The Francis Richard Family

~ From French Nobility to Florida Pioneers ~

By Mark McDonough mrkmcdngh(at)gmail(dot)com

In 1746, Louis Joseph FRANÇOIS was born into a life of privilege as the son of a French nobleman whose family had been connected with the Dukes of Lorraine since the early 1300s. Louis Joseph's father received an imperial command to move to Florence to continue his services to the dukes. At age 20, Louis Joseph was challenged to a duel. He won the duel, but, in order to avoid prosecution, was forced to flee his life in Florence. Facing an unknown future, he would start his life over in three different countries: Haiti, the United States, and Spanish East Florida.

He first landed in the thriving French colony of Saint Domingue (present day Haiti) in 1766. There, he married Genevieve "Honorine" BIANNE, took on the RICHARD surname of his extended family, started his family, and operated a successful plantation until the bloody slave revolt of 1791 forced him to flee his second home and country. The FRANÇOIS-RICHARD family, along with 22 slaves eventually made their way to Florida, then a colony of Spain.

In Spanish East Florida, Francis RICHARD, the name by which he was later known, and his three sons would own over 20,000 acres of land - due mostly to Spanish Land Grants. The RICHARD family endured disease, the privations of pioneer life, attacks by the local Miccosukee and Creek Indians, and the coup de grâce - being driven out of Florida and having their lives and plantations devastated by Georgian rebels and former neighbors during the so-called Patriot War of 1812.

Son Jean Baptiste and Rebeckah HART caused a scandal by eloping to Georgia to marry. Since he was Catholic and she was Protestant, they couldn’t marry legally in Florida. Father O'REILLY ordered them held at the St. Augustine fortress, but later had a change of heart. Jean Baptiste died young, and his tenacious wife Rebeckah, sister of Jacksonville founder and slave and horse thief Isaiah D. HART, went on to marry two more times.

Daughter Clementine married a GAUTIER. Their daughter, named Honorine in honor of matriarch Genevieve, married William B. ROSS, a prominent planter in Columbia County who also served in the Florida House and Senate.

Son Francis II operated a lumber business on his sawmill plantation. Along with many other Spanish-era planters, he espoused the more liberal Spanish view of slavery. After his young wife Maria FERREIRA died, he fathered eleven children with his slaves, all of whom he educated and provided for. Fearing for his children’s safety and welfare once Florida became part of the United States, Francis II shielded them from a society hostile to non-Whites by sending them to his native island Hispaniola to live.

Son John Charles was a generation younger than his siblings. During Florida’s “Seminole Wars,” he and his wife Melinda TISON raised fifteen children on their Sugar Grove Plantation in Alachua County. Five of their sons fought in the Civil War. They became the progenitors of a long line of RICHARDs from north central Florida. While most members of the “Richard Clan” were distinguished, prominent citizens, quite a few were of dubious character, and met violent deaths.