As I wrote in this column of March 7, 2010, Many of the concerns of the day were matters that were not under the Council’s authority. But as we see today, that did not stop the Council from discussing and railing about those issues. One of the accomplishments of the 1823 session in St. Augustine was legislation with a laughable double meaning, aimed to prevent “horses and asses roaming at large within the territory of Florida.”
St. Augustine and the rest of the Florida Territory had been part of the U.S. for only two years, but the Government House meeting site had been used for government decisions and activities for 225 years. The governor of Spanish La Florida Gonzalo Mendez Canzo purchased the property for his executive residence and office in 1598. He sold it to the Spanish crown in 1604, when his term here ended. It continued to be the center of government for La Florida.