In the Treaty of Paris of 1763, England gained from Spain a swath of land on the eastern side of the Florida peninsula that was titled British East Florida. The former Spanish town of St. Augustine was named the capital of British East Florida with James Grant (1720-1806) appointed as the first royal governor. In 1765, Andrew Turnbull (1718-1792), along with partner Sir William Duncan (b. ?-1774), secured from Grant a land grant of 40,000 acres in British East Florida with the stipulation that the colony be settled within 10 years. Turnbull was a Scottish physician who later served as a British Consul at Smyrna in present-day Turkey. Only about a thousand people living in Menorca were willing to gain permission and leave to settle in British East Florida after Turnbull made stops in Livorno, Italy; Smyrna; Melow, Mani, Koroni, Methoni in Greece; Crete; Santorini; and Corsica. Turnbull named the colony New Smyrna in honor of the birthplace of his wife, Maria Gracia Dura Bin. The settlers were initially successful producing crops of indigo, hemp, and sugarcane. The settlers also worked to extend the King’s Road from Savannah to New Smyrna. But then by 1781, insect-borne diseases, conflict with Native Americans, and abusive overseers sent most of the colonists fleeing and re-establishing homes and farms near St. Augustine. Andrew Turnbull and his wife Maria Gracia gained refuge in Charleston, South Carolina.
When John James Audubon was sailing from Charleston to St. Augustine in November of 1831, he wrote:
Reader, imagine yourself standing motionless on some of the sandy shores between South Carolina and the extremity of Florida, waiting with impatience for the return of day;–or, if you dislike the idea, imagine me there. The air is warm and pleasant, the smooth sea reflects the feeble glimmerings of the fading stars, the sound of living thing is not heard; nature, universal nature, is at rest. And here am I, inhaling the grateful sea-air, with eyes intent on the dim distance. See the bright blaze that issues from the verge of the waters! and now the sun himself appears, and all is life, or seems to be; for, as the influence of the Divinity is to the universe, so is that of the sun to the things of this world.
While exploring the sandy shores between Charleston and St. Augustine, John James Audubon found Wilson’s plover “much more abundant than any other.” Coastal development between Charleston and St. Augustine and all along the rest of the eastern coast of North America has since left Wilson’s plover as one of the least abundant than any other. In fact, no more than a few hundred Wilson’s plovers have been reported on Cornell’s eBird system in all of the lower 48 United States (see eBird Checklist S370332580).