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Map of Atlantic Coast of North America from the Chesapeake Bay to Florida
Joan Vinckeboons (1617–70) was a Dutch cartographer and engraver born into a family of artists of Flemish origin. He was employed by the Dutch West India Company and for more than 30 years produced maps for use by Dutch mercantile and military shipping. He was a business partner of Joan Blaeu, one of the most important map and atlas publishers of the day. Vinckeboons drew a series of 200 manuscript maps that were used in the production of atlases, including Blaeu’s Atlas Maior. This pen-and-ink and watercolor map ...
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Library of Congress
Map of the Gulf Coast from Florida to Mexico
Joan Vinckeboons (1617–70) was a Dutch cartographer and engraver born into a family of artists of Flemish origin. He was employed by the Dutch West India Company and for more than 30 years produced maps for use by Dutch mercantile and military shipping. He was a business partner of Joan Blaeu, one of the most important map and atlas publishers of the day. Vinckeboons drew a series of 200 manuscript maps that were used in the production of atlases, including Blaeu’s Atlas Maior. This pen-and-ink and watercolor map ...
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Library of Congress
Map of the Peninsula of Florida
Joan Vinckeboons (1617–70) was a Dutch cartographer and engraver born into a family of artists of Flemish origin. He was employed by the Dutch West India Company and for more than 30 years produced maps for use by Dutch mercantile and military shipping. He was a business partner of Joan Blaeu, one of the most important map and atlas publishers of the day. Vinckeboons drew a series of 200 manuscript maps that were used in the production of atlases, including Blaeu’s Atlas Maior. This circa 1639 map of ...
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Library of Congress
Ringling Circus Winter Quarters, Sarasota, Florida
John Ringling (1866–1936), one of the seven Ringling brothers who dominated the development of the American circus in the late 19th and early 20th century, moved the winter quarters of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus from its original quarters in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Sarasota, Florida. Ringling’s vision, as recalled by Fred Bradna, equestrian director for the show, in his book The Big Top, was to “lay out the quarters like a zoo, and thousands of visitors will pay to see it. I’ll build an open-air ...
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The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art
“Shipwrecked” by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, and the Description of the Journey Which he Made Through Florida with Panfilo de Narvaez
Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1490-1560) was second in command of an expedition led by Pánfilo de Narváez (1478-1528) that left Spain in June 1527 with five ships and 600 men with the mission of establishing a colony in “Florida.” The expedition suffered storms, desertions, disease, and other difficulties in the Caribbean. On November 5 and 6, 1528, 80 surviving members of the expedition were shipwrecked on or near Galveston Island, Texas. After living among the local Native Americans for six years, Cabeza de Vaca and three other survivors headed ...
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Library of Congress
Osceola of Florida, Drawn on Stone by Geo. Catlin, from his Original Portrait
Osceola was a Seminole war chief who led the resistance to the campaign by U.S. federal troops to forcibly resettle his tribe to territory west of the Mississippi River. Known as the Second Seminole War (1835-42), this was one of the most destructive campaigns by federal authorities against American Indians. Despite outnumbering the Seminoles ten to one, the U.S. troops failed to secure a quick victory. They then turned to desperate measures and deception, including capturing and imprisoning Osceola under the pretence of negotiating a truce. The American ...
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Library of Congress
St. Augustine: Part (Below Thirty Degrees Latitude) is on the Mainland of Florida, but the Sea Coast is More Low-Lying and thus Torn Away and Rendered Island-Like
This map is the earliest engraving of any city or territory now part of the United States. It also includes the dorado fish, one of the natural history subjects drawn by John White, governor of the first Anglo-American settlement in America, in the Hatteras region, then part of Virginia (now North Carolina). Sir Francis Drake’s 1585-86 raid on the West Indies picked up the Virginia settlers and returned them to Europe. In the course of the return voyage, the author of this view-plan was able to copy the figure ...
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Library of Congress
The Special Features of French Antarctica, Otherwise Called America, and of Several Lands and Islands Discovered in Our Time
André Thevet (1516/17-92) was a Franciscan friar who traveled widely and, through his writings, helped to establish cosmographie--as geography was called at the time--as a science in 16th-century France. After making trips to Africa and the Middle East in the 1540s, he was appointed chaplain to the expedition of Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon, which set out from Le Havre in May 1555 to establish a colony in Brazil. The expedition landed near present-day Rio de Janeiro in November of the same year. In January 1556, Thevet fell ill ...
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Library of Congress
Clarence Earl Gideon, Petitioner, vs. Louis L. Wainwright, Director, Department of Corrections, Respondent
In the landmark case of Gideon v. Wainwright, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed the right of an individual to legal counsel, even in cases not involving capital offenses. Clarence Earl Gideon was convicted of burglary and sentenced to five years imprisonment in a case in which the trial judge had refused his request for counsel. As an inmate, Gideon wrote and filed a lawsuit against the secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections, asking for a writ of habeas corpus on the grounds that he had been denied legal ...
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State Library and Archives of Florida
Saint Augustine Map, 1589
This engraved hand-colored map or view-plan by Baptista Boazio depicts Sir Francis Drake's attack on Saint Augustine on May 28-29, 1586. Boazio, an Italian who worked in London from about 1585 to 1603, made maps to illustrate accounts of English expeditions and campaigns. He prepared a series of maps marking Drake's route for Walter Bigges' work on Drake's expedition to the West Indies, first published in 1588 and followed by later editions. This map highlights an episode from Drake's Caribbean expedition, pictorially portraying how the English ...
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State Library and Archives of Florida
Florida Constitution of 1838
On December 3, 1838, delegates from across the Territory of Florida gathered in the town of Saint Joseph to draft a constitution in preparation for statehood. Although Saint Joseph was to disappear from the map within a decade, after suffering a devastating hurricane and repeated outbreaks of yellow fever, the work of the constitutional convention survived, resulting in this document. The 1838 constitution established a one-term governor, a bicameral legislature, tight restrictions on banking (a response to the national banking crisis of 1837), and a strict separation of church and ...
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State Library and Archives of Florida
Iowa-Florida Act
In December 1838, delegates from the Territory of Florida met in the town of Saint Joseph to adopt a constitution, a necessary step toward becoming a state. It was not until March 3, 1845, however, that both houses of the United States Congress approved “An Act For The Admission of the States of Iowa and Florida Into The Union.” Florida was to be admitted to the union as a slave state and Iowa as a free state, thereby preserving the delicate political balance within the U.S. Senate between free ...
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State Library and Archives of Florida
Ordinance of Secession, 1861
This document is a one-page handwritten copy of the Ordinance of Secession passed on January 10, 1861, by the members of the Florida Convention of the People (commonly referred to as the Secession Convention). Pursuant to an act of the Florida legislature approved on November 30, 1860, Governor Madison S. Perry issued a proclamation calling an election on Saturday, December 22, 1860, for delegates to a convention to address the issue of whether Florida had a right to withdraw from the Union. The Secession Convention met in Tallahassee on January ...
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State Library and Archives of Florida
Will of Zephaniah Kingsley, 1843
Zephaniah Kingsley was a wealthy planter and slave owner in northeast Florida. His heirs included his wife, a freed slave named Anna M. J. Kingsley, and their children. Kingsley was both a defender of slavery and an activist for the legal rights of free blacks. Born in Bristol, England, in 1765, Kingsley moved to Charleston, South Carolina, then a British colony, in 1770. By the 1790s, Kingsley was active in maritime commerce, including the slave trade. In 1803, he became a citizen of Spanish Florida and began acquiring land in ...
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State Library and Archives of Florida
Thousands of Live Alligators on Free Exhibition
This broadside, dating from about 1950, is an advertisement for Osky’s, also known as Osky’s Curio Shop or Osky’s Alligator Store, a Jacksonville mercantile store that sold gift items, rare or bizarre decorative items, and goods made out of alligator skin, including lamps, purses, and wallets. The shop also exhibited live alligators and other reptiles. Jacksonville was home to many of Florida’s earliest tourist attractions, including the Florida Alligator Farm. Operating for several decades on Jacksonville’s historic Bay Street, Osky’s promoted itself through postcards ...
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State Library and Archives of Florida
From Flies and Filth to Food and Fever
The Florida Bureau of Health issued this broadside in 1916. It reflects the increasing awareness on the part of health institutions in the early 20th century of the microbial sources of disease, and it illustrates the efforts of state and local health agencies to combat what was seen as a primary cause of disease: unsanitary living conditions. Rendered in a style similar to the wall hangings and kitchen calendars produced for homes by advertisers, the illustrations depict the interaction between pests and food. The broadside reflects the early efforts of ...
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State Library and Archives of Florida
Spanish Land Grant Papers of John B. Gaudry
The Spanish Land Grants were claims filed to prove ownership of land after the transfer, in 1821, of the territory of Florida to the United States. Starting in 1790, Spain offered land grants to encourage settlement in the sparsely populated and vulnerable Florida colony. When the United States assumed control of the territory, it agreed to honor any valid land grants. Residents had to prove the validity of their grants through documentation and testimonials in dossiers filed with the U.S. government. Claims either were confirmed (found to be valid ...
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State Library and Archives of Florida
Mary McLeod Bethune with a Line of Girls from the School
Mary McLeod Bethune was a pioneering American educator and civil rights leader. Born Mary Jane McLeod on July 10, 1875, in Mayesville, South Carolina, the daughter of former slaves, Bethune won scholarships to attend Scotia Seminary in Concord, North Carolina (now Barber-Scotia College), and the Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago (now the Moody Bible Institute). In 1904, she moved to Daytona Beach, Florida, to found her own school. Her one-room school house became the Daytona Normal and Industrial School for Negro Girls before merging with Cookman Institute ...
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State Library and Archives of Florida
Portrait of Mauma Mollie
Mauma, a Partridge family slave, was transported to South Carolina on a slave ship from Africa. She came to Jefferson County, Florida with John and Eliza Partridge in the 1830s, and was Frances Weston Partridge’s nurse. Henry Edward Partridge recorded in his diary in 1873: “We buried either in 57 or 58 our faithful old ‘Mauma’ Mollie – her who had nursed nearly all of the children of the family; been a friend as well as faithful servant to my Mother; in whose cabin we had often eaten the homely ...
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State Library and Archives of Florida
Fort Jefferson Lighthouse
This photograph shows Fort Jefferson Lighthouse, one of 30 historic lighthouses in the state of Florida. The origins of the structure go back to 1825, when a 65-foot (20-meter) tower was completed at Bush Key (now known as Garden Key) in the Dry Tortugas and fitted with a light consisting of 23 lamps in 14-inch (35-centimeter) reflectors. Construction of Fort Jefferson began in 1847. The fort covered the entire island and incorporated the lighthouse in its south wall. In 1856 a taller lighthouse was constructed, and in 1858 the Garden ...
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State Library and Archives of Florida
Convicts Leased to Harvest Timber
This early-20th-century photograph shows the harsh working conditions for African-American prisoners caught up in the convict labor system of the state of Florida, which had a notorious reputation for its severe penal labor system. Throughout the American South, African-Americans were far more likely than whites to be incarcerated for minor crimes, and imprisonment and forced labor were tools used by local and state governments to enforce Jim Crow racial restrictions. Agreements between correctional institutions and private corporations such as lumber companies and turpentine manufacturers enabled companies to use convict labor ...
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State Library and Archives of Florida