William Panton

William Panton (c. 1740 – 26 February 1801) was the head of a group of five Scottish merchants who in 1783 founded the powerful and influential trading firm of Panton, Leslie & Company at St. Augustine, then the capital of British East Florida. They formed a partnership to trade with the Indians of Florida and the Spanish borderlands on the southern frontier of the British colonies. By 1795 the company had established a monopoly on trade with the Indian tribes of what is now the southeastern United States, sanctioned by successive governors of Spanish Florida.

Early years in America

Panton, the son of John Panton and Barbara Wemyss, was born on the family farm at the Mains of Aberdour on the south coast of the Moray Firth in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.{{cite book|author1=William S. Coker|author2=Thomas D. Watson|title=Indian Traders of the Southeastern Spanish Borderlands: Company and John Forbes & Company, 1783-1847|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gGeJGwAACAAJ|date=1 December 1986|publisher=University Press of Florida|isbn=978-0-8130-1854-6|pages=17–18}} Panton emigrated to Charleston, South Carolina, with his countryman, Thomas Forbes, in 1765.{{cite book|author=J. Leitch Wright Jr|editor=William S. Coker and Robert Right Rea|title=Anglo-Spanish confrontation on the Gulf Coast during the American Revolution|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3rkMAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Charleston%22%20%221765%22|date=October 1982|publisher=Gulf Coast History and Humanities Conference|pages=183–184|chapter=The Queen's Redoubt Explosion and the Lives of William A. Bowles, John. Miller and William Panton|isbn=9780940836167}} He got into the Indian trade as an apprentice with the firm of John Gordon, a Scots immigrant from Aberdeenshire who established a vast trade network in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida during the 1760s. Panton served as Gordon's clerk from 1765 until 1772,{{cite book|author=Henry Laurens|title=The Papers of Henry Laurens|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lO_ZhGdBhzEC&pg=PA62|date=1 May 1988|publisher=Univ of South Carolina Press|isbn=978-0-87249-516-6|page=62}} when Gordon appointed him as one of his attorneys.{{cite book|author=William S. Coker|title=Historical Sketches of Panton, Leslie and Company|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BTcLAAAAYAAJ|accessdate=30 September 2013|year=1976|publisher=University of West Florida|page=3}}

Forbes was Gordon's maternal nephew.{{cite book|author=John Forbes|title=Description of the Spanish Floridas, 1804|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8WATAAAAYAAJ&q=%22John%20Gordon%22|accessdate=25 September 2013|year=1979|publisher=Perdido Bay Press|isbn=978-0-933776-02-9|page=2}} In 1774 Panton and Philip Moore formed a partnership that lasted for several years, and in 1776 Panton started his own trading house with Thomas Forbes in Savannah known as Panton, Forbes and Company. They began to trade with the growing population of white colonists, and speculated in lands, acquiring large tracts in both Carolina and Georgia.{{cite book|author=James Leitch Wright|title=Creeks & Seminoles: The Destruction and Regeneration of the Muscogulge People|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cSZjm5DgSNEC&pg=PA43|year=1990|publisher=U of Nebraska Press|isbn=978-0-8032-9728-9|pages=43–44}} Soon after the American revolution broke out, they being determined loyalists, their properties were confiscated. They migrated to East Florida, now a British province and rapidly developing with the infusion of British capital and enterprise, and established themselves on the St. Marys River.{{cite book|author=Organization of American Historians|title=Proceedings|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v1UUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA120|year=1916|publisher=Torch Press|pages=120–121}}

In December 1775, the British governor of East Florida, Patrick Tonyn, appointed Panton official trader for the Creek Indians, and in 1778 the British Indian agent, Col. Thomas Brown, charged Panton with responsibility for the giving of presents to the Creeks and Cherokees,{{cite book|author=Leslie Hall|title=Land & Allegiance in Revolutionary Georgia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=047oGerxpi8C&pg=PA47|date=1 January 2001|publisher=University of Georgia Press|isbn=978-0-8203-2262-9|page=47}} a necessary part of diplomacy with the Indian tribes. The company also specialized in fur trading, more specifically deerskins, which was a vital industry for Native tribes in the region.Narrett, D. (2017). William Panton, British Merchant and Politico: Negotiating Allegiance in the Spanish and Southern Indian Borderlands, 1783-1801. The Florida Historical Quarterly, 96(2), 135–173. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44955741 On 10 January 1783, Panton received a license signed by Governor Tonyn, Brig. Gen. Archibald McArthur, commander of British forces in East Florida, and Thomas Brown, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, to carry on trade with the Indians and supply them with British manufactures.{{cite book|author=Colin Mitchell|title=Record in the Case of Colin Mitchell and Others, Versus the United States: Supreme Court of the United States. January Term, 1831|url=https://books.google.com/books?i=xWdGAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA298|year=1831|publisher=D. Green|pages=298–299}}

Trading in Spanish Florida

With the recession of the Floridas to Spain on 20 February 1783, Panton was allowed to remain in the province by agreement between the British officers and Manuel de Zéspedes, the Spanish governor. He had insinuated himself into the good graces of Zéspedes, who interceded on his behalf at the Spanish court. By royal orders of the Spanish Crown in March 1786, Panton, Leslie & Company were authorized to continue to trade with the Indians in the Floridas.{{cite book|author1=John Arthur Garraty|author2=Mark Christopher Carnes|author3=American Council of Learned Societies|title=American National Biography|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oe0pAQAAMAAJ|year=1999|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-520635-7|page=234}}{{cite book|author=Helen Hornbeck Tanner|title=Zéspedes in East Florida, 1784-1790|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9ZEYAAAAYAAJ|year=1963|publisher=University of Miami Press|page=95}}{{cite book|author=Arthur Preston Whitaker|title=Documents Relating to the Commercial Policy of Spain in the Floridas with Incidental Reference to Louisiana|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SKoKAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Panton,%20Leslie%20and%20Company%22|year=1931|publisher=The Florida State Historical Society|page=xxxii}} They did a large mercantile business in St. Augustine, managed by John Leslie, and were generally employed by the Spaniards to furnish goods and lend funds. Some of the partners of the firm were permitted to purchase lands and to hold them in East Florida. John Leslie presented himself on behalf of Panton, Leslie & Co., and declared the four principals of the house to be William Panton and Thomas Forbes, Charles Maclatchy, and himself, and that the company owned 72,820 acres of land in the province.{{cite book|author=United States. Congress|title=American state papers: Documents, legislative and executive of the Congress of the United States ...|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xLMbAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA110|year=1860|publisher=Gales and Seaton|page=110}}

Later in 1783, Panton and William Alexander moved to Nassau in the Bahamas,{{cite book|author=James Leitch Wright|title=British St. Augustine|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TmwTAAAAYAAJ&q=%22his%20Saint%20Augustine%20residence%22|year=1975|publisher=Historic St. Augustine Preservation Board|page=46}}{{cite book|author=Lee H. Warner|title=Free Men in an Age of Servitude: Three Generations of a Black Family|url=https://archive.org/details/freemeninageofse00warn|url-access=registration|date=1 January 1992|publisher=University Press of Kentucky|isbn=0-8131-1799-2|page=[https://archive.org/details/freemeninageofse00warn/page/16 16]}} which then became the center of the firm's operations,{{cite book|author1=William S. Coker|author2=Robert Right Rea|title=Anglo-Spanish confrontation on the Gulf Coast during the American Revolution|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3rkMAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Nassau%20became%20the%20center%22|date=October 1982|publisher=Gulf Coast History and Humanities Conference|page=187|isbn=9780940836167}} where it stored trade items in large warehouses.{{cite book|author=Smithsonian Institution (Emeritus) Roger G. Kennedy Director of the National Museum of American History|title=Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause : Land, Farmers, Slavery, and the Louisiana Purchase: Land, Farmers, Slavery, and the Louisiana Purchase|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a4POPypwImYC&pg=PA144|date=6 March 2003|publisher=Oxford University Press, USA|isbn=978-0-19-803498-8|page=144}}

File:Panton, Leslie & Company headquarters.jpg

In April 1785, Panton and John Forbes arrived in Spanish Pensacola with a hastily loaded cargo of goods from Nassau.{{cite book|author=Judith Ann Bense|title=Archaeology of Colonial Pensacola|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_WnLuhfm7vAC&pg=PA42|year=1999|publisher=University Press of Florida|isbn=978-0-8130-1661-0|page=42}} They established the new house headquarters in the settlement as its volume of trade exceeded that of the St. Augustine branch.{{cite journal|author1=J. A. Brown|title=Panton, Leslie and Company Indian Traders of Pensacola and St. Augustine|journal=The Florida Historical Quarterly|date=January–April 1959|volume=37|issue=3/4|page=33|series=Pensacola Quadricentennial Issue|publisher=Florida Historical Society}} According to the Spanish census of 1786, Panton, Leslie and Company owned nineteen separate land grants, as well as 250 enslaved Africans, most of them working on its plantations and ranches.{{cite book|author=Jane Landers|title=Black Society in Spanish Florida|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6KByoQgXZEcC&pg=PA171|date=1 January 1999|publisher=University of Illinois Press|isbn=978-0-252-06753-2|page=171}} In February 1789, Panton gained the Choctaw and Chickasaw trade at Mobile with the failure of Mather and Strother, a competitor firm based in New Orleans.{{cite journal|author1=Thomas D. Watson|author2=Samuel Wilson Jr.|title=A Lost Landmark Revisited: The Panton House of Pensacola|journal=The Florida Historical Quarterly|date=July 1981|volume=60|issue=1|page=43|publisher=Florida Historical Society}}{{cite journal|author1=Thomas D. Watson|title=Continuity in Commerce: Development of the Panton, Leslie and Company Trade Monopoly in West Florida|journal=The Florida Historical Quarterly|date=April 1976|volume=54|issue=4|page=562|series=The Floridas in the Revolutionary Era: Bicentennial Issue|publisher=Florida Historical Society}}

By 1795 the company monopolized trade with the Native American tribes in the southeast,{{cite book|author=David Narrett|title=Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LHNpBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA210|date=5 March 2015|publisher=UNC Press Books|isbn=978-1-4696-1834-0|page=210}}{{cite book|author=Colin G. Calloway Professor of History and Samson Occom Professor of Native American Studies|title=White People, Indians, and Highlanders : Tribal People and Colonial Encounters in Scotland and America: Tribal People and Colonial Encounters in Scotland and America|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kL8bYs02ahoC&pg=PA119|date=3 June 2008|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-971289-2|page=119}} its presence reaching northward from Pensacola to Fort San Fernando (formerly known as Chickasaw Bluffs) on the site of present-day Memphis, and westward as far as New Orleans, with posts at Mobile and several locations in Florida, the Bahamas, and around the Caribbean.{{cite book|author=William S. Coker|title=Historical Sketches of Panton, Leslie and Company|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BTcLAAAAYAAJ&q=%22maintained%20trading%20posts%22|year=1976|publisher=University of West Florida|page=31}}

Largest mercantile company in the Old Southwest

File:William Panton Home 1890s.jpg

Panton, Leslie & Company made a fortune in the Indian trade and would become the largest mercantile company on the southern frontier in the 1790s.{{cite book|author=Lawrence Sanders Rowland|title=The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: 1514-1861|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WjdhnfG0tYcC&pg=PA182|accessdate=14 September 2013|year=1996|publisher=Univ of South Carolina Press|isbn=978-1-57003-090-1|page=182}} Working in partnership with Alexander McGillivray, they were able to expand their operations from East Florida and the Bahamas to the Mississippi River. McGillivray, an influential chief of the Upper Creek (Muscogee) towns,{{cite book|author=Arthur Orrmont|title=Diplomat in warpaint: Chief Alexander McGillivray of the Creeks|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=V-QKAQAAIAAJ|year=1968|publisher=Abelard-Schuman|page=100|isbn=9780200715164 }} was an intimate associate of Panton and is generally considered to have been a silent partner in the firm. Panton had promised him a one-fifth share of the company's profits once it obtained Spanish approval.{{cite book|author=Paul M. Pressly|title=On the Rim of the Caribbean: Colonial Georgia and the British Atlantic World|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Gxqc3NSzgdAC&pg=PA131|date=1 March 2013|publisher=University of Georgia Press|isbn=978-0-8203-4503-1|page=131}} McGillivray, always sickly, died in 1793, and was buried with Masonic honors in Panton's garden at Pensacola on 18 February of that year.{{cite book|author=Edward J. Cashin|title=The King's Ranger: Thomas Brown and the American Revolution on the Southern Frontier|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vWmBxHo12JkC&pg=PA242|date=30 January 1999|publisher=Fordham Univ Press|isbn=978-0-8232-1908-7|page=242}}{{cite book|author=Dan L. Thrapp|title=Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography: G-O|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hc35mM0PqSQC&pg=PA904|date=1 August 1991|publisher=U of Nebraska Press|isbn=0-8032-9419-0|page=904}}{{cite book|author1=William S. Coker|author2=Robert Right Rea|title=Anglo-Spanish confrontation on the Gulf Coast during the American Revolution|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3rkMAAAAYAAJ&q=%22buried%22%20%22garden%22|date=October 1982|publisher=Gulf Coast History and Humanities Conference|page=190|isbn=9780940836167}}{{cite book|author1=John Walton Caughey|author2=William J. Bauer|title=McGillivray of the Creeks|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rAeuJjNLUD8C&pg=PA53|year=1938|publisher=Univ of South Carolina Press|isbn=978-1-57003-692-7|page=53}}{{cite book|author=Peter Alexander Brannon|title=The Southern Indian Trade: Being Particularly a Study of Material from the Tallapoosa River Valley of Alabama|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vbMbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22garden%22|year=1935|publisher=Paragon Press|page=35}}

The firm fixed prices to undersell its competitors in Georgia and South Carolina, dispatched agents throughout the Indian country, and carried Spanish government communiques among the tribes. Although Panton, Leslie & Company were a legitimate trading firm, they smuggled goods across the border and manipulated the market to their advantage in other ways, practices probably common to any trading firm operating on the frontier at the time.{{cite journal|author1=Merritt Bloodworth Pound|title=Colonel Benjamin Hawkins – North Carolinian – Benefactor of the Southern Indians|journal=The North Carolina Historical Review|date=April 1942|volume=19|issue=2|pages=172–173|url=https://archive.org/stream/northcarolinahis1942nort#page/n225/mode/2up|publisher=North Carolina Historical Commission|location=Raleigh, North Carolina}} After the deaths of William Panton and John Leslie, the company was reorganized in 1804 as John Forbes & Company.

Death

In January 1801, Panton came down with a serious illness at Pensacola, and acting on medical advice to seek a change of climate immediately, he sailed for Havana attended by his physician, Dr. Reeves Fowler, on the company schooner Shark. They left in haste, even though his letters of recommendation had not yet arrived. The Cuban authorities refused to allow him to disembark without such papers, on account of the ongoing war between Spain and Great Britain. He continued toward Nassau,{{cite book|author=Dan L. Thrapp|title=Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography: P-Z|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NCObM3OAPuwC&pg=PA1107|date=1 June 1991|publisher=U of Nebraska Press|isbn=0-8032-9420-4|page=1107}} but died at sea on 26 February, and was buried at Great Harbour Cay, the major island of the Berry Islands in the Bahamas.{{cite book|author1=Amos J. Wright Jr.|author2=Vernon J. Knight|title=The McGillivray and McIntosh Traders: On the Old Southwest Frontier 1716-1815|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A7T2HCPyMhkC&pg=PA271|date=1 February 2007|publisher=NewSouth Books|isbn=978-1-60306-014-1|page=271}}Coker, 1976, p.19Coker Watson1986, pp. 234–235

William Panton

Early years in America

Trading in Spanish Florida

Largest mercantile company in the Old Southwest

Death

Notes

Further reading