Gerald Ensley: Author’s Frenchtown interpretation changes things

(This column was originally published in the Tallahassee Democrat on Dec. 10, 2006)

One of the cherished legends of Tallahassee is that Frenchtown, the one-time heart of Black social life, was named for early French colonists who lived there.

Now, as mentioned in a recent story about the new book "Historic Frenchtown," author Julianne Hare says there never were any French colonists and the name came from some other source.

As revelations about history go, it's a doozy.

"It certainly is contrary to accepted wisdom," said William Rogers, retired Florida State history professor, who has written a dozen books about the Tallahassee area. "I'm not challenging her thesis, but it is a new interpretation. And that's what history is about: forming new interpretations."

Frenchtown, now remade by urban renewal, was the hub of pre-integration black life in Tallahassee. Centered on a half-dozen blocks of North Macomb Street, it had black-owned drugstores, dry cleaners, grocery stores, garages, restaurants, nightclubs and homes.

The legend of its name traces to 1825, when the U.S. government gave a township on Tallahassee's east side to French Gen. Marquis de Lafayette for his service during the Revolutionary War. Though Lafayette never visited Tallahassee, he wrote of his intentions to send a colony here - and lore holds that he did.

Lore holds that 50 to 60 Norman peasants came to Tallahassee in 1831 to farm grapes and silkworms on the Lafayette land grant, which stretched six miles east and north from today's intersection of Meridian and Gaines streets. Supposedly, they had two bad years of farming and abandoned the project after 1832.

Lore holds that some of the colonists left for New Orleans or Mobile, while the rest settled in the newly created Northern Addition of Tallahassee - which soon became named Frenchtown. Over time, African Americans became the primary residents of the area.

It's a dandy story that has satisfied Tallahassee history buffs for nearly 175 years.

But Hare determined it's not true - and nobody was more surprised than she was. She had written a previous book about Tallahassee history, and her goal this time was an overview of Tallahassee's historic Black community. Most of her book deals with black migration to Frenchtown, its community life and its role in race relations.

But she thought she had to include the origin of its name and went digging for the facts to back up the legend. "The more research I did, the less plausible it was," she said. "I did not set out to debunk the myth; the facts did that for me."

Hare found no record of 50 to 60 French peasants arriving in any Southern seaport, including nearby St. Marks, in the early 1830s. There was no record of such a group traveling overland to Tallahassee. Newspapers of the period carried extensive stories about every ship arrival. But none mentioned a group of French colonists heading to Tallahassee.

"It seemed to me if 50 to 60 people arrived as a group, that would have been big news," Hare said. "There could have been logical reasons why it wasn't reported. But I couldn't think of any."

Hare tried to find evidence of the colonists in Leon County. She found a letter referring to "our French immigrants," but it apparently referred to the only three people with French names living on the Lafayette grant in the early 1830s.

In the 1830 census, which did not list birthplaces, she found four French-named residents in Tallahassee, all of whom had arrived in the 1820s. In the 1850 census, when birthplaces were listed, she found nine people of French origin in Leon County. All of them lived in a large census section that included Frenchtown - but all had come to Tallahassee from other states. So what is the more likely origin of Frenchtown's name? Hare offers three possibilities:

An incident in the War of 1812 that occurred in Frenchtown, Mich. British soldiers and Indian allies massacred 50 Americans in their sleep, prompting a popular rallying cry of "Remember Frenchtown."

Frenchtown, N.J., a 19th-century stronghold of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, whose preachers made several visits to North Florida and established AME churches here. Frenchtown, N.J., was also the home of Tallahassee pioneer Peres Brokaw, whose 1856 home by Leon High is a city landmark.

The fact that most early homes in Frenchtown were built by a mulatto carpenter named Jourdan Frenchy. Folks may have simply started calling the area "Frenchy's Town."

"At this time, we don't know the absolute truth," Hare said. "But I think we can eliminate the folklore."

You might ask why no one has questioned Frenchtown's naming before now. One answer is that the myth was easy to believe. Lafayette was anti-slavery and had sponsored communal farms in Europe: "There is great evidence Lafayette wanted to do this," Hare said.

Another answer is that not many went looking. There have been only a few studies of Frenchtown, and most concentrated on black occupation of the area. They took the naming story on faith.

The other answer is that knowledge of history is fluid.

Longtime Tallahasseeans will remember there was a historical marker at Lake Jackson, saying that was where DeSoto celebrated the first Christmas in America. We knew de Soto celebrated the first Christmas while living among the Indians in the Tallahassee area in 1539-40. We knew there were Indian mounds at Lake Jackson.

Later we would learn the Indian mounds dated 300 years earlier than de Soto. In 1987, the late state archaeologist Calvin Jones discovered de Soto's Tallahassee camp on a hillside just east of the Capitol.

The historical marker now is by that site, six miles south of Lake Jackson.

"History changes, interpretations change and from any given set of facts you can have an infinite number of variations," Rogers said. "All too often, an original mistake is made and handed down generationally.

"It's always good to keep investigating. So, I applaud what (Hare) is doing."

Gerald Ensley was a reporter and columnist for the Tallahassee Democrat from 1980 until his retirement in 2015. He died in 2018 following a stroke. The Tallahassee Democrat is publishing columns capturing Tallahassee’s history from Ensley’s vast archives each Sunday through 2024 in the Opinion section as part of the TLH 200: Gerald Ensley Memorial Bicentennial Project.

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Gerald Ensley: Author’s Frenchtown interpretation changes things