page_title: Mala Compra Plantation Archeological Site
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Mala Compra Plantation Archeological Site / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Plate CCCV.— Male. The American Coot Fulica americana "The male, from which I drew the figure in the plate, was procured at General Hernandez's, in East Florida, and was among the best of about thirty shot on one of my excursions there." Ornothological Biography, Or, An Account of the Habits of the Birds of the United States of America: Accompanied by Descriptions of the Objects Represented in the Work Entitled, The Birds of America, and Interspersed with Delineations of American Scenery and Manners, Volume 3 Page 294
context_page_description: The Mala Compra Plantation Archeological Site is an archaeological site in Palm Coast, Florida, on the east bank of the Matanzas River. It is located west of the intersection of State Road A1A and Mala Compra Drive at Bings Landing County Park in Flagler County. On March 5, 2004, it was added to the United States National Register of Historic Places.
  Mala Compra was formerly part of one of northeastern Florida's largest plantation systems. Situated on the coast, it belonged to Joseph Marion Hernández, and was worked primarily as a cotton plantation from 1816 through 1836, when the Seminoles burned it down near the beginning of the Second Seminole War.
  Preliminary archaeological investigations were conducted at the Mala Compra site in 1999. The study identified the house where Hernández and his family resided when they were not at their home in St. Augustine, and the detached kitchen was also found. The land for the plantation was purchased by Hernández in 1816; cotton and corn were grown there until the settlement was destroyed by marauding Indians.
  The main dwelling-house was described in historical accounts as a 1 1/2-story framed structure with a masonry foundation.
context_section_description: In 1816, the Spanish government granted Hernández a large tract of land at the confluence of Graham's Swamp and what was then the headwaters of the southern end of the Matanzas River, on its western bank. There he cultivated about 700 acres of sugarcane, calling the place St. Joseph plantation. According to a deed dated March 11, 1816, for 1,500 pesos in cash Father Miguel Crosby sold Hernández 800 acres on the coastal barrier island, described as "800 acres with its adjoining marshes on the Matanzas River, bounded on the north by lands of John Bautista Ferreyra". The name "Mala Compra" had been given previously to the property by another owner. In 1818, Hernández bought from Ferreyra's son, Francis Ferreira (spelling of these names varied, often in the same document), another property of 375 acres adjoining Mala Compra called Bella Vista. Ferreira was a sea captain who participated in the Florida slave trade. The soil of the cotton fields at Mala Compra was said to have been as white and sandy after some years as the Atlantic beach, yet still produced abundant crops of Sea Island cotton. This was high hammock land where the original growth was almost exclusively Southern live oak.
  Hernández' country residence was the plantation house at Mala Compra, a 1 1/2-story frame structure built on a coquina block foundation measuring 18 by 30 feet and laid three feet deep; the side facing the river had a long, wide porch. The interior of the house had two fireplaces built of brick and coquina, plastered walls and paneled doors. The detached kitchen was also 18 by 30 feet, it had a terraced first floor and a loft used for curing tobacco. There was a wooden-framed warehouse for cotton on the property that could hold 200,000 pounds of seed and 200 bales of ginned cotton. Agricultural equipment included single- and double-horse gins and twenty-four-foot-gins, in which the horses trod a path twenty-four feet in circumference. There were other buildings including a corn crib, a driver's house, and a privy, as well as slave cabins.
  Hernández was Florida's first delegate to the U.S. Congress in 1822 and 1823 and the first Hispanic to serve in the United States Congress. He was a brigadier general commanding troops of the Florida Militia during the Second Seminole War, who while negotiating with Seminole leader Osceola under a white flag of truce in October 1837, took him captive by order of General Jesup.
  It was from Mala Compra that Hernandez wrote a letter to Dr. William H. Simmons, dated April 15, 1830, on the cultivation of Cuban tobacco. Simmons and John Lee Williams of Pensacola were commissioned by the second Territorial Council of Florida to select a central point between St. Augustine and Pensacola to serve as capital of the territory in 1823. In 1831, John James Audubon spent ten days as a guest of Hernández at Mala Compra. There he shot dozens of American coots, one of which was a male from which he drew the figure for the plate which appeared in his The Birds of America.
  In 1832 the Legislative Council of the Territory of Florida incorporated a company to dig a canal from the head of Matanzas Lagoon to Smith's Creek, a tributary of the Halifax River. With this act a memorial was presented to Congress seeking financial assistance and land grants; subsequently five sections were appropriated for the proposed canal. The company intended to commence the canal at Mala Compra plantation and dig it southward a distance of about 11 or 12 miles through a rich wet savanna, parallel with the coast, to Smith's Creek, about four miles north of John Bulow's plantation.
  In the early stages of the Second Seminole War, during the winter of 1835 and 1836, and in the spring of the latter year, both Mala Compra and St. Joseph plantations were taken into military possession by the United States, and the houses occupied and fortified as military posts. During the course of that winter and spring, both places were occupied, evacuated, and reoccupied by various detachments and bodies of troops, until the Indians, taking advantage of a temporary evac
caption: The American Coot from The Birds of America. Plate CCCV — Male.
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