How History Unfolds on Paper: Important Americana from the Eric C. Caren Collection, Part X

Frederica, Georgia, ca. July 1736. 2 pp. on bifolium. Docketed on verso, "Copy Deposition of John Latter, John Barber, Rice Pyke, David Holmes, Darby Kellihorne, taken 13. Apl. 1736. In D(uke). of Newcastle July 2d. 1736." 12 x 7 5/8 in. (305 x 194 mm), old folds.

A secretarial copy (presumably in the hand of Francis Moore, secretary of James Oglethorpe) of a deposition of John Latter, John Barber, Richard Pike, David Holmes, and Darby Kallihorne[?], all of Georgia, taken at Frederica on April 13, 1736. Attesting that they traveled with Tomochichi to the Altamaha and St. Johns Rivers and encountered no Spanish settlements in the area, and that the territory north of the St. Johns was in possession of “the Indians.”

In 1736, James Oglethorpe and the Yamacraw leader Tomochichi stood at the center of the increasingly fraught dispute between British Georgia and Spanish Florida over the southern limits of the English settlement. Oglethorpe maintained that Georgia’s boundaries extended to the St. Johns River, citing English charters and agreements negotiated with Native leaders allied to the colony. Tomochichi, whose earlier visit to London with Oglethorpe had lent legitimacy to the Georgia enterprise before the Trustees and the Crown, remained a crucial diplomatic figure in relations between the British and the region's Indigenous peoples. In a letter dated April 17, 1736, Oglethorpe warned the Duke of Newcastle that the Spanish governor intended to demand that Britain abandon not only Georgia but also territory extending even into Carolina. As the correspondence of the period makes clear, British officials regarded Native alliances as indispensable to securing their claims against mounting Spanish opposition from St. Augustine.