I represent Elias Durnford. I was Lt. Governor of the British province of West Florida between 1769 and 1778. I came from the army, where I had served since 1759 in the Corps of Royal Engineers. I served in the Seven Years’ War, and afterward I was assigned to West Florida, where I became Chief Engineer and Surveyor General. One of my first items of business was to draw up the 1765 plan of Pensacola that is still reflected in downtown today: I saved the center area for the fort and military needs; then laid out residential lots and their corresponding garden lots on a grid surrounding the fort. Take a walk downtown and see my work! I was also paid to make improvements to the dilapidated barracks and hospital that had been left to us by the Spanish. I had a 5,000-acre plantation called Belle Fontaine on the cliffs overlooking Mobile Bay, near present-day Montrose. I was appointed to the West Florida Council, the upper house of the provincial General Assembly, and sat for most of its seven lengthy sessions between 1764 and 1778. In 1769, Lt. Gov. (and acting Governor) Montfort Browne was under intense opposition from members of Council and of the General Assembly and had been charged with mismanaging his office. He sent me, a trusted councilor, to London to present the evidence in his defense. I came back to Pensacola with orders from Lord Hillsborough that I was to replace him as Lt. Governor. I served as acting Governor until Peter Chester arrived in 1770. While I was in England, I married Rebecca Walker of Suffolk. Our eldest child, William Elias Durnford, was born in 1770, but he died as an infant. We would go on to have eight more children. Phillip was the only other one born during the British period in West Florida; in fact, he was born in Mobile while the Spanish attacked Fort Charlotte in 1780. I was in command there and had put up a good fight with the limited resources I had, but in the end I had the dubious honor of surrendering to Bernardo de Gálvez. After the Revolutionary War, I and my family returned to England where I continued my career in His Majesty’s army. I went to the Caribbean to fight the French in the 1790s, and died of yellow fever there in 1794.
Sources: 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 23, 24; 34, 35, 37, 53, 65, 104