Being Critical of our Sources

I am currently reading a book called The Cana Sanctuary by Frank Marotti.  It concerns the way African-Americans in St. Augustine, Florida, both in Spanish colonial times and after Florida was acquired (that's putting a nice face on it) by the United States, worked the system to their advantage in a number of ways, particularly by finding an ally in the Catholic Church.  The theme of how black citizens leveraged the system to their advantage is also explored in Jane Landers's seminal work, Black Society in Spanish Florida.

The first chapter of Mr. Marotti's book sets a background describing St. Augustine in the late colonial period (1784-1821, the Second Spanish Period) as being prosperous and bountiful, concentrating particularly on 1811-1812.  It is a rosy picture, painted from the testimonies Mr. Marotti found in claims filed after the so-called "Patriot War" of 1812, which was a blatant invasion of Spanish Florida by a ragtag "army" of mainly Georgians and South Carolinians, backed secretly at the highest levels by the United States government.  (For more on this, read James Cusick's The Other War of 1812: The Patriot War and the American Invasion of Spanish East Florida.)

These claims were filed by St. Augustine and rural East Florida residents to exact from the United States government reparations for destroyed properties and lost crops and other business losses.  Mr. Marotti appears not to have been terribly critical of these sources, for he asks no questions about what they contain.  There are descriptions of great bounty from the fields and farms of the area.  At one point he says, "Indeed, money grew on trees for numerous rural East Floridians."  He describes a five-acre plot owned by a Minorcan and worked by him and his family as being ample in its production to support a large family and to provide some profit as well.  He seems to indicate that this was a norm among the Minorcans, and states that the family in question was able to set aside money each year off the profits from such endeavors. This does not seem to square with the death records in the Catholic cathedral's archives, which cite instance after instance of Minorcans dying intestate because they were poor.  But then, we have to ask what constituted poverty in St. Augustine.

He also does not question one statement that the orange groves were so productive that 5,000 to 6,000 oranges could be got off of one tree. 

There are other statements that require questioning, but let's examine what we have here.  First, the oranges.  No one is going to get 5,000 to 6,000 oranges off one tree in a season.  According to the Florida Department of Agriculture, one mature orange tree can bear at most 1,250 oranges per tree "if you properly care for and fertilize the tree."(3)  The Department of Agriculture, for this figure, is presupposing modern agricultural methods.  I have a childhood memory of a particularly productive orange tree we had in our back yard.  My mother picked something like 100 oranges off that tree in one day, preparing to make and freeze orange juice, and it looked like it had not been touched at all.  I estimate there may have been a total of 250-300 oranges on that tree, which was pretty much just left to its own devices.

Also, this rosy picture does not square with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's soil survey of St. Johns County, where St. Augustine, and many of the rural farms surrounding it, are located. Most of the soils in St. Johns county are naturally low in fertility according to the soil survey. Soils in the county also tend to be strongly acidic, needing applications of lime to bring the pH more towards neutral. These soils also tend to be low on phosphrous and potassium. Soil tilth – preparation of the seed bed so that seeds can germinate properly and roots penetrate the soil – is important for germination and for the infiltration of water. When a soil has good tilth, the soil is porous and granular. Most St. Johns County soils do have good tilth, with their sandy surface layers. Organic matter is present in the county’s soils in low to moderate amounts, so the soil must be amended. The soil can get crusty if allowed to dry out after a heavy rain. Cover crops, plowed under, add organic matter and increase fertility.(4)  While it is true that southern St. Johns county is highly productive of such crops as potatoes, cabbages, and sorghum, these results are obtained with 20th century agricultural methods such as plowing under cover crops to add organic material, fertilization, irrigation using modern equipment and technology, and methods not available to the farmers of Spanish colonial St. Augustine.  What methods were in use in the late 18th and early 19th centuries?

But the broader consideration is that Mr. Marotti did not once bring up the question of what was behind his sources, the Patriot War claims.  One thing we have to keep in mind while looking at these documents is, these were people who were seeking to get money from the U.S. government, and the likelihood was high that they were going to exaggerate their claims in order to extract as much money as they could.  They were motivated to inflate their estimates. 

Much of the testimony he cites is from neighbors testifying on a neighbor's claim, not from the individual claimants themselves.  These neighbors testify as to how many acres their friend had, how much money he received from the sale of his produce, how much he paid his workers, how much he had in expenses, and other such figures.  We need to ask the question, "Where did they get these figures from?  Who did they get the information from?"  Was there someone advising them on their testimony and advising the claimants on their claims?  Were they being told that they had to inflate their claims in order to get anything at all?  Did their friend and neighbor come to them and say that he needed them to testify as to these figures, and give them the numbers he needed mentioned?  After all, the ones testifying for their friends also had claims pending, and who doesn't need a little quid pro quo in such circumstances?

We must also remember that these claimants and their witnesses were people who had been stripped of their properties and livelihoods.  Their fields and crops destroyed, they went from the reality or even the prospect of prosperity to abject poverty.  One resident is quoted as saying that the invasion "had stripped us of nearly all that we possessed, and left ourselves, our wives, and children to the cold charity of the world." (5)  Others expressed their bereavement and their resentment.  Thus, we have not only a population motivated to garner as much as they could by inflating their claims, but also a population motivated by resentment and a wish for vengeance against the government that had supported such depredation and impoverishment among them.  This is not to say that St. Augustine was not prosperous at one time, because it certainly was not as abjectly poor as some have made it out to be in the past.  The truth lies somewhere in between these two extremes, and we also must take a further look to see what the income distribution was in St. Augustine, and where and how great was the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Being critical of sources raises questions such as these, some of them useful, some of them silly.  Further research can answer some of them, and some are left to speculation on the possibilities, tempered with a knowledge of human nature and psychology.  But not asking the questions at all is inviting being fooled by the sources.  It is better to ask the questions, however silly they may be, than to ignore them.  Even if our conclusions, our answers to these questions, proves at a later date to have been in error, they may lead future historians down a path that will lead to a better understanding, to better insights, and a picture that much closer to "how it essentially was." 



(1) Marotti, Frank.  The Cana Sanctuary: History, Diplomacy, and Black Catholic Marriages in Antebellum St. Augustine, Florida. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2012), 21.

(2) Ibid., 20.

(3) Florida Department of Agriculture.  Producing Citrus in Florida.  PDF document at http://faitc.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/Producing-Citrus-in-Florida.pdf (accessed 15 May 2017).

(4)  U.S. Department of Agriculture, Soil Survey of St. Johns County, Florida (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1983), 56.

(5) Marotti, The Cana Sanctuary, 30.

All done; time to go home

Today I finished my research at the Library of Congress.  In addition to the marriage license petitions I mentioned in my last post, I have found a few letters concerning "clandestine marriages," those marriages conducted without a Catholic priest present.  This was a punishable offense in Spanish society, being outside the observance of those rules laid down in the Real Pragmática de Casamientos.

There were also several royal edicts, or cédulas, regarding the Real Pragmática, the rules for marriage among the military and among government employees, and the rules for the marriage of slaves.  It is going to be interesting transcribing and analyzing these documents.  The transcription at times will also be harrowing and frustrating.  For example, the document in which the rules for the marriage of slaves is spelled out is heavily damaged by worms. There are other documents which suffer from faded ink or from just plain awful handwriting.  That's what makes paleography a challenge.

The research was intriguing.  The staff in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress are real pros.  They know their collection and are very helpful.  I had some frustrating times with the scanning microfilm readers, but that is more because at times machines and I just do not get along. 

Now I begin my preparations for going home.  I leave Monday afternoon, and am looking forward to getting home.  I am not a city person; I prefer suburbia or the country.  It is also very hot in Washington, D.C., being the middle of July.  City heat is a thing all its own.

I'll post entries here as I go along in the transcription and analysis of the documents, and the development of my thesis.  I was hoping to look at how the different governors had applied the Real Pragmática, but the marriage license petitions span only 1785-1803, the administrations of two governors, Vicente Manuel de Zéspedes and Juan Nepomuceno de Quesada.  I think there is enough material, and taken together with background reading on the Real Pragmática and other issues relating to marriage, I'm sure I can come up with something.

Just what that will be remains to be seen.
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The Tome of Testimony

I'm a gamer.  Sometimes phrases come to me when I'm writing my papers, phrases couched in terminology used by gamers, or in words that sound like it.  I put such a phrase in my paper on the suspension and removal of Al Cahill as sheriff of Duval County, Florida.  Cahill was suspended 30 January 1958.

The term was "the tome of testimony," by which I referred to the very thick -- something like 1100 pages -- transcript of grand jury testimony generated by the investigation into the charges made against Cahill.  The newspaper reported on the thickness of the transcript.  Governor LeRoy Collins remarked, when he received a copy of the transcript by permission of the judge in whose jurisdiction the inquiry was held, that it was "a foot thick."

The transcript probably contained a wealth of information about the case, information which probably would have answered many of the questions arising out of the event.

It is information we historians will never see.  Nor will anyone else.  Grand jury proceedings, and the transcripts thereof, are secret.  Forever.

This is something historians have to deal with, especially when we deal with history that touches on politics and law enforcement.  The "smoking gun" is not available.  We can only speculate about what information the Tome of Testimony holds, but we'll never get near it.

What I had to do for my paper was look very thoroughly into newspaper reports of the event.  It occupied a lot of space in the Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville's newspaper, because it was a very big story.  There are some other sources.  There is a history of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office (formed from the old Duval County Sheriff's Office and the Jacksonville Police Department when the city of Jacksonville and Duval County were consolidated in 1968).  That book has some information on Cahill's predecessor, Rex Sweat, who was reputed to be corrupt.  There is very little on Cahill himself, as he's a character they'd probably rather forget.  There is a great deal on Cahill's successor, Dale Carson, a measure of the regard in which he is still held in the Sheriff's Office and the city generally.

There is a popular magazine article on Rex Sweat which also has useful information in it.  There are a few items concerning the case in the LeRoy Collins Papers at the library at the University of South Florida, Tampa.  One repository I have not yet had a chance to check is the state archive, which I will do before I submit the paper for publication.

The largest source in this case was the newspaper reports, which have to be approached carefully.  We have to watch for "loaded" words or words which could be interpreted in more than one way.  We have to account for the various meanings or the emotional charge a word may carry.  We have to be aware of possible reporter bias or the bias of the newspaper, and we have to take into account the possible agendas of the people being reported on.

It is possible to tell the story of an event from such scant sources, and to perform some analysis of the event and the people involved in it.  There will be questions remaining to be addressed by others with different interpretations.  There will be questions which will forever remain unanswered.  That does not mean that we should not ask them, nor does it mean that we should not try to tell the story.

But there it is, intrepid players of the game of history.  Seek thou the Tome of Testimony, only to find that it is concealed forever behind the strongest of magic spells and castle walls.  Then seek thou other sources, and use your powers of analysis to crack their secrets.
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Next step . . .

I got a 98 on my paper on the suspension and removal of Al Cahill as sheriff of Duval County, Florida.  The 2 points probably were for technical points.

Now I'm going to polish it up and see about getting it published in a journal.

That's exciting!
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Journal advice

I had lunch with my friend Barbara today.  We met in 1986 at a Star Trek movie.  We were big Trek fans then, and accumulated a circle of friends who were, too.  We had some great times.  We have moved on, yet we fondly remember those days.  Our friends have moved on with us, and we still keep in touch with the hard core.

Barbara is optimistic and a fountain of positive wisdom.  She has encouraged me to keep a daily journal, even if only to write one sentence.  So I'm going to do that.  The journal will be hard copy, and sometimes I will record in there things that I wish to keep private.  But I will also, from time to time, reprint here the entries that pertain to the subject of this blog: the journey of a historian-in-training.

The first entry will probably be tonight.  Tomorrow is the day my husband and I lug a bunch of my stuff -- mostly books! -- to my new digs, in the home of a family friend, four hours south of where we make our home.  I'm looking forward to the living arrangement, which is eminently suitable for both of us.  Our friend has just painted the interior of her house, and is also going to install a new ceiling fan for me in my room.  I saw the color she had in mind for my room, and I like it a lot.

I'm looking forward to the program in which I will be working on my master's degree.  The Florida Studies program at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg is an interdisciplinary program, and in addition to history courses concentrating mainly on colonial Spanish Florida, I will take courses in other subjects which are related and which I think will enhance my research. 

For instance, this term, in addition to a seminar in Early Florida and a seminar in Florida Politics Since World War II (which is required of all Florida Studies majors), I will be taking Geologic History of Florida.  I think an understanding of the geology is important to my understanding of the soils of St. Augustine, which in turn is necessary to an understanding of what food crops would grow there!

Related to that will be a course or courses in the environment and environmental history of Florida.  I have already had one course in Florida's environmental history at the University of North Florida.  That course concentrated on the area of the St. Johns River, which includes St. Augustine.  I had not anticipated the course would be so deeply relevant to my inquiries, but it surprised me.

I also anticipate taking a basic economics course, because part of my study of St. Augustine during the Second Spanish Period is to study the economy, possibly to find new material to bring out about that economy, from information I will be digging out of the East Florida Papers and other original documents.

 My car is packed, and tomorrow we put the rest of my stuff -- including a bookcase, a file cabinet, and my office chair -- in my husband's F-150.  This is going to be an adventure.
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A Little Florida History: the Midwives' Song

Today I am going to relate a tale from my own childhood, which reveals a little Florida history from the mid-twentieth century.

My aunt, Elizabeth Reed, was a public health nurse and in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, Director of Health Information for the State Board of Health, as it was known in those days.  Today it is the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services.

In this capacity, she traveled around the state of Florida, making speeches, observing conditions, and otherwise gathering data on Florida public health.  One experience she had was in the Florida panhandle, in Tallahassee, with a group of midwives who served the surrounding rural area, in the 1940s.  There was a shortage of doctors in these rural areas, so these midwives were on the front lines in assuring safe childbirth.  The state of Florida wanted to assure that they used the latest in aseptic practice (handwashing, sterilizing equipment, etc.).

These women were in the main not well-educated.  The nurses who trained them used "visual aids," as in one meeting where the nurse was making the point that the infant mortality rate was still too high, and emphasizing the need for good aseptic practice.  The nurse stood at the head of the group with a jar of beans, saying that for every bean in the jar, there had been a woman or child who died in childbirth as a result of carelessness on the part of a midwife or midwives.

Just then, two women entered the meeting late, and took seats in the back of the room.  Another woman seated up front looked back and saw them.  Then she turned forward again and said to the nurse who was training them, "You see Sister A---- what just come in?  Two of them beans is hers!"

The ladies had a song they sang for what today would be called "team building."  Here are the first two verses and the chorus.  Unfortunately, I cannot remember the third verse.

The Midwives' Song

We midwives will help you
As your dearest friend,
For we are all midwives indeed!
We help build the nation,
Assistance we lend,
For we are all midwives indeed!

For we are all midwives, indeed! (Hallelujah!)
For we are all midwives, indeed!
We know what is right,
And we work day and night,
For we are all midwives, indeed!

There are babies in Heaven,
Who should be on Earth,
For we are all midwives, indeed!
They had no good midwife
Assist them in birth,
For we are all midwives, indeed!

For we are all midwives, indeed! (Hallelujah!)
For we are all midwives, indeed!
We know what is right,
And we work day and night,
For we are all midwives, indeed!
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