William Panton (c. 1740 – 26 February 1801) was the head of a group of five
Scottish merchants who in 1783 founded the powerful and influential trading firm of
Panton, Leslie & Company
Panton, Leslie & Company was a company of Scottish merchants active in trading in the Bahamas and with the Native Americans of what is now the Southeastern United States during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
The origins of Panton, Leslie ...
at
St. Augustine, then the capital of
British East Florida
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
. They formed a partnership to trade with the Indians of Florida and the Spanish borderlands on the southern frontier of the British colonies. By 1795 the company had established a monopoly on trade with the Indian tribes of what is now the southeastern United States, sanctioned by successive governors of
Spanish Florida
Spanish Florida ( es, La Florida) was the first major European land claim and attempted settlement in North America during the European Age of Discovery. ''La Florida'' formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba, the Viceroyalty of New Spain, ...
.
Early years in America
Panton, the son of John Panton and Barbara Wemyss, was born on the family farm at the Mains of Aberdour on the south coast of the
Moray Firth
The Moray Firth (; Scottish Gaelic: ''An Cuan Moireach'', ''Linne Mhoireibh'' or ''Caolas Mhoireibh'') is a roughly triangular inlet (or firth) of the North Sea, north and east of Inverness, which is in the Highland council area of north of Scotl ...
in
Aberdeenshire
Aberdeenshire ( sco, Aiberdeenshire; gd, Siorrachd Obar Dheathain) is one of the 32 Subdivisions of Scotland#council areas of Scotland, council areas of Scotland.
It takes its name from the County of Aberdeen which has substantially differe ...
, Scotland.
Panton emigrated to
Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston is the largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina, the county seat of Charleston County, and the principal city in the Charleston–North Charleston metropolitan area. The city lies just south of the geographical midpoint o ...
, with his countryman, Thomas Forbes, in 1765.
He got into the
Indian trade
The Indian Trade refers to historic trade between Europeans and their North American descendants and the Indigenous people of North America, and the First Nations in Canada, beginning before the colonial period, continuing through the 19th century ...
as an apprentice with the firm of
John Gordon, a
Scots immigrant from
Aberdeenshire
Aberdeenshire ( sco, Aiberdeenshire; gd, Siorrachd Obar Dheathain) is one of the 32 Subdivisions of Scotland#council areas of Scotland, council areas of Scotland.
It takes its name from the County of Aberdeen which has substantially differe ...
who established a vast trade network in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida during the 1760s. Panton served as Gordon's clerk from 1765 until 1772,
when Gordon appointed him as one of his attorneys.
Forbes was Gordon's maternal nephew.
In 1774 Panton and Philip Moore formed a partnership that lasted for several years, and in 1776 Panton started his own trading house with Thomas Forbes in Savannah known as Panton, Forbes and Company. They began to trade with the growing population of white colonists, and speculated in lands, acquiring large tracts in both Carolina and Georgia.
Soon after the American revolution broke out, they being determined loyalists, their properties were confiscated. They migrated to East Florida, now a British province and rapidly developing with the infusion of British capital and enterprise, and established themselves on the
St. Marys River.
In December 1775, the British governor of East Florida,
Patrick Tonyn
Patrick Tonyn (1725–1804) was a British General who served as the last British governor of East Florida, from 1774 to 1783. His governorship lasted the span of the American Revolution. East Florida was a Loyalist colony during the war.
Ear ...
, appointed Panton official trader for the
Creek
A creek in North America and elsewhere, such as Australia, is a stream that is usually smaller than a river. In the British Isles it is a small tidal inlet.
Creek may also refer to:
People
* Creek people, also known as Muscogee, Native Americans
...
Indians, and in 1778 the British Indian agent, Col.
Thomas Brown, charged Panton with responsibility for the giving of presents to the Creeks and Cherokees,
a necessary part of diplomacy with the Indian tribes. The company also specialized in fur trading, more specifically deerskins, which was a vital industry for Native tribes in the region. On 10 January 1783, Panton received a license signed by Governor Tonyn, Brig. Gen. Archibald McArthur, commander of British forces in East Florida, and Thomas Brown, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, to carry on trade with the Indians and supply them with British manufactures.
Trading in Spanish Florida
With the recession of
the Floridas
The Floridas ( es, Las Floridas) was a region of the southeastern United States comprising the historical colonies of East Florida and West Florida. The borders of East and West Florida varied. In 1783, when Spain acquired West Florida and re-ac ...
to Spain on 20 February 1783, Panton was allowed to remain in the province by agreement between the British officers and
Manuel de Zéspedes, the Spanish governor. He had insinuated himself into the good graces of Zéspedes, who interceded on his behalf at the Spanish court. By royal orders of the Spanish Crown in March 1786, Panton, Leslie & Company were authorized to continue to trade with the Indians in the Floridas.
They did a large mercantile business in St. Augustine, managed by John Leslie, and were generally employed by the Spaniards to furnish goods and lend funds. Some of the partners of the firm were permitted to purchase lands and to hold them in East Florida. John Leslie presented himself on behalf of Panton, Leslie & Co., and declared the four principals of the house to be William Panton and Thomas Forbes, Charles Maclatchy, and himself, and that the company owned 72,820 acres of land in the province.
Later in 1783, Panton and William Alexander moved to
Nassau
Nassau may refer to:
Places Bahamas
*Nassau, Bahamas, capital city of the Bahamas, on the island of New Providence
Canada
*Nassau District, renamed Home District, regional division in Upper Canada from 1788 to 1792
*Nassau Street (Winnipeg), ...
in the Bahamas,
which then became the center of the firm's operations,
where it stored trade items in large warehouses.
![Panton, Leslie & Company headquarters](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Panton%2C_Leslie_%26_Company_headquarters.jpg)
In April 1785, Panton and John Forbes arrived in Spanish
Pensacola
Pensacola () is the westernmost city in the Florida Panhandle, and the county seat and only incorporated city of Escambia County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 54,312. Pensacola is the principal ci ...
with a hastily loaded cargo of goods from Nassau.
They established the new house headquarters in the settlement as its volume of trade exceeded that of the St. Augustine branch.
According to the Spanish census of 1786, Panton, Leslie and Company owned nineteen separate land grants, as well as 250 enslaved Africans, most of them working on its plantations and ranches.
In February 1789, Panton gained the Choctaw and Chickasaw trade at Mobile with the failure of Mather and Strother, a competitor firm based in New Orleans.
By 1795 the company monopolized trade with the Native American tribes in the southeast,
its presence reaching northward from Pensacola to Fort San Fernando (formerly known as
Chickasaw Bluff
The Chickasaw Bluff is the high ground rising about above the Mississippi River flood plain between Fulton in Lauderdale County, Tennessee and Memphis in Shelby County, Tennessee.
This elevation, shaped as four bluffs, is named for the Chickas ...
s) on the site of present-day
Memphis
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* Memp ...
, and westward as far as
, with posts at
Mobile
Mobile may refer to:
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* Mobile, Alabama, a U.S. port city
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and several locations in Florida, the Bahamas, and around the Caribbean.
Largest mercantile company in the Old Southwest
![William Panton Home 1890s](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/William_Panton_Home_1890s.jpg)
Panton, Leslie & Company made a fortune in the Indian trade and would become the largest mercantile company on the southern frontier in the 1790s.
Working in partnership with
Alexander McGillivray
Alexander McGillivray, also known as ''Hoboi-Hili-Miko'' (December 15, 1750February 17, 1793), was a Muscogee (Creek) leader. The son of a Muscogee mother and a Scottish father, he had skills no other Creek of his day had: he was not only liter ...
, they were able to expand their operations from East Florida and the Bahamas to the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...
. McGillivray, an influential chief of the Upper Creek (Muscogee) towns,
was an intimate associate of Panton and is generally considered to have been a silent partner in the firm. Panton had promised him a one-fifth share of the company's profits once it obtained Spanish approval.
McGillivray, always sickly, died in 1793, and was buried with
Masonic
Freemasonry or Masonry refers to Fraternity, fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of Stonemasonry, stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their inte ...
honors in Panton's garden at Pensacola on 18 February of that year.
The firm fixed prices to undersell its competitors in Georgia and South Carolina, dispatched agents throughout the Indian country, and carried Spanish government communiques among the tribes. Although Panton, Leslie & Company were a legitimate trading firm, they smuggled goods across the border and manipulated the market to their advantage in other ways, practices probably common to any trading firm operating on the frontier at the time.
After the deaths of William Panton and John Leslie, the company was reorganized in 1804 as
John Forbes & Company.
Death
In January 1801, Panton came down with a serious illness at Pensacola, and acting on medical advice to seek a change of climate immediately, he sailed for Havana attended by his physician, Dr. Reeves Fowler, on the company schooner ''Shark''. They left in haste, even though his letters of recommendation had not yet arrived. Unfortunately, the Cuban authorities refused to allow him to disembark without such papers, on account of the
ongoing war between Spain and Great Britain. He continued toward Nassau,
but died at sea on 26 February, and was buried at
Great Harbour Cay
Great Harbour Cay is the major island in the north Berry Islands. It has a population of 353 (2010 census).Berry Islands
The Berry Islands are a chain of islands and a district of the Bahamas, covering about of the northwestern part of the Out Islands.
The Berry Islands consist of about thirty islands and over one hundred small islands or cays, often referred to ...
in the Bahamas.
[Coker Watson1986, pp. 234–235]
Notes
Further reading
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Panton, William
People from Aberdeenshire
People of Spanish Florida
1740s births
1801 deaths
Year of birth uncertain
Scottish slave traders
Scottish expatriates in the United States
People of British Florida
Scottish merchants
People from Pensacola, Florida
People from St. Augustine, Florida
Speculators
Scottish emigrants to the Thirteen Colonies
American slave traders
18th-century Scottish businesspeople
Spanish slave traders