#62 Camp Governor Milton, Civil War camp at Blue Springs (100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida)

Blue Springs from site of Camp Governor Milton

The important Confederate camp established at Blue Springs during the War Between the States (or Civil War) is #62 on our list of 100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida.

Please click here to see the entire list as it is unveiled.

Blue Springs (or Jackson Blue Springs as the state has renamed it) has been a landmark for thousands of years. Early American Indians frequented the spring and surrounding caves to hunt and fish. The actual Old Spanish Trail passed by the spring, which was a frequent stopping point for Spanish missionaries, soldiers and explorers. The U.S.Army of Major General Andrew Jackson visited Blue Springs during the First Seminole War of 1817-1818. During the 1820s it became the centerpiece of Major William Robinson's cotton plantation.

Sylvania Plantation Marker at Blue Springs

By the time Florida seceded from the Union in January 1861, the beautiful spring was known by its present name and was owned by Governor-elect John Milton as part of his Sylvania Plantation. He enjoyed fishing in Blue Springs and sitting by the water to reflect during the trying times of the War Between the States.

The availability of a large quantity of fresh water, access to good roads leading in all directions, proximity to Marianna and the good condition of the buildings of the former Robinson Plantation led the Confederate Army to establish Camp Governor Milton at Blue Springs in 1862.

Historic photo of Blue Springs with plantation house visible.
State Archives of Florida/Memory Collection

The camp stood on the hill overlooking the head spring where the parking area is located today. The surrounding farms and plantations provided a steady supply of provisions plus corn could be ground downstream at Coker's Mill.

While the term "camp" implies a temporary establishment and evokes mental images of soldiers sleeping in tents, Camp Governor Milton was a more permanent facility. Surviving documents include receipts for lumber and nails used to build a hospital. Soldiers were quartered in the original Robinson plantation house and outbuildings instead of in tents.

Underwater view of Blue Springs
Photo by Alan Cox

In fact, the camp was occupied from 1862 until the end of the war in 1865. Among the units known to have been stationed there at various times were Captain Walter Robinson's Independent Company (later Company A, 11th Florida Infantry); the Marianna Dragoons (later Company B, 15th Confederate Cavalry); Company C, 1st Florida Reserves; Captain Robert Chisolm's Woodville Scouts of the Alabama State Militia (later Company I, 5th Florida Cavalry); Companies A and E, 5th Florida Cavalry, and detachments from other companies.

View from Blue Springs at Sunset
Photo by Camille Lakey

Troops from Camp Governor Milton played a critical role in several Florida actions of the War Between the States. Robinson's company marched from Blue Springs to attack Union sailors trying to get the captured blockade runner Florida out of St. Andrew Bay in 1862. The next year the same company attacked another Federal detachment at St. Andrews (present-day Panama City). In September 1864, a detachment of Chisolm's company fought at the Eucheeanna Skirmish in Walton County and then the entire company took part in the Battle of Marianna. Finally, in March 1865, companies of the 5th Florida Cavalry rode from Blue Spring to Tallahassee to fight at the Battle of Natural Bridge.

The camp was abandoned at the end of the war and not used by Union occupation troops during the Reconstruction era. The buildings are gone now, but traces of the Confederate soldiers that once served there can still be seen in the form of carvings left in the rocks and caves around Blue Springs.

To learn more about the history of Blue Springs Recreational Area, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/jacksonbluespring.

#91 Governor John Milton (100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida)

Gov. John Milton
(D) Florida

Governor John Milton is #91 on my list of 100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida. Please click here to see the full list as it is posted.

Born in Louisville, Georgia, on April 20, 1807, Governor Milton was a descendant and namesake of the famed English poet John Milton, who wrote Paradise Lost. The governor's grandfather was a soldier of the American Revolution and his father, General Homer V. Milton, served with distinction during the War of 1812 and Creek War of 1813-1814.

As a boy, the "Governor" - as he is generally known around Jackson County - studied at an academy in his hometown of Louisville and excelled in subjects that included Greek, Latin, English and mathematics. He was undoubtedly a bright and talented individual who was admitted to the bar in Georgia before he was 20 years old.

Leaving his hometown, Milton went on to practice law in Columbus, Georgia, where he was also elected to the rank of colonel in the Georgia militia (forerunner of today's Georgia National Guard). He ran for U.S. Congress in 1832 as a supporter of John C. Calhoun's theory of nullification.

Columbus, Georgia

The Nullifcation theory held that a state, by virtue of its sovereign status, could overrule or nullify actions of the Federal government that were not beneficial to the state. Milton lost that race, but remained an adamant supporter of states' rights and opponent of the growing power of the Federal government.

On August 11, 1834, Milton was arrested and charged with murder after he shot a man with whom he had been engaged in a personal and political dispute:

This day has terminated the controversy between Col. John Milton and Maj. J.T. Camp, by the death of the later. Col. Milton understanding that his life had been threatened by Maj. Camp, procured a double barreled Gun, and walked over to Nicholas Howards Store, and discharged the contents of one of his barrels into his back, and while falling discharged the other into his left breast. -

New Orleans, Milton's one-time home.
Photo courtesy of Brian Mabelitini

Milton turned himself in to local authorities, but was acquitted in a trial that began less than two weeks later. The jury determined that he had acted in self defense as Camp had threatened to kill him.

By 1835, Milton had relocated to Mobile, Alabama, where he continued his practice of law. He raised a company of cavalry during the Creek War of 1836 and took part in the movements that sent many of the Creek Indians west on the Trail of Tears.

Following the death of his first wife, Susan Amanda Milton, the future governor remarried Caroline Howze with whom he eventually had ten additional children. He and Susan had parented five children, but only one - William Henry Milton - survived the diseases of that day to become an adult.

Seeking more fertile ground for his law practice, the future governor moved to New Orleans and lived in Louisiana until 1845. It is believed that he was the same John Milton who was listed as having been badly injured during a steamboat explosion that took place on the Mississippi River at New Orleans on July 1, 1845. Among the "gentleman" passengers on the boat was a "John Milton" who was reported to have been badly scalded by steam.

Sylvania Plantation Marker at Blue Springs

Not long after this accident, Milton began his move from Louisiana to Jackson County. Through family connections he acquired the plantation of the late William Robinson at Blue Springs, which he expanded tremendously during the late 1840s and 1850s. Eventually his "Sylvania" plantation grew to include more than 6,000 acres of prime Jackson County land.

Always active in military and political affairs, John Milton was elected Major General of the 1st Division of the Florida Militia in 1849 and to a seat in the Florida Legislature one year later. Even though Jackson County was then a "Gibraltar" of the now-defunct Whig Party, Milton was a dedicated Democrat. His popularity is evidenced by the fact that he was elected to the legislature from a county controlled by party other than his own.

Old State Capitol in Tallahassee, Florida

In 1860, Milton was elected Governor of Florida by a commanding margin in the same November election that saw Abraham Lincoln elected President of the United States. In Florida, Milton received 6,994 votes in that election, compared to 5,248 for his opponent. Abraham Lincoln did not receive a single vote in Florida.

Although in those days the Governor-elect did not take office for nearly one year after being elected, Governor Madison S.Perry worked closely with his successor. It was Governor-elect Milton who announced Florida's secession from the portico of the Old Capitol on January 10, 1861.

Old Capitol as it appeared when Milton was Governor
State Archives of Florida/Memory Collection

Governor Milton assumed his office in October 1861. By that time Florida was part of the Confederate States of America. The governor would lead his state through nearly four years of war against the United States, even though he had been elected to his post while Florida was still part of the U.S.

His tenure as governor was remarkable as he was tasked with protecting the citizens of a state all but abandoned by the Confederate military. On their own and with little help from the Confederate capital in Richmond, Governor Milton and the Florida Legislature raised and equipped troops both for the Confederate armies and the defense of Florida.

Old Capitol Building in Tallahassee

The governor also stood up for the poor people of his state in the face of acts that reflected the growing desperation of the Confederate government. When Confederate commissary officers began seizing the last cows from the widows and children of Southern soldiers, Milton pleaded their case to Richmond. When the wives and children of a group of Unionists from Taylor County were seized by the Confederate army and placed in a concentration camp near Tallahassee, Milton secured their freedom and had them passed through the lines to their husbands and fathers.

Battle of Marianna Monument

Milton played a critical role in maintaining Florida's transportation systems during the war and in providing for the families of soldiers. His efforts helped secure the Confederate victory at Olustee on February 20, 1864, and when Marianna was attacked on September 27 of that year, he rushed forward to Chattahoochee determined to oppose the Federal advance in person if the enemy continued to advance.

On March 6, 1865, Confederate troops that included the Governor's sons - Major William H. Milton of the 5th Florida Cavalry and Cadet John Milton of the West Florida Seminary (today's Florida State University) - defeated a Union attempt to take Tallahassee and nearby Thomasville, Georgia. Dr. Charles Hentz, a Confederate surgeon who knew the governor well, remembered that things did not seem right with him in the wake of the dramatic victory:

Gov. Milton's grave at St. Luke's Episcopal Church

Governor Milton made an address to the soldiers in the Capitol. I had observed him when we were going down, walking up & down the Depot platform with an air of the most profound abstraction and dejection. I think he must have been suffering from some disease of the brain.

Less than one month later, Governor John Milton was dead. His life came to an end from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his Sylvania plantation on April 1, 1865. While many of blamed Milton's death on suicide, recent research has produced a copy of a special Extra issue of the West Florida News from the week of his death that indicates the fatal gunshot wound was fired by accident. Milton was preparing for a bird-hunting expedition with his son when his shotgun accidentally discharged.

The Governor is buried at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Marianna, alongside his father and many other members of his family. The Milton family remains heavily involved in business, legal and community improvement efforts in Jackson County to this day.

To learn more about Governor Milton's life and administration, please consider my book: The History of Jackson County, Florida: The War Between the States. It is also available at a discounted price for Kindle readers.

Chipola River could once block traffic for weeks!

The rains and high water we have seen this winter reminds me of stories I have heard and read from the early history of Jackson County, when rivers and creeks were much great barriers to travel than they are today.

The Spanish, for example, visited the county in 1674-1675, 1677 and 1693. They usually followed the real "old Spanish trail," a footpath that led from the Apalachicola River near today's Sneads northwest across the county along a line that took it just north of Grand Ridge to Blue Spring and on to the Natural Bridge of the Chipola River at Florida Caverns State Park.

Most of their surviving accounts describe few problems in their travels, but in 1693 they found the water running high and it caused major difficulties for them. At the Natural Bridge of the Chipola River, for example, they described water and mud that reached the girths of their horses. As still happens today, so much water was coming down the Chipola that it overflowed the sink where the river normally goes underground and flooded the bridge itself.

The Chipola, in fact, would continue to cause problems for more than 200 years to come. By the time of the Civil War, for example, an open wooden bridge spanned the river at Marianna, but during high water the entire structure would be submerged. This meant a total halt to mail and other communication with the county seat, as English tutor Sarah Jones, who lived on Governor Milton's Sylvania Plantation, described in 1862:

When we arrived at the swamp near the Chipola, which flows into the Chattahoochie [i.e. Apalachicola], the water was up to the spokes of the wheels, and when we returned, less than two hours afterwards, the water had risen more than half a foot. “It is just nine days since any mail left this place,” said the postmaster, “and the river is rising now, so there will be no chance of sending for a week or two.” And no chance of obtaining the mail either!

Jones related that the postmaster would often throw away all but the most recent newspapers to save postal patrons the "trouble" of reading old news. The river would continue to cause such problems almost annually until the elevation of the bridge was finally raised in the years after the Civil War.

To read more of Miss Jones' descriptions of Jackson County during the Civil War, please consider my new book The History of Jackson County, Florida: The War Between the States. It is available through Amazon by clicking the link here or can be purchased in downtown Marianna at Chipola River Book and Tea on Lafayette Street across from the Battle of Marianna monument. You can read more about the Natural Bridge of the Chipola at www.exploresouthernhistory.com/floridacaverns.

Life on a Jackson County Plantation - An Excerpt from the New Book

The following is excerpted from Chapter One of my new book, The History of Jackson County, Florida: The War Between the States. The book is available through Amazon.com by clicking this ad. It is also available at Chipola River Book and Tea in Downtown Marianna.

This excerpt discusses Sylvania, the Jackson County plantation of Confederate Governor John Milton:

"...Milton’s plantation, Sylvania, was centered around a surprisingly modest home all but hidden from view in a grove of lush trees. English tutor Sarah L. Jones (a pseudonym) vividly described her first view of plantation manor:


"It was just light enough to distinguish a long, low dwelling, surrounded by a deep piazza reached by steps extending along the whole front. A very pretty style of building, quite Southern, and in the midst of a wood. Excepting the drive to the house, and a cleared space in front, it was literally in a wood, and was therefore appropriately called ‘Sylvania.’

"Jones quickly discovered that Sylvania was a unique mixture of gentility and boisterousness and her arrival at the home in the trees was quite memorable. She described how she was invited into the parlor for tea by Mrs. Milton, all under the watchful eyes of the family’s ten youngest children:

"A fire was soon blazing in the sitting-room, called the parlour, the evenings being chilly; but the doors remained open, and I heard steps and voices on the piazza, and saw by the light of the blazing fire, splendid black eyes peeping in at the windows, and popping away on meeting mine, and I knew that some of the ten were ascertaining what sort of a looking body ‘the new teacher, Miss Jones’ might be.

"At the tea-table some half-dozen of the ten appeared, and I never saw such a collection of eyes in my life. They were all dark, and all beautiful, and all like their mother’s, but no two pairs alike. ‘Pretty girls, and amiable, evidently; manners perhaps a little uncouth, listless and inexpressive; temper easy, mind undeveloped, and character also expressionless. Such were my pupils in Florida….

"Life at Sylvania, however, soon proved to be a bit more difficult than the young teacher had expected. She quickly discovered to her chagrin that Jim, one of the Milton slaves, was a prankster who enjoyed taking items from the home and hiding them in the woods. Prior to bed one night she had arranged a row of books on a piano in the little one-room plantation schoolhouse, only to return to the building the next morning to find them gone:

"‘I bet a dollar that Jim…has carried them off into the woods,’ said Johnny.
‘Why should he do that.’
‘Oh, just for mischief. I left my violin here one evening, and the next day it was gone. A long time afterwards, which I was hunting in the woods, I found it smashed up under the trees; and I know Jim broke it up for mischief.’ Thus the row of books vanished, their loss borne amiably and unconcernedly, without an effort to recover them.

"Miss Jones soon discovered that the girls of the family were just as playful as Jim. In fact, she soon realized that the Miltons, like other wealthy elites of the Southern planting class, did not discipline their children at all:

"…Southern parents who have been reared on the same principals do not understand the discipline necessary to enforce any system. They are too indulgent, too much accustomed to control an inferior class, and to allow their children to control that class, to reconcile to themselves the idea of compelling obedience in their own children when once past infancy, which would perhaps be placing them too much on a par with the negroes.

"In short, the tutor believed that wealthy Southerners did not discipline their children because doing so would place them on the level of slaves. She described how little Johnny would even call a slave to carry his spade for him while helping her in the garden. As a result, her efforts to teach the Milton children were frustrating in the extreme. The children would come and go from the little school on the grounds as they pleased. Sometimes other children from the neighborhood would come, other times not.

"While Jones’ account provides a fascinating look at life in the Milton home itself, the plantation was first and foremost a place of work and farming. The future governor of Florida held 52 slaves, some were children and others house servants, but most were field hands, who worked all day in the fields and woods of the plantation. Jones paid little attention to them during her sojourn at Sylvania, noting only that they were “too busy planting, or ploughing, or chopping wood” to assist her with her small garden...."

To read more, please consider The History of Jackson County, Florida: The War Between the States.

Jeff Milton - Faster than the Fastest Gun in the West

By Dale Cox

Blue Spring – On Blue Springs Road a few miles east of Marianna, a state marker points out the site of “Sylvania,” the home of Governor John Milton. The marker provides the basic story of Governor Milton, Florida’s Confederate leader.

An important fact overlooked by the writer of the marker text, however, is that “Sylvania” was also the birthplace of Jefferson Davis Milton, a lawman who faced down the “fastest gun in the West” and lived to tell about it.

Jeff Milton was born at Sylvania in November of 1861 and was just four years old when his father died from a gun blast in one of the bedrooms. It was the beginning of a remarkably turbulent and yet highly successful life.

Like many young Southern men of his era, Milton turned his back on his home state and headed west for Texas. Only fifteen years old, he worked as a cowboy for a time but soon embarked on a career in which he achieved lasting fame.

In 1878, when he was just seventeen years old, Jeff Milton lied about his age and became a Texas Ranger. Four years later he moved west to New Mexico and spent the 1880s and 1890s working as a deputy U.S. marshal, sheriff’s deputy, police chief and in other law enforcement roles.

One thing is for certain, Jeff Milton had one of the fastest draws of any gunfighter in the Old West. He was responsible over the years for the gunfight shootings of such desperadoes as “Bronco Bill” Walters, “Three Fingered Jack” Dunlop and “Bravo Juan” Yoas. His famous quote, “I never killed a man who didn’t need killing,” is among the best known attributed to any gunfighter.

Milton’s most remarkable accomplishment, however, may well have been the stand he made as Police Chief of El Paso, Texas, against the man some believe was the deadliest gunfighter of them all, John Wesley Hardin. Often described as “the fastest gun in the West,” Hardin killed between 30 and 60 men over the years – many of them lawmen.

Jeff Milton had signed on as the head of El Paso’s police force in 1894 and vowed to bring law and order to the boisterous frontier town. Almost immediately he heard that the infamous Hardin was on his way to town, heavily armed and accompanied by several others. Despite Hardin’s fearsome reputation, Milton met him face to face in the streets of El Paso where he informed the gunfighter that he would not be allowed to carry weapons in the city. It was a remarkable scene, the man called by his biographer “a good man with a gun” facing down the “Dark Angel” of Texas. In the end, not a shot was fired. For one of a very few times in his life, Hardin calculated his odds and decided against a gunfight with Jeff Milton. He meekly turned over his weapons and submitted to Milton’s orders.

John Wesley Hardin died not long after, shot in the back of the head by an adversary while he rolled dice in an El Paso saloon. Jeff Milton, however, went on to live a long and productive life. In 1904 he accepted employment with the Immigration Service and continued with the agency until he was 72 years old.

Jefferson Davis Milton died in Tucson, Arizona, on May 7, 1947. His ashes were sprinkled over the deserts that he came to love, far away from his birthplace in Jackson County. He is remembered today by officers of the U.S. Border Patrol as “America’s First Border Patrolman.”

Blue Spring - A Jackson County historic landmark

Located off Blue Springs Road northeast of Marianna, Blue Spring (or Blue Springs, as some prefer) is one of the largest springs in Florida. The submerged cave system below the spring, in fact, is one of the deepest in the world.

Now a popular recreation area that is open during the spring and summer, Blue Spring is one of the most historic spots in Jackson County. The spring was on the primary trail connecting the Apalachicola River with the Chatot or Chacato (sometimes incorrectly confused with the Chatot) Indian villages of the Chipola River valley. Spanish missionaries followed this trail in 1674 when they passed through the area on their way to establish the missions of San Nicolas and San Carlos west of the Chipola. One of the priests, Fray Rodrigo de la Barreda, left an account of Blue or Calistoble Spring, which he described as being of great depth and located in the center of a vast forest. He reported seeing buffalo in the area and noted that the stream coming from the spring was large enough that the Indians sailed on it in canoes. He also mentioned that caves in the area were used as shelters by Chatot hunters.

The Robinson family settled around Blue Spring at the time of Florida's transfer from Spain to the United States and it became the center of a large plantation. The Robinson home stood on the hill overlooking the spring and was the first home in Jackson County with running water. The owner, Col. Robinson, devised a unique apparatus to move water up from the spring to a holding tank at his house. By 1825, the spring was known as "Robinson's Big Spring" or the "Big Spring of the Chipola."

By the time of the War Between the States, the land had passed into the ownership of Florida's Confederate governor, John Milton. Milton's home, Sylvania, stood a little more than one mile from the spring, but according to one antebellum diarist, he often fished there. A camp of Confederate cavalry was maintained at the spring during much of the war and Captain Robert Chisolm's company of cavalry from the Alabama Militia was stationed at Blue Spring during the days leading up to the Battle of Marianna.

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, Blue Spring was developed as a popular resort. Guests from the Chipola Hotel in downtown Marianna were carried out in carriages to bathe in the waters, which were believed to have healing properties.

Today, it is a popular swimming area maintained by Jackson County.