History of Tallahassee

The birth of a Capital

The indigenous peoples occupied this area for thousands of years before the European meeting.

The name Tallahassee is a Muskogean word translated as Ancient Fields or Old City, it is likely that it was an expression of the inhabitants who emigrated from Georgia and Alabama to this region at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. it owes to the pressure of the American European invasion in its territory. These large tracts of land were previously occupied by the Apalachee Tribe.

It was until the sixteenth century during the expedition of Hernando de Soto Baron the city of Apalachee of Anhaica in what is now known as Tallahassee this occurred during the winter of 1538 and 1539. There is a belief that the camp of Soto the first place where Christmas was celebrated in the continental United States, although there is no historical record to support this belief.

General Andrew Jackson fought two separate races in and around Tallahassee, which was then Spanish territory. My first battle took place on November 12, 1817. This first battle occurred because Chief Neamathla of the village of Fowltown located west of the present Tallahassee ignored orders to move from General Jackson. He entered the town, burned it and made its inhabitants. The Indians took revenge, killing 50 soldiers and civilians. Jackson returned to Florida in March 1818. According to Jackson’s assistant, Colonel Robert Butler, they conquered in the Indian village called Tallahassee where two of the enemies were taken prisoner.

The Treaty of Adams Onís of 1819 Florida became an American territory in September 1821.

During the first and second session of the Legislative Council of the territory of Florida, delegates needed more than 59 and 28 Days respectively to arrive at the meeting point, at this second meeting they said they would hold future meetings at an intermediate point, two of the commissioners They selected Tallahassee. It was then when the 1824 third legislative session met there in a log building that served as a Capitol.

The Marquis de Lafayette was a French hero during the American Revolution returned to the United States in 1824 for a tour. The Congress of the United States granted him the American citizenship the concession of the lands of Lafayette 93 square kilometers as compensation for his valuable contribution great part of these lands belongs to Tallahassee.

In 1845, a masonry structure inspired by Greek Renaissance architecture was erected, such as the Capitol Building, which is now known as the Old Capitol building in front of the high-rise Capitol building built in 1970.

Tallahassee had a very high commercial value because the county of León led cotton production and was the center of the slave trade in Florida.

Tallahassee was the only capital of the Confederate state east of the Mississippi River that during the American Civil War was not captured or burned by Union forces. A small fight called the Battle of the Natural Bridge was fought south of March 1865 just one month before the war ended.

The institutions that would develop in what is now the Florida State University were established in Tallahassee during the 19th century Tallahassee became a university city. These include the Tallahassee Women’s Academy founded in 1843 and the Florida Institute founded in 1854. In 1851 the Florida Legislature decreed that two seminars were built both sides of the Suwannee River East Florida Seminar and the Seminar of the West of Florida. In 1855 the West Florida Seminary was transferred to the Florida Institute Building (which had been dressed as an incentive for the state to place the seminary in Tallahassee).

In 1858 the seminar absorbed the Tallahassee Women’s Academy and became coeducational. Its headquarters were located approximately where the FSU Wescott building is located today.

Much of Florida’s industry is to the south and east of the city a trend that began after the civil war and which remains today. With the end of slavery, changes in world markets also ceased the activity and profitability of the cotton and tobacco trade. The main industries of the state changed to citrus, wood, naval stores, livestock, and tourism. Turning tourism increasingly relevant at the end of the nineteenth century.

In the aftermath of the civil war, the wealthy northerners bought many old plantations in the Tallahassee area to use as winter hunting grounds. This includes the home reservation of Henry L. Beadel, who granted his land for the study of the effects of fire on the wildlife habitat. Today, the reserve is known as Tall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy, nationally recognized for its research in fire ecology and the use of prescribed burns.