I represent David Taitt (also spelled Tate). I was a resident of British West Florida and one of its earliest settlers. I came to Pensacola from Scotland and I began serving under Elias Durnford as assistant surveyor for the colony in 1764, a post I held until 1767. In 1771, I produced “Map of the Bays of Mobile and Pensacola.” I owned a large sawmill west of town, on Eleven Mile Creek near Perdido Bay. I married Sehoy McPherson at one point and we had two children together before the marriage ended. In 1772, John Stuart, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Southern District, appointed me as on of his deputies and the last British commissary to the Upper Creeks. I was sent to Georgia by Superintendent Stuart in 1779 where I led groups of indigenous warriors in several attacks in Savannah and South Carolina – which is where I got my military rank. I returned to Pensacola in March 1780, just after the British took Mobile. The Spanish captured me once, mostly to take me out of the delicate web of native alliances, and I had to be paroled by the British in Pensacola. I was captured again and got to watch the siege of Pensacola from a prison ship in the Bay. After the fall of Penscola, I escaped and made my way back to London. I eventually settled in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I died in 1834 at the age of 94.
Sources: 34, 36, 80, 121, 132