Ted Burrows, St. Lucie Historic Society
On New 12 months’s Day 1838 a regiment of newly arrived American troopers labored underneath the winter solar on the west financial institution of the Indian River, clearing a spot for his or her new fort and constructing a log blockhouse for shelter and safety. The subsequent day, Jan. 2, 1838, the brand new wilderness outpost turned lively – named Fort Pierce to honor its first commander, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Benjamin Kendrick Pierce.
Pierce and the first Artillery Regiment had arrived late on the afternoon of Dec. 31, one among two separate army models that had traveled south alongside the lagoon from their earlier camp on the northern tip of Merritt Island close to Cape Canaveral. The opposite contingent was a blended power of troopers and sailors commanded by U.S. Navy Lt. Levin Powell.
One of many most interesting accounts of the earliest days at Fort Pierce comes from Jacob Rhett Motte, a younger U.S. Army surgeon who stored a richly detailed journal ultimately revealed in e-book kind as “Journey into Wilderness.” Harvard-educated Motte was a South Carolinian whose grandfather had been a hero within the American Revolution. By his late 20s, Motte already had served at numerous posts within the Southeast earlier than being assigned to Florida.
By then the Second Seminole Conflict had raged for greater than two years. The Army technique was to advance steadily down the peninsula, constructing forts and step by step limiting the territory out there for the Seminoles.
The army would patrol broadly by way of woods and wetlands, raid Seminole camps and destroy their properties and crops. Captured Seminoles can be shipped to the “Indian Territory” west of the Mississippi River.
In the present day’s Floridians accustomed to the fashionable scene alongside the lndian River – bustling cities, paved highways, tall buildings, and so forth. – should marvel at Motte’s account of the troops’ journey alongside the lagoon in shallow-draft boats:
“We continued gliding … down the Indian River, whose placid floor had remained unbroken for thus many ages, by another voyagers than the attractive and timid duck, the dignified and unwieldy pelican … In whose undisturbed and clear waters the fishes had elevated and multiplied …. The thickly wooded shores, wrapt in silence and solitude, exhibited to the view all the assorted shades of coloring which creativeness may fancy; and lots of inexperienced and sunny islands, clothed in homosexual verdure, and diversified by the richest and most luxuriant foliage on this southern clime, exhibited a lot of the picturesque as we floated previous with noiseless progress.”
The realm was a hunter’s paradise, with deer, turkeys, wild hogs and different sport in abundance. Predators similar to bears, panthers and alligators additionally have been current.
Most wonderful to the troopers, as Motte remarked, was “the amount and high quality of fish that abounded in these waters. In a single hour one could take as many bonitos, redfish, groupers, sheephead, bass, trout and lots of different kinds, unknown elsewhere, of the best taste and of huge dimensions, typically from two to a few toes in size, as will feast a regiment.
“As for the oysters, six are a snug meal for one particular person, certainly with out exaggeration the best abundance could also be simply obtained, which after elimination from the shell measure six or seven inches in size and two or three inches in breadth. A complete military could also be subsisted right here upon the produce of this river … and never worry an exhaustion of provides. All of us of us started to develop so fats upon this good residing that … our garments day by day turned tighter.”
Just a few days after Fort Pierce was established, Lt. Powell, along with his detachment of sailors and troopers, left to proceed their expedition southward. On Jan. 14, Maj. Gen. Thomas S. Jesup arrived with different troops. Jesup was commander of all U.S. forces in Florida, so Fort Pierce was designated “Headquarters, Army of the South” whereas he was there. Jesup quickly moved farther south, to Jupiter, in pursuit of the Seminoles.
Lt. Col. Pierce, although nominally in control of the fort, was not all the time current. He needed to go St. Augustine to obtain extra provides for Jesup’s forces, and his return was delayed for a number of days by stormy climate. Pierce truly spent solely about three months commanding the fort that had been named in his honor. By April he was on his manner north for one more posting at Fort Hamilton, N.Y. Pierce served at a number of different northern posts and died in New York Metropolis on April 1, 1850.
For a number of years quite a lot of army models got here and went, and Fort Pierce remained lively till 1842 when U.S. forces ended their campaigning in opposition to the Seminoles, whose numbers had dwindled to just a few hundred.
After the troopers deserted Fort Pierce, its buildings have been used as non permanent quarters for settler households arriving underneath the brand new Armed Occupation Act not too long ago enacted by Congress. Homesteaders who constructed their very own cabins and lived on the land for 5 years may qualify for a 160-acre grant.
Catastrophe struck in late 1843. That is recounted due to analysis by Jack Favourite of the St. Lucie Historic Society. He discovered an article revealed Feb. 10, 1844 in The East Florida Newspaper, of St. Augustine.
“A melancholy occasion has currently prostrated the brilliant hopes and exquisite prospects of most of the settlers. … A hearth has destroyed the buildings at Fort Pierce and with them the provides of each description laid in by the settlers enough for the consumption of a number of years.”
Little extra data is out there concerning the hearth and its quick aftermath. The fort web site step by step fell into decay. A number of archaeological surveys in the course of the previous century have unearthed quite a few artifacts reflecting the lives of those that have been there.
Many artifacts are on show on the St. Lucie County Regional Historical past Middle. The fort web site itself is a public park alongside Indian River Drive.
