Dear Madeleine and Brent:
   Because Wakulla County's Palaver Tree Theater Co. has decided to use THE FORBES PURCHASE in its heritage play this March, the year 2013 promises to be a banner one for telling the story of how this old 1804 Spanish land grant shaped the lives of pioneer Floridians and all those who have come after them unto the present day.

Madeleine, if you could do me one BIG favor, please see fit to include a line in the play about how this story of land in Wakulla County & THE BIGGEST REAL ESTATE DEAL IN AMERICAN HISTORY begins with treaty talks with the Indians at a place almost 100 miles away from Wakulla County, at a little Indian village in Alabama called CHISKATALOFA, located near where the present-day states of Florida, Georgia and Alabama intersect.


I am so excited about the possibility of us seeing a performance of THE WAKULLA STORY & THE FORBES PURCHASE on either Friday, March 8th or on Saturday, March 9th so please put me on your email list for ticket information. We'll be leaving Maryland for Dauphin Island toward the end of January so we won't be able to see the Sneak Peak on Friday, January 11 but please send me any publicity that this performance generates.

Even if the play is already written , you might still be able to use the following sources as you continue to clarify the important role of THE FORBES PURCHASE upon the formative years of Wakulla County.

Chapter 4 of Doherty's 1961 book on Richard Keith Call is entitled DEFENDER OF THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. That chapter is about how Call unsuccessfully defended the government case against the owners of the FORBES PURCHASE. Call lost this case along with the fourteen others he pleaded before the U.S. Supreme Court. By taking the government side, Call was working against the interests of JOHN INNERARITY, head of Pensacola's Forbes & Co.  but check out what Doherty says happened after Florida was annexed into the U.S. after 1819's ADAMS ONIS TREATY:

.....After the signing of the treaty of cession in 1819 a genuine boom in Florida lands set in, Niles Register reporting a price rise of from 500 to 1,000 per cent, with city lots selling from $500 to $7000. About the time of the transfer in 1821 Call managed to secure several tracts near Pensacola. In partnership with James Innerarity he purchased 800 arpents of land on Santa Rosa sound and a like amount on Escambia Bay in partnership with Henry M. Brackenridge. An arpent in Spanish Florida was slightly more than an acre. In the city of Pensacola Call secured one town lot. 

I wonder whether the confirmation of John Innerarity's Spanish land grant which comes down to us in the present day from the place name, INNERARITY POINT on Perdido Bay has anything to do with this land deal Richard Keith Call, the nemesis of THE FORBES PURCHASE, had with James Innerarity, the man who executed the Forbes Purchase and the brother of John.

The best article I found on the actual surveying of the Forbes Purchase is from the Florida Historical Quarterly < XLVIII 2/Fall 1969 Article, by John C. Upchurch, “Aspects of the Development and Exploration of the Forbes Purchase,” pp. 117-139. I haven't found my copy of the article so I don't have it in front of me but I do recall that Upchurch devotes a section to the 1808 Hartsfield Survey.


 The opening paragraph from Cotterill's "A Chapter in Panton, Leslie, and Co." The Journal of Southern History
Vol. 10, No. 3 (Aug., 1944), pp. 275-292 Perhaps no land speculation in our history is better known than that of the Forbes Purchase in Florida; certainly none has given rise to more litigation or has more often taken up the time of the courts. The Forbes Purchase, however, was but a minor incident in a huge effort to collect from the southern Indians the trading debts which they had contracted to Panton, Leslie and Company, the famous British firm which dominated the Indian trade in the Floridas and adjoining areas during the closing years of the eighteenth century. This collection campaign was long and persistent, and in its final ten years it had the co-operation of the United States government. It became involved in the Mississippi question, the West Florida controversy, and the War of 1812. It contributed to the final downfall of that notorious adventurer, William Augustus Bowles, and for a time claimed the participation of the even more notorious James Wilkinson. It is a thread running through southern history from 1794 to 1812 and touching in its course foreign policy, Indian administration, frontier defense, and private intrigue.


 This play is a "dream come true" for me so feel free to solicit my assistance in any way you see fit and I look forward to seeing how you describe the tremendous impact this last chapter of the saga of the illustrious WILLIAM AUGUSTUS BOWLES had upon your region. (By the way, in the year 2000, I drew the attention of Chip Forbes of the FORBES Magazine family. The FORBES Collection archivist,Bill Casari, got in touch with me and I proposed doing an article on John Forbes in Cuba. Nothing ever came of that but if you could find a contact in FORBES MAGAZINE or their museum, it might help)

 Best,
 Robert Register http://robertoreg.blogspot.com/2009_01_04_archive.html