black people to have their taxes reduced to the same rate as the white residents of Pensacola they were not happy that their neighbors and friends and family members who were being persecuted and they did try to make moves to protect each other in the community.

- That's wonderful to know.

And you mentioned these other, I have people come over to me all the time and tell me that I'm their cousin.

And they have names, the Bonifaz and Sierras.

Being in Pensacola is a special treat.

But we talked about how this big celebration is not just for people that have been here for a long time.

It's really for everybody and we're getting short on time.

- It is for everyone.

And I think this is raising awareness of just how we are all connected.

We're all standing next together, next to each other.

We are friends, we're neighbors, and it's a wonderful way to bring our community together.

- Fortunate that we have you all in our midst and we appreciate everything that you're doing.

And we look forward to learning more.

Thank you for being with us.

- [Deborah] Thank you.

- [Brian] Thank you for having us.

- Thank you so much.

Also special thanks to our earlier guests, Dr. Judy Bense.

We've just had a fascinating, fascinating conversation here about all the different Northwest Florida aspects and the roles that we played, the crucial role in the making of our state.

This program will be available soon online at wsrfree.org as well as on YouTube.

And we hope that you will share it around with your friends and your family.

I'm Sherri Hemminghaus Weeks, thank you so much for watching, we'll see you again soon.

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