A Bit of History
Hillsborough County
1834
In 1834 the bottom half of Alachua County was split off to make Hillsborough County.
Black Seminoles
Chief Micanopy sells girl to John Paine
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The role that black slaves played is intertwined with that of the Seminoles. Run away slaves from the north, particularly from Georgia, sought refuge with the Seminoles in Florida. This had been a contentious issue for sometime with many excursions of men from Georgia into to Florida to retrieve them. For the most part, the Seminoles welcomed the slaves, and in time integrated them into their culture becoming what would become known as Black Seminoles. The treaties of Moultrie Creek and Paynes Landing had articles about the return of the slaves and in a few cases they did so, but many of the slaves remained with the Seminoles.
While there were the “Black Seminoles” that were not viewed as slaves, the Seminoles did own actual slaves. Slaves, considered property, ownership was recorded as property, and were listed as property in wills. A case in point was the deed recorded by Chief Micanopy in in May of 1834 in the newly formed new Hillsborough County in which Chief Micanopy sells a “negro girl named Catherine” to John Paine and Susan Paine for one hundred and forty dollars. There is an interesting aspect to the transaction in that it says that the girl Catherine is the “daughter of the said John Paine and Susan Paine.” How was it that Catherine, age five, was the property of Micanopy while the parents were not? A story for another time.