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Panton, Leslie & Company facts for kids
The main office of Panton, Leslie & Company in Pensacola, Florida. This building was William Panton's home and the company's headquarters from 1796 to 1848.
Panton, Leslie & Company was a trading company started by Scottish merchants in the late 1700s and early 1800s. They traded in the Bahamas and with Native American tribes in what is now the Southeastern United States.
The company began as "Moore and Panton" in Savannah, Georgia, with William Panton joining in 1774. In 1775, the British, who then controlled Florida, chose Panton to trade with the Creeks. He later teamed up with John Forbes to form "Panton and Forbes."
William Panton was a loyalist, meaning he supported the British king and did not want American independence. When Britain recognized American independence in 1783, Panton had to leave the United States, and his property was taken. He chose Florida as a new base for trading with Native Americans. Florida had just been a British colony for 20 years.
Panton, Leslie & Company was officially formed in 1783 in St. Augustine. The founders were William Panton, John Leslie, John Forbes, Charles McLatchy, and William Alexander. They were all loyalists. Their goal was to trade with Native Americans in Florida and nearby areas claimed by Spain.
The company was already set up in Florida and the Bahamas. This allowed them to keep working in Florida even after Spain took control of the colony again in 1783. Spanish traders were not interested in trading with the Native Americans in that region. So, Panton, Leslie & Company received a special permission to be the only company allowed to trade with Native Americans in East Florida. They later also controlled the trade in West Florida. Some sources say Spain gave them a monopoly on all Native American trade across its colonies.
For many years, Panton, Leslie & Company was the main trading partner for the Creeks and Seminoles. They also gained much of the trade with the Choctaws and Chickasaws, and were important for the Cherokees. The company partners did not like the United States. They used their influence with Native Americans to support Spain's land claims against the U.S. They also encouraged Native Americans to resist American settlers and attempts to buy tribal lands.
Panton, Leslie & Company also worked as merchants in the Bahamas. They arranged for cotton and other local goods to be shipped. They also acted as agents for merchants in Britain.
After William Panton died in 1801 and John Leslie in 1803, the company changed its name in 1804 to John Forbes & Company.
Contents
Company History
Scottish Traders and Deerskin Trade
John Gordon, a Scots immigrant, started a large trading network in colonial South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida in the 1760s. This network became the base for Panton, Leslie & Company. It grew into the biggest trading company on the southern frontier.
William Panton and John Forbes had traded with James Spalding and his partners before 1776. Panton worked as Gordon's clerk from 1765 to 1772. Forbes was Gordon's nephew.
The five founding partners—William Panton, Thomas Forbes, John Leslie, William Alexander, and Charles McLatchy—formed Panton, Leslie & Company in St. Augustine in late 1782 or early 1783. They were all Scotsmen who had traded with colonists and Native Americans before and during the American Revolution. Staying loyal to the Kingdom of Great Britain was important for them. Most of their trade goods, like guns and gunpowder, came from Britain. Rebelling would have stopped these supplies.
Between 1710 and 1714, a disease harmed cattle in Europe. This led Britain to ban importing cowhides from continental Europe. As these supplies dropped, the demand for deerskins from British North America and Spanish Florida grew quickly. Buckskin was used instead of cowhide for saddles, leggings, shoes, gloves, and breeches. By the mid-1700s, yellow buckskin breeches were worn by people of all social classes in England.
The deerskin trade in the South slowly declined after the American Revolutionary War. However, the clever Scottish merchants found new ways to trade with Native Americans. This happened even as they lost political and economic power in South Carolina and Georgia. Panton, Leslie & Company and its later company, John Forbes & Company, were very involved in Native American affairs. They also influenced international talks in the region.
All the original partners were from northern Scotland. Panton, Leslie, and Forbes were born near Inverness. The birthplaces of McLatchy and Alexander are not known. As strong loyalists, these Scotsmen went to St. Augustine during the war. They were allowed to stay when Spain took Florida back under the Treaty of Paris of 1783. The Spanish government found it useful to let Panton Leslie & Company trade with the Creeks and Seminoles. They allowed the company to sell British guns, ammunition, rum, and other goods. This helped Spain keep its alliance with these southern tribes strong.
By 1776, Panton had 32,000 deerskins stored in his main warehouse. He also had other businesses, including lumber, a rice and indigo farm, and land. In the 1780s, he and his partner Thomas Forbes received thousands of acres of land west of modern-day Palatka. Here, they used enslaved labor to build canals and dikes for a rice farm. They also grew indigo and harvested pine trees for products like turpentine and tar.
Controlling the Indian Trade
In January 1783, a meeting was held in St. Augustine. British representatives met with leaders of the Upper and Lower Creeks. The Creeks complained about how far they had to travel to get supplies. They offered protection to merchants who would move their stores closer to their lands. They suggested the Apalachicola River as a good place for a trading house. The Creeks said it would be closer for them and for the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cherokee. They asked that Panton, Leslie, & Co., who had been supplying them, be asked to set up a store there.
William Panton was at the meeting. He agreed to open a store on the Apalachicola River if he and his partners received the necessary licenses. The British government approved this. Their store opened in 1784, after Spain had taken Florida back. It was located at Fort San Marcos de Apalache (now St. Marks, Florida). This store was attacked and robbed by William Augustus Bowles in 1792 and again in 1800. After the second attack, it closed.
Many traders tried to get a share of the Native American trade in the South, but few lasted long. Panton, Leslie & Company formed a partnership with Alexander McGillivray, a leader of the Upper Creeks. He became a secret partner in the company. William Panton knew McGillivray's father, Lachlan McGillivray, who was also a successful deerskin trader. Panton had recognized Alexander's skills since he was a child.
By 1786, Spain gave Panton, Leslie & Company a special right to control the Native American trade in East and West Florida. The company owned 250 enslaved people and nineteen land grants in Florida, totaling 12,820 acres. Most of the enslaved people worked on company farms and cattle ranches. Some had special jobs, like interpreting for the Spanish government.
Working with Alexander McGillivray, Panton, Leslie & Company grew its business from East Florida and the Bahamas all the way to the Mississippi River. Panton had promised McGillivray a share of the company's profits once Spain approved their deal. By 1795, with its main office in Spanish Pensacola, the company almost completely controlled trade with Native American tribes in the southeast. They had locations stretching north to Fort San Fernando (now Memphis) and west to New Orleans. They also had posts in Mobile, several places in Florida, the Bahamas, and around the Caribbean.
The Native American trade was mostly an exchange of goods that each group wanted but did not make themselves. The company bought hogs and cattle from Native Americans. They also bought indigo plants, hides, furs, corn, and other farm products. In return, they sold weapons, gunpowder, tools, cloth, dyes, and liquor. Packhorse teams carried European goods like guns and rum from Pensacola and other warehouses to Native American villages. They returned with deerskins, furs, bear oil, and food. The company's agents ran stores in Native American villages from the St. Johns River in East Florida to the Mississippi. These stores reached from the Gulf coast to Tennessee. The main depot in Pensacola had a store and warehouses. Furs and skins were sorted and packed there for shipment to other countries on the company's fleet of fifteen ships.
Company Practices and Land Deals
This map shows the "Forbes Purchase." After Panton, Leslie & Company became John Forbes & Company, they collected debts from the Seminoles and Lower Creeks. The tribes gave land to Spain in 1806 and 1811 to pay these debts. Spain then gave this land, over 1.2 million acres, to John Forbes & Company. This land was between the Apalachicola and Wakulla Rivers in Florida.
After their rival, William Augustus Bowles, was imprisoned in Havana in 1783, Panton, Leslie & Company became a powerful company. They worked with large plantation owners in the lower South. For almost twenty years, deerskins from the Creeks and Seminoles were shipped on the company's vessels to its large warehouse in Nassau. There, they were stored with other goods bought from markets in the southeast. These goods were then sent to markets further north on the mainland. Some goods were sold to merchants in the Bahamas for local sales. John Forbes managed this Bahamian trade. The company also partly owned salt works on Providence Island. The salt was sent to Pensacola and sold to Native Americans for high profits.
The company controlled the East Florida trade with about a dozen posts, including five on the St. Johns River. In West Florida, the Pensacola store alone took in 250,000 hides in one busy year. Panton's salt works dried fish and tanned hides. Leslie's workers cut timber on the St. Johns River for sale in the West Indies, where wood was scarce. His cattle drivers herded cattle to be killed for salted beef. At trading stores, enslaved people worked on the company's corn and vegetable fields, herded cattle, and tanned deerskins from Native American towns. Other enslaved people processed hides for export at the warehouse in St. Augustine.
The travel writer John Pope visited the region in 1790. He looked into the profits from the Native American trade. He concluded that William Panton often sold his goods for five times their cost. From the start, this trade made high returns. These large profits worried some government officials and Creek leaders. However, this business also involved risks and significant costs.
The Spanish government used the trading system that was already in place. Panton, Leslie & Company kept their special trading rights as long as Spain controlled Florida. Their influence with Native Americans was very important for Spain's policies with the various tribes. It was a key way for Spain to protect its interests in the region before Florida was given to the United States in 1821.
The Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Creeks often did not deal with exact numbers or prices. Their sales of hides and purchases of goods like ammunition and liquor happened through the barter system. Panton, Leslie & Company aimed to make a profit, buying low and selling high. Since they had a monopoly, they set the prices. The traditional Native American way of life had largely changed. Native Americans now depended on European-style products. The company paid low prices for hides, and the goods Native Americans bought were expensive. This led to Native Americans falling into large debts with the company. To pay these debts, Native Americans were convinced to give millions of acres of land to the company. This land was in what are now the states of Alabama and Mississippi.
Panton, Leslie & Company was also involved in the trade of enslaved African people in East and West Florida. Along with other firms, they brought at least 1,260 enslaved Africans to Florida between 1802 and 1811. From Florida, these enslaved people were then sent north to Georgia and the Carolinas.
Archival Materials
A research project gathered 517 microfilm reels and 31 cubic feet of paper records about Panton, Leslie & Company. These records are kept at the John C. Pace Library at the University of West Florida in Pensacola. That library also holds the papers of the company's attorney, John Innerarity. Papers belonging to John Forbes are held by the Mobile Public Library.