Fort San Carlos

An 1821 map of Fernandina shows that the street plan, laid out in 1811 in a grid pattern by the newly appointed Surveyor General of Spanish East Florida, George J. F. Clarke, today preserves nearly the same layout as that of 1821.Archaeological investigations, starting in the early 1950s, revealed intermittent occupation and use of the area for as long as 4,000 years, beginning in the Orange period (2000–500 BC) and continuing to this day.[14] Because it was a center for smuggling and represented a threat to trade of the United States, Fernandina was invaded and seized by forces under the command of General George Mathews in 1812 with the approval of President James Madison.[15] A group of Americans calling themselves the "Patriots of Amelia Island" had banded together to drive out the Spanish and reported to General Mathews, who moved into a house at St. Marys, Georgia, nine miles[16] across Cumberland Sound.[17][18] General Mathews, who was ensconced at Point Peter on the St. Marys River in Georgia, ordered Colonel Lodowick Ashley to send a flag to Don Justo Lopez,[19] commandant of the fort and Amelia Island, and demand his surrender.John H. McIntosh, George J. F. Clarke, Justo Lopez, and others signed the articles of capitulation;[20] the Patriots then raised their own standard at the flagstaff of the fort.The next day, March 17, a detachment of 250 regular United States troops were brought over from Point Peter, and the newly constituted Patriot government surrendered the town to General Matthews, who ordered the stars and stripes of the US flag raised immediately.The small garrison at Fernandina had only fifty-four men on duty including officers, most of them old veterans, some of whom had served in the Spanish colonial armies for thirty years.[25] Financed by American backers,[26] he led an army of only 150 men including recruits from Charleston and Savannah, some War of 1812 veterans, and 55 musketeers in an assault on Fort San Carlos.[30] Now in possession of the town, and seeing the need to make the appearance of a legitimate government, he appointed Ruggles Hubbard, the former high sheriff of New York City, as unofficial civil governor, and Jared Irwin, an adventurer and former Pennsylvania Congressman, as his treasurer.[37] When about August 28 fellow conspirator Ruggles Hubbard sailed into the harbor aboard his own brig Morgiana, flying the flag of Buenos Aires, but without the needed men, guns, and money, MacGregor announced his departure for New Providence in the Bahamas.[38] On September 4, faced with the threat of a Spanish reprisal, and still lacking money and adequate reinforcements, he abandoned his plans to conquer Florida and departed Fernandina with most of his officers, leaving a small detachment of men at Fort San Carlos to defend the island.On September 13 the Battle of Amelia Island commenced when the Spaniards erected a battery of four brass cannons on McLure’s Hill east of Fort San Carlos.Realizing they had nothing to gain by opposing him, a compromise was reached and they made an alliance with the Frenchman:[44] Aury would be commander-in-chief of military and naval forces, Irwin his adjutant general, and Hubbard the civil governor of Amelia.[53] In 1950–51, John W. Griffin and Ripley P. Bullen, the archaeologists for the Florida Board of Parks and Historical Memorials, led extensive archaeological excavations in the Fort San Carlos area.A report compiled by Smith and Bullen, "Fort San Carlos",[54] synthesizing the results of both excavations, was published by the Department of Anthropology at Florida State University in 1971.