Dr. Andrew Turnbull and the New Smyrna Colony of Florida

This diary-like correspondence brings to life the dreams, efforts, and trials of Andrew Turnbull and the Smyrna colonists. When East Florida was ceded to England by Spain in 1763, Scottish physician, Dr. Andrew Turnbull, recruited over 1,400 Mediterranean colonists to establish the agricultural colony he named "Smyrnéa." Carita Doggett recounts that not only did the growing conditions prove less than ideal but how seemingly every imaginable calamity befell the colony before it failed in 1777. This edition of Dr. Andrew Turnbull and The New Smyrna Colony of Florida includes dozens of letters between Andrew Turnbull and others involved with his Smyrnéa venture. These documents, not available to Carita Doggett, were discovered in the tower of Ballindalloch Castle in Scotland where they had been archived for centuries.