Florida Founder William P. DuVal: Frontier Bon Vivant

In 1822, largely because of the influence of DuVal’s lifelong friend John C. Calhoun, President James Monroe appointed him the first civil governor of the newly acquired Territory of Florida. Enjoying successive appointments from the John Adams and Andrew Jackson administrations, DuVal founded Tallahassee and presided over the territory’s first twelve territorial legislative sessions, years that witnessed Middle Florida’s development into one of the Old Southwest’s most prosperous slave-based economies. Beginning with his personal confrontation with Miccosukee chief Neamathla in 1824, DuVal worked closely with Washington officials and oversaw the initial negotiations with the Seminoles.

A perennial political appointee, DuVal was closely linked to national and territorial politics in antebellum America. Like other “Calhounites” who supported Andrew Jackson’s rise to the White House, DuVal became a casualty of the Peggy Eaton Affair and the Nullification Crisis. After leaving the governor’s chair, DuVal migrated to Kentucky, lent his efforts to the cause of Texas independence from Mexico, and eventually returned to practice law and local politics in Florida. Throughout his career DuVal cultivated the arts of oratory and story-telling—skills essential to success in the courtrooms and free-for-all politics of the American South. Part frontiersman and part sophisticate, DuVal was at home in Kentucky, Florida, Texas, and Washington, D.C. He delighted in telling tall tales, jests, and anecdotes that epitomized America’s expansive, democratic vistas. Among those captivated by DuVal’s life and yarns were Washington Irving, who used DuVal’s tall tales as inspiration for his “The Early Experiences of Ralph Ringwood,” and James Kirke Paulding, whose “Nimrod Wildfire” shared DuVal’s brashness and bon-homie.