The Dooley House

10/11/2021

Plaza Ferdinand VII, a National Historic Landmark, in Pensacola, FL It is the site of the formal transfer of Florida from Spain to the United States in July of 1821. The transfer ceremony began when Andrew Jackson rode to the steps of the Government House to met Spanish governor and colonel Don José María Callava. Together the men descended the steps and entered the plaza where they walked between lines of United States and Spanish troops. While the Fourth Infantry band played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” The soldier lowered the Spanish flag and raised the United States flag to full staff while the U.S.S. Hornet (1805) in Pensacola Bay fired a 21-gun salute.

05/08/2021

The Spanish jail or gaol, known in Spanish as the calabozo ("dungeon") and corrupted in English to calaboose, was constructed during Pensacola's second Spanish period at the southwest corner of Alcaniz and Intendencia Streets. Despite conditions that were described as "deplorable" by federal surveyors who inventoried the Spanish properties after the 1821 transfer to the United States, it remained the primary detention facility for both Pensacola and Escambia County until 1875, when a new county jail was constructed on Jefferson Street at Main.

Andrew Jackson, offers an account of Callava's night in the Spanish jail: José María Callava was the final governor of Spanish West Florida, serving from February 1819 to the time of Spain's transfer of the territory to the United States on 17 July 1821. Jackson and Callava did not communicate well. The Spanish jail: with a narrow, low, small brick building in the midst thereof, similar in size and appearance to an old brick stable. This building was the calaboose. It had served, for some time, as a guard-house; giving shelter to twenty or thirty Spanish soldiers, whose occupation of it had not improved its appearance within or without. In short, the calaboose was as forlorn, dirty and uncomfortable an edifice as can be imagined. It contained two prisoners, Lieutenant Sousa and a young man from New Jersey, who had been arrested for shooting a snipe on the common, contrary to orders. Colonel Callava, his major domo, and all the Spanish officers in the town, escorted by Lieutenant Mountz and a file of American troops, arrive at the calaboose.

The Spanish jail was a two-story brick structure, about 18 feet by 36 feet, with two rooms on each floor. Prisoners were held on the first floor, while the jailer and his family stayed on the second. A small wooden building on the property served as a kitchen. Date of demolition is unknown.

09/22/2020

Dooley House make it thur hurricane Sally with some damage. We are fine. Water has receded. Let the clean up begin!

06/30/2020

People paid “Door Taxes” for each exterior door on their home.

https://www.facebook.com/historicpcola/videos/1118399188560627/

01/01/2020

In 1764, British civil engineer Elias Durnford surveyed the town Pensacola and laid out a street grid which remains mostly preserved to the present day. So the Street, East Intendencia Street in Pensacola was originally named Harcourt Street. West Intendencia Street in Pensacola was originally named Granby Street and Alcaniz Street was named Charlotte, for Queen Charlotte. As shown Below in the 1770 British map by Joseph Purcell.

“In the early days of Governor Johnstone's administration, Pensacola was surveyed and a plan established. The main street was named George, for King George III,, and the second street eastward Charlotte, for Queen Charlotte. The area between those streets as far north as what is now Intendencia Street was not Surveyed into blocks and lots, but reserved as a public place or park. The lots south of Garden Street had an area of 80 feet front and 170 in depth. North of that street they were 192 feet square, known as arpent or Garden lots, and numbered to correspond with those lying south of Garden Street, which were, strictly speaking, town Idts. In order to famish each family with a garden spot, each grantee of a town lot was entitled, upon the condition of improvement, to receive a conveyance of an arpent * lot of the
Same number as his town lot.”

Reference 1: Historical Sketches of Colonial Florida, By Richad L. Campbell, ISBN 978-1-947372-28-3
* Unit of length and area used in France, Louisiana and Canada. As a unit of length, an arpent is approximately 191.8 feet. The (square) arpent is a unit of area, approximately. 85 acres.

Below the street Intendencia is present in the 1812 Pintado plan, As the Calle de la Intendencia. Similar to some of the streets in New Orleans that were layout by the Spanish.

11/29/2019

Thanksgivings says it all, happy to receive these moments

09/06/2019

USS Constellation is a sloop-of-war, the last sail-only warship designed and built by the United States Navy. She was built in 1854, using a small amount of material salvaged from the frigate USS Constellation, She is currently on display at Baltimore's Inner Harbor. One of the first protestant church was a Methodist church lead by Rev. Charles Hardy who was assigned to the church on January 11, 1827. They built a church on northeast corner of Intendencia and Tarragona Streets. But before that he held services at the Navy Yard and Cantonment. Among the first funds for the new church on Intendencia Street, Pensacola was $173 contributed by the men on the USS Constellation.

In 1825, Constellation was chosen as flagship for Commodore Lewis Warrington and began duty with the West India Squadron to eradicate waning piracy operations in the Caribbean. During an outbreak of yellow fever at Key West, Florida, Warrington moved the squadron's home port to Pensacola, Florida where a permanent base was established. Other ships operating with Constellation during this period included the USS Hornet.

06/27/2019

06/16/2019

Captain Jonathan Walker was committed to the Spanish calabozo on July 19 1844 under the watch of jailer Francis Torward. He had attempted to free 7 black slaves whom he had become friends with. Convicted, fined, jailed and branded on his hand in Pensacola “SS”, Slave Stealer. The Spanish jail was on the SW corner of Intendencia and Alcaniz streets.

Captain Jonathan Walker (1799-1878) was a carpenter and shipwright who aided the escape of seven Pensacola slaves, for which he was imprisoned in the city's calabozo and his hand branded "SS" (for "slave stealer"). After his release he became a champion for the abolition movement.

04/07/2019

Jazz Fest 2019 Pensacola!