Petals Plucked from Sunny ClimesBrooks, A. M. (Abbie M.)
History
Petals Plucked from Sunny Climes
Brooks, A. M. (Abbie M.)
Cuba -- Description and travel; Florida -- Description and travel; Florida -- History
they built houses and cultivated gardens, which are occupied by their
children to this day.
Not far from this we find the Halifax River country, near which is
Daytonia and other settlements, said to be remarkable for the selectness
of its settlers, no rough adventurers having drifted in there. Below New
Smyrna is the famous Colonel Douglass Dummit plantation, from which, a
half century since, he raised and manufactured two hundred barrels of
sugar in one season, which he sent to the city of Boston, Mass., and
sold for eleven cents per pound. It was only rich planters, then, who
could afford to buy seed and pay three or four thousand dollars for an
engine to make sugar. An acre of cane here has been made to produce
three thousand pounds of sugar in one year.
INDIAN KEY MASSACRE.--Adjectives expressive of the horrible were
exhausted in Florida during the Indian war. Some of the contemporaries
of the Indian Key murder are still surviving in St. Augustine, and to
hear them relate its terrors produces a chilliness which to us is quite
overpowering.
_August 15, 1840._--The steamer Santee arrived on Wednesday--Captain
Poinsett commanding--bringing the family of Dr. Perine. They were living
on Indian Key, a small spot not over seven acres in extent, situated
near Matacomba Key, about thirty miles from the mainland, on the
Southern Atlantic coast. When the attack was made by the savages, seven
of its inhabitants were murdered, the island plundered, and its
buildings burned. About three o'clock on the morning of the 7th instant
a Mr. Glass, in the employ of Mr. Houseman, happening to be up, saw
boats approaching, after which, on closer inspection, it was discovered
they were Indians. They immediately commenced firing on the residences
of Mr. Houseman and Dr. Perine, the former of whom, with his family, and
that of Charles Howe and family, succeeded in escaping to boats and
crossing over to Teable Key. The family of Dr. Perine passed through a
trap-door into their bathing-room, from whence they got into the
turtle-crawl, and by great effort removed the logs, and secreted
themselves among the rocks. The bathing-house above them was set on fire
by these fiends, when with the greatest efforts only they were kept from
being roasted alive by putting mud on their heads and cheeks. Mr. Motte
and wife, and Mrs. Johnson, a lady seventy years of age, fled into an
out-house, from whence Mrs. Motte was dragged by an Indian, and while in
the act of calling on her husband, "John, save me!" was killed. Mr.
Motte shared the same fate, and was scalped. The old lady, as she was
dragged forth, suddenly broke his hold, and escaped under the house. Her
granddaughter, a child of Mrs. Motte, aged eleven years, was then killed
with a club--the infant strangled and thrown into the water. This was
seen by Mrs. Johnson from her hiding-place; but the Indians fired this
building, when she was again obliged to flee, escaping to Maloney's
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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