John Forbes and Company facts for kids
John Forbes (1767–1823) and his older brother Thomas Forbes (died 1808) were Scottish traders. They worked in areas like East Florida, West Florida, and Spanish Florida during the late 1700s. Their company, John Forbes & Company, took over from an earlier trading business called Panton, Leslie & Company. This happened after William Panton died in 1801 and John Leslie died in 1803.
Trading in deer hides and ammunition became difficult during the War of 1812 and the Creek War. So, Forbes & Company tried to get money back by suing British officers. They also talked with Native American tribes. The Creek and Seminole Indians gave large areas of land to the company to pay off their debts. The Spanish governor approved these land deals. This land became known as the Forbes Purchase. It was over 1.4 million acres, making it the largest land grant in Spanish Florida. This happened between 1804 and 1812. In 1817, the Forbes Purchase was sold to two merchants, Carnochan and Mitchel. They later started the Apalachicola Land Company. Even in territorial Florida (1821–1845), land ownership near the Apalachicola River was not fully settled until 1835. Lawsuits about land in the Florida Panhandle by Thomas Forbes' family continued until 1887.
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The Forbes Brothers and Their Families
Thomas and John Forbes were the sons of James and Sarah Gordon Forbes. They lived in Banff, Scotland. John was born on December 20, 1767. He passed away in Matanzas, Cuba, on May 13, 1823. Thomas's birth date is not known, but he died in 1808. They also had two sisters, Anne and Sophia. Sophia's husband, Alexander Glennie, also worked in international trade, just like Thomas and John.
Records suggest that John Forbes never married. However, he had children with a widow named Marie Isabelle Narbonne in Mobile, Alabama. Around 1818, the family moved to an estate in Matanzas, Cuba. There, Forbes ran a sugar mill with his sons-in-law. Marie Narbonne died in 1822. John Forbes died on May 13, 1823, from an illness while sailing to New York.
Thomas Forbes married Elizabeth Anne Yonge in the Bahamas in 1789. They had four children: William Henry, John Gordon, Mary Sophia, and Thomas Irving Forbes. Some of Thomas Forbes's family later sued the companies that took over from John Forbes and Company. They wanted money for lands the company once owned.
Early Trading Companies in Florida
Thomas Forbes likely arrived in Charles Town, South Carolina, before the American Revolution. He began meeting his future trading partners from Panton, Leslie and Company. His uncle, John Gordon, had arrived around 1760. John Gordon and Company hired William Panton as a clerk in 1765. They imported goods from Europe. These goods were sold to colonists and traded with the Cherokee and Creek (Muscogee) nations. These nations controlled land west and south of the Southern colonies. In 1772, Gordon made Panton one of his lawyers. Another future partner, John Leslie, started trading in the Charleston area before 1779. However, he mainly did business in East Florida.
Just before John Forbes arrived, all the old companies closed down. William Panton, John Leslie, Thomas Forbes, William Alexander, and Charles McLatchy formed Panton, Leslie and Company in 1783. This new company grew into Florida. It became very powerful in the Native American trade from St. Augustine to Pensacola. In 1784, John Forbes sailed from Scotland to the Bahamas. The company had docks and warehouses there. Then he went to St. Augustine, which was the company's main office in East Florida. Soon, he was sent to help William Panton at the West Florida office. He also managed the store in Mobile, West Florida.
Panton, Leslie and Company and its later companies were part of the triangular trade. They brought manufactured goods to Africa. From there, they acquired people who were then taken across the Atlantic to the West Indies and the Thirteen Colonies. These people were sold to plantation owners, including some Creek Indian chiefs. Rum, sugar, salt, and indigo were bought in the West Indies. These goods were then taken to North America. Other items, like firearms, gunpowder, and lead bullets, were traded with Native Americans for deer hides and furs. Hides, cotton, tobacco, sugar, rum, and rice were taken back to Europe. They were sold to buy more goods for the next round of trade.
All the partners of Panton, Leslie and Company were Scots. They remained loyal to Britain during the Revolutionary War. This was a smart choice because their trade depended on goods that could not be made in the colonies. The partners were attacked by American Patriots. They were even called traitors by the Committee for Safety in South Carolina. Because it was dangerous to stay in the rebelling colonies, the partners moved to St. Augustine, Florida in 1776. This city was a safe place for loyalists until Britain gave the territory back to Spain in the 1783 Peace of Paris.
William Panton and Thomas Forbes worked closely with the Governor of East Florida, Patrick Tonyn. Their trading company operated from East Florida and Nassau in the Bahamas. They gained trading posts along the St. Mary's and St. Johns rivers. They also had plantations that grew indigo, rice, tobacco, and cotton. The company sometimes brought in African workers who worked on the plantations or were sold to other owners. Thomas also managed a very successful business in the Bahamas.
When the Revolutionary War ended, the British government gave East and West Florida back to Spain. The new Spanish governors saw trade with Native Americans as key to controlling the territory. They quickly learned that the Creeks especially preferred to deal with Panton, Leslie and Company. The partners became agents of the Spanish Crown. They were given almost complete control over trade. Pensacola soon became the busiest place for business. So, Panton, Leslie and Company moved its main office from St. Augustine to Pensacola.
Trade with Creek and Seminole Indians
A big reason Panton, Leslie and Company controlled trade with the Creek Indians was the help of a Creek chief named Alexander McGillivray. He was the son of a Scotsman, Lachlan McGillivray, and a half-Creek woman named Sehoy Marchand. Alexander studied in Charleston before the Revolutionary War. He worked in a trading house in Savannah. However, he returned to Creek country before the war and became a British official. Because Patriot troops had taken his lands in Georgia, he stayed loyal to Britain. He favored trade with Panton, Leslie and Company. In 1783, McGillivray was named a head warrior of the Creek nation.
Panton, Leslie & Company set up its main office in Pensacola, West Florida. They also had other trading houses in Mobile and St. Marks, Florida. From these places, goods could be carried into Creek and Seminole lands by boat and pack train. Deer hides were the main item traded between the Creeks and the company. This was partly because there was a high demand for leather in Europe. Hides and furs brought in by the Native Americans were traded for woolen goods, cotton and linen cloth, handkerchiefs, leather shoes, saddles and bridles, rifles and muskets, gun flints, bullets, brass and tin kettles, axes, metal pots and pans, scissors, and tobacco pipes. However, gunpowder was always the most important item for trade.
Native Americans in the Southeast began trading with Spanish, English, and French people in the 1600s. None of the tribes could make cloth, iron goods, or glass. Firearms became very important not only for getting deer hides but also for defending tribal lands. They used them against rivals and settlers from the American colonies. All the southeastern Native Americans became dependent on manufactured goods. Traditional skills, like making stone-tipped knives and arrows, became less common. Like the Cherokee, Creeks adopted many European customs. This included living in stable villages with farms that grew corn, beans, squash, melons, and cotton. They also raised cattle and hogs.
After William Panton died in 1801, John Leslie went back to London to manage the company's business. In July 1803, "John Forbes and Company" appeared in the company's records. In 1804, it officially replaced Panton, Leslie and Company. During this time, partners in Florida, including John and James Innerarity and interpreter William Hambly, tried to get payments from the Native Americans for unpaid debts.
From 1804 to 1817, John Forbes and Company controlled Native American trade in Spanish Florida. Even so, making a profit was hard during the War of 1812, the Creek War, and the first Seminole Wars. Spanish leaders, including Governor Vicente Folch, allowed the company to trade without paying taxes. This was to stop American fur traders from coming in. James Innerarity and Edmund Doyle opened a new store at Prospect Bluff. This was about 20 miles north of the Apalachicola River mouth. James managed the store in Mobile. Mobile remained in West Florida, even though the United States claimed it was part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.
John Forbes and Company operated in West Florida under Spain's protection. When the United States took over Mobile and part of West Florida in 1814, Forbes and his partners, James and John Innerarity, said they were Spanish citizens. They got official papers from the Spanish governor to prove this. The men used Spanish names and probably spoke Spanish well. To help Spain keep its right to the territory, "Juan Forbes" wrote a book in 1804. It was called Descripción de las Floridas y medios de fomentarlas. This translates to John Forbes Description of the Spanish Floridas, 1804.
Land Deals with the United States
Many Native American tribes that traded with Panton, Leslie & Company and John Forbes & Company lived on land between Georgia and the Mississippi River. This area became the Mississippi Territory in 1798. Spain had given the land to the United States with the Treaty of Madrid. President Thomas Jefferson wanted to move Native American tribes to allow more settlers into the territory.
Benjamin Hawkins, a Native American agent in Mississippi Territory, and John McKee, an agent in Tennessee, met with John Forbes. They talked about using Forbes & Company to help. The Creek (Muscogee), Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cherokee tribes (along with the Seminoles, these were the five civilized tribes) owed money to Forbes & Company. So, the tribes might agree to give up land if the United States government paid their debts. This plan was discussed with U.S. General James Wilkinson. He sent the idea to Henry Dearborn, the U.S. Secretary of War. In 1804, Forbes went to Washington to talk with Secretary Dearborn. He brought a letter from General Wilkinson to Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton.
Forbes & Company successfully made agreements with the four tribes in 1805. The U.S. signed separate treaties with each tribe. The land given up totaled about 8,000,000 acres. These deals were approved between 1805 and 1814. The Creeks gave up land in Georgia between the Oconee and Ocmulgee rivers. The Choctaw gave up land between the Alabama and Pearl rivers. The Chickasaw and Cherokee gave up lands north of the Tennessee river. The United States paid Forbes & Company over $77,000 for their help.
The Forbes Land Grants
Even after helping the United States, John Forbes insisted that the Lower Creeks and Seminoles owed his company a large debt. This was because of two robberies of the trading post on the Wakulla River in 1792 and 1800, involving William Augustus Bowles. The company had also given credit to members of several tribes. They claimed a total of over $192,000 was owed to them.
Forbes sailed to London after John Leslie's death in 1803. He went to officially change the company name from Panton, Leslie and Company to John Forbes and Company. Meanwhile, his partners, James and John Innerarity and William Hambly, talked with 24 Creek and Seminole chiefs about giving up land as payment. Between 1804 and 1811, the company collected most of the debt. They were paid when the tribes gave land to the company, with approval from the Spanish governor Vicente Folch y Juan. The transfer of land between the Apalachicola River and Wakulla River to the company became known as Forbes Grant I or the Forbes Purchase. It included over 1.4 million acres. This land stretched from the barrier islands of Apalachicola Bay to Upper Sweetwater Creek in what are now Liberty and Leon Counties.
The Creek Native Americans agreed to give Forbes & Company their land only if the company would build a trading post on the Apalachicola River. In 1804, James Innerarity and Edmund Doyle built a post at Prospect Bluff, about 20 miles north of the river mouth. The trading post had a building for storing hides, living quarters for workers, and a pen for several hundred cattle raised nearby. During the War of 1812, British troops looted the store. Losses during the war later caused the company to ask the Spanish governor for a second land grant. This became known as Innerarity's Claim or Forbes Grant II. This second claim was for 1.2 million acres west of the Apalachicola River. However, it was overturned in Florida courts in 1830. This happened when future Florida governor, Richard K. Call, found out the land deal was made too late to be valid.
When it was not possible to make a profit from trade after the War of 1812–1814, Forbes decided to sell the land in Forbes Grant I. He likely knew that Spain and the United States would make a treaty that might put his land claims at risk. So, he sold the property to two merchants named Carnochan and Mitchel in 1817. Future lawsuits about the land would mainly involve them and James Innerarity. James still owned about 40,000 acres of the grant. The families of the partners continued to file lawsuits until their claim was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1906.
After John Forbes left, James and John Innerarity continued to manage John Forbes and Company for several years. However, sales were mostly with American settlers, not Creek Native Americans. In 1830, John Innerarity bought the remaining company assets in Pensacola. He retired from the company and closed the Pensacola store. The company's claim to land west of the Apalachicola River was denied by the courts. Their remaining Native American clients were forced to move west of the Mississippi River because of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. James continued to manage the company from Mobile. John Forbes & Company ended when he died in 1847.
Carnochan, Mitchel and Company
John Forbes had tried to make money for his company by selling land to settlers. He also tried to get direct payments of cash or land from the Spanish Crown. But neither of these plans worked well. In December 1817, John Forbes sold most of the lands his company had bought east of the Apalachicola River. He sold them for $66,666 to two merchants from Savannah and Cuba named Richard Carnochan and Colin Mitchel. He and his partners kept about 25,000 acres for themselves, including Forbes Island in the Apalachicola River. An initial payment was to be made in London in 1818. The rest of the $50,000 was to be paid in yearly amounts. This balance was to be paid through mortgages that Forbes and his partners never received.
The lands of the Forbes Purchase were given to Carnochan and Mitchel in the same year that John Quincy Adams and Luis de Onís began talking about Spain giving Florida to the United States. The two signed the Adams–Onís Treaty in 1819, and it was approved in 1821. Spanish land grants made before January 24, 1818, were supposed to be legal. However, they had to be confirmed by local or federal courts. The way to get official ownership for large grants like the Forbes Purchase was not set up by the U.S. Congress until 1828.
After selling the land, John Forbes slowly retired from the company. He died in Cuba in 1823. This left future disagreements about inheritances to Carnochan and Mitchel, James Innerarity, and many other family members. These heirs believed they had not received their promised inheritance when Panton, Leslie and Company and Forbes and Company closed down.
The Apalachicola Land Company
The first American settlers who moved into the territorial Florida Panhandle lived on what they thought was unclaimed public land. But often, it was part of the Forbes grant. For example, Major Charles I. Jenkins, a U.S. customs collector, built a customs house on the west side of the Apalachicola River mouth. Other people who settled without permission joined him at a place called Cottonton or West Point. This land was claimed by Forbes's successors.
The legal ownership of Colin Mitchel and his partners' claim to the Forbes Purchase could not be confirmed right away. The partners planned a settlement called Colinton near their old trading post, several miles north on the river. But most new people skipped that town. They built homes near the customs house at West Point. In 1821, James Grant Forbes (who was not related to John Forbes) included a map of Colinton and a description of the Forbes Purchase in his book about East Florida. Even though the land had a huge amount of untouched forest, most of the area was not good for farming or manufacturing.
In 1828, the U.S. Congress allowed people claiming Spanish land grants to file lawsuits in federal courts. Mitchel and his partners asked the U.S. District Court to confirm their claim. Their request was denied in 1830. So, the partners appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the last decision made by Chief Justice John Marshall, the court ruled in favor of Mitchel and partners in 1835. The partners then reorganized as the Apalachicola Land Company. They planned to raise money by selling land and lots in the town. This town had been renamed Apalachicola, Florida in 1831. Right after the favorable decision, the company hired Asa Hartfield to survey the area. This was to create documents that could prove land ownership. The first sale of lots in Apalachicola brought in $443,800. But later sales went down. A document from 1835 in Leon County, Florida, shows Thomas Baltzell, who would become a Florida supreme court justice, as the President of the Apalachicola Land Co.
The future of the lands in the Forbes Purchase was never simple. Some residents bought lots and built homes. Others started a new town called St. Joseph. This town was on land not part of the Forbes Purchase, about 20 miles northwest. It was next to a deep-water harbor on St. Joseph's Bay. Most residents moved back to Apalachicola after a yellow fever outbreak in 1841 caused many people to leave St. Joseph.
The Apalachicola Land Company kept trying to sell land from 1835 until the American Civil War. However, land sales never really took off. Without enough money, the company had to pay its debts and taxes by giving land to those it owed money to. Also, the family members of Thomas Forbes felt they had been cheated out of their inheritance. They filed a lawsuit in 1851. In 1855, John Beard was put in charge of the company. He tried to sell the properties at auction. He gave his position to George Hawkins in 1866. Most of the land was sold for very little money per acre. The Apalachicola Land Company stopped existing. Years of legal battles were needed to settle who owned the land and barrier islands near Apalachicola.
Forbes Purchase and Florida County Borders
When people from Apalachicola moved to St. Joseph outside the Forbes Purchase in 1835, they asked the Territorial Legislative Council to make St. Joseph the county seat of Franklin County. Even though this request was denied, a new county called Calhoun was created from parts of Franklin County and Washington County in 1838. The western border of the Forbes Purchase became the county line between Calhoun and Franklin. This line still exists today as the border between Franklin and modern Gulf County.
When the family members of Thomas Forbes sued the Apalachicola Land Company in 1851, residents in Gadsden County, in the northern part of the Forbes Purchase, worried. They feared they might lose ownership of their lands or face new taxes. The county representative suggested dividing Gadsden into two. Liberty County, in the southern central area, would contain most of the land from the Forbes Purchase. In 1855, Liberty County was formed by taking sections from Gadsden and Franklin counties. Gulf County was formed from Calhoun County in 1922 and follows the boundary of the Forbes Purchase. As a result, the Forbes Purchase continued to affect Florida's borders and land sales long after the legal dispute was settled in 1887.
