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the centrepiece of Levett's edifice was the domestic arrangement, which included a vineyard with 3,000 vines, two hanging gardens fronting the St. Johns River, 50 farm buildings, a network of bridges, roads and causeways built by Levett's slaves, including slave cabins, kitchens, barns, poultry houses and the crowning gem: a large two-story dwelling measuring 60 feet (18 m)-by-36 feet (11 m) with seven rooms on each floor. The home had seven bays, a gambrel roof, which itself supported a lantern tower. On either side of the house were six separate dependency structures, three on either side of the mansion, diminishing in size as they extended outward.
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164:, Forbes said Levett had diverted the resources of his absentee landlords. The English planter was "charged with purchasing Negroes on Ashby's account and claiming them as his own, with employing Ashby's Negroes at his (own) work, with carrying boatloads of corn from Ashby's place to his (Julianton) settlement without giving credit for them, and with many such extraordinary and unjust transactions," Forbes wrote.
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The complex Levett built showed what could be done in a new colony by a powerful
English merchant with money and connections. In addition to indigo fields and acres devoted to corn, potatoes and peas, the new plantation also had a network of rice fields, sliced by dams and dykes to regulate them. But
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Charlotte Box was the daughter of James Box, a prominent
Savannah, Ga., attorney who had moved to British East Florida, where he served as the colony's Attorney General. Box sat on the Royal Council and began raising indigo on his plantation called "The Hermitage." Box died in 1770, and his daughter
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was named the colony's second
Governor, and he presided over a rehabilitation of his brother-in-law. Levett was allowed to make restitution and died shortly afterwards. Management of his Julianton plantation fell to his son Francis Levett Jr., who was apparently a better businessman than his father.
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The family was never able to sell its East
Florida properties. The elaborate English manor house and farms were abandoned. Francis Levett's attempts to establish himself as a planter in the Bahamas failed, and the heir was forced to return to London. But he and his wife Charlotte Box had apparently
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At the end of the War, some 13,000 Loyalists fled the new
American nation for East Florida, which was still under British control. But their haven didn't last long; in the diplomatic after effects of American independence, the British were forced to cede their Florida colony back to Spain in 1784.
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built one of the first plantations in
Florida, and then forfeited his investment when the English lost their foothold in Florida, forcing him to flee to the British colony in the Bahamas. Eventually his son returned to Georgia, where he (or, perhaps more accurately, his slaves) became the first to
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Despite his connections in the new colony, which included not only his brother-in-law the
Governor, but also his son-in-law Dr. David Yeats, a physician and Secretary of the Colony who had married Levett's daughter, Francis Levett apparently got into financial trouble. He was accused in a whisper
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The opulent home, said to be the finest in
British East Florida, had an 180-foot (55 m) wharf for the docking of ships. Stallions, breeding mares and goats grazed nearby on the rich pastures surrounding the home. It was an extraordinary gesture to import the luxuries of the life of a wealthy
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and returned to London. But having spent his career abroad, Levett wasn't accustomed to the damp weather in the capitol. Having inherited a fortune from an uncle, Levett decided to move to the
British colony in East Florida. Levett planned initially to import Greek labourers from Smyrna into the
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to escape the controversy. In the meantime, his son-in-law Yeats stood bail for him. By 1774, Levett returned to East
Florida and subsequently resigned from the Royal Council after discovering that the controversy had rendered him ineffective: no members would sit with him.
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Francis Levett's sister was married to British Governor of Florida Patrick Tonyn, and Levett's daughter Jane Fitzhugh Levett was married to Dr. David Yeats, secretary of the colony. His son Francis Jr. was married to Charlotte Box, daughter of a prominent attorney in
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many of the English planters like Francis Levett Jr. were forced to pack up everything and leave hurriedly. Their mood was bleak. "I am totally ruined and see nothing but want and misery before me," wrote Francis Levett's son-in-law Yeats to his good friend
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to set aside prime acreage for his "worthy friend" Levett, to whom Oswald said he owed "particular obligations." A recipient of the largesse of the initial old boy network, Levett built his 10,000-acre (40 km) Julianton Plantation on today's
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Some historians confuse the early Florida planter Francis Levett Sr., with his son Francis Levett Jr., who left Florida with his father, but returned later to Georgia and became the first person to plant Sea Island cotton in
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to manage the Earl's land grants in his absence. Then Levett was tapped as a judge for the new colony and granted large tracts of land at the insistence of Oswald and his brother-in-law Tonyn. Oswald encouraged Governor
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English gentleman to a fledgling, mosquito-infested colony in the Americas. In addition to his inherited income, Levett relied on fees paid him by absentee English landlords to manage their plantations as well.
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of the British Army had been appointed governor of the English colony. Wielding connections from a lifetime of overseas trading, as well as family connections from a powerful English mercantile family,
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Francis Levett Jr. was born 21 December 1753, to Francis Levett Sr. and his wife Juliana while they were living in London. Francis Levett Jr. was baptized on Christmas Day, 25 December 1753, at
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260:, with exports increasing from 10,000 pounds in 1790 to 6.4 million in 1800. Francis Levett Jr. died in 1802. He left the newly christened Julianton Plantation to his wife.
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on short notice. Much of Levett's loot was left behind on the docks when Levett's newly purchased schooner was found inadequate to handle the family's accumulated riches.
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Levett Jr. became one of the first planters in America to sow Sea Island cotton, taking advantage of both his knowledge of the crop that he brought with him from
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campaign of embezzling funds by purchasing slaves for one of his absentee clients, Thomas Ashby, and then absorbing them into his plantation workforce. Rev.
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Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785, David Hancock, Cambridge University Press, 1997
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Thomas Ashley sent a relative to Florida to investigate the charges of malfeasance. Levett was said to be so upset by the allegations that he went to
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The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Alexander Moore, George C. Rogers, University of South Carolina Press
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The papers relating to the Levetts and their Georgia plantation are held at the Manuscripts Collections of Perkins Library at Duke University.
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Born in the Ottoman Empire, the son of Francis Levett, a tobacco merchant who as a descendant of the trading house built by two brothers, Sir
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and the abolition of slavery on that cotton-producing island. The 1790s were boom years for South Carolinian cotton, according to historian
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Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1855–1858, Massachusetts Historical Society, Printed for the Society, Boston, 1859
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in 1783, Francis Levett Jr. was forced to transport all his goods, including 100 slaves and house frames and household silver, to the
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In the meantime, Levett exploited all his connections. He was named in 1771 to a position helping oversee the Russian fur trade.
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429:"English Plantations on the St. Johns River, Florida History Online, University of Florida, unf.edu/floridahistoryonline"
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245:. He named the new plantation Julianton, in honour of his father's abandoned Florida plantation and his mother Julia.
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Portrait of Francis Levett, English Turkey merchant, costumed in local garb, National Portrait Gallery, npg.org.uk
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The Story of Textiles, Perry Walton, John S. Lawrence, Walton Advertising and Printing Co., Boston, 1912
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The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, Edward Hasted, W. Bristow, Canterbury, 1800
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barrister in London who was himself granted an enormous tract of 20,000 acres in 1766 in what is now
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fledgling British colony to do the work of planting. That scheme was apparently soon abandoned.
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The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. II, Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Ga., 1917–1918
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Colonial Plantations and Economy in Florida, Jane G. Landers, University Press of Florida, 2000
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Today's St. Johns River, Florida, site of Francis Levett's Julianton Plantation
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Having established his connections with such powerful London merchants as Sir
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tried to convince Levett to move to South Carolina instead of East Florida.
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Julianton Plantation, Florida History Online, unf.edu/floridahistoryonline
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The Early History of Clay County, Kevin S. Hooper, The History Press, 2006
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English Plantations on the St. Johns River, unf.edu/floridahistoryonline
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gotten a taste for life in America. They later returned to the state of
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522:Empire of Cotton: A Global History
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