FRANCISCO SANCHEZ

Inscription

FRANCISCO SANCHEZ
BORN 1736 AND DIED 1807
IN ST. AUGUSTINE.
PATRIOT WHO RENDERED AID
TO AMERICAN AND SPANISH
PRISONERS OF WAR.
CAPT. JAMES ORMOND CHAPTER NSDAR
WILLIAM G. POMEROY FOUNDATION 2025

Francisco Xavier Sanchez ran a successful cattle business. His family had operated a cattle ranch north of St. Augustine for 200 years.

After the Seven Years War, the British held Florida from 1763-1783. When Spain had joined the war against England in 1779, almost all the Spanish residents fled from St. Augustine. Sanchez remained in what became known as East Florida during British regime, selling meat to British.

From the onset of the American Revolution in 1775, the British Crown Colony in East Florida was a Loyalist bastion. In its capital, St. Augustine, the British lodged as prisoners many American Patriots and their French allies. Most of these prisoners were given the liberty of the town, but some were held in Castillo de San Marcos. A few captives rented quarters, but most of the men were housed in the unfinished State House which stood near this spot. By the end of 1780, these prisoners included three signers of the Declaration of Independence — Thomas Heyward, Jr., Arthur Middleton, and Edward Rutledge. (HMDB.org, accessed 21 October 2024)

The diarist Josiah Smith Jr. is one of the few St. Augustine exiles for whom contemporaneous correspondence exists. After the surrender of Charles Town, South Carolina to the British in 1780, Joseph Smith was arrested with other public officials and militia officers. In July & August, 1780, 29 persons taken from their homes in Charles Town by armed British soldiers. Confined to a prison ship, they were exiled to St. Augustine for a year. In July 1781, due to an exchange of prisoners with the British, Smith was sent to Philadelphia along with about 31 other prisoners on board the Brigantine Nancy. The British refused to supply food to the prisoners for the voyage. Sanchez stepped in and helped to feed and clothe the paroled American prisoners on this ship as well as those on another schooner. (Josiah Smith’s Diary, 1780-1781. The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, Jan. 1932, Vol. 33, pp. 1-28)

In 1782, Sanchez aided Spanish soldiers from Cuba sent to capture the Bahama Islands. They had been shipwrecked in a storm off St. Augustine and taken prisoner by the British. Sanchez provided them with food and clothing. After they were freed, he provided a brigantine stocked with supplies to take them back to Havana. (Zéspedes in East Florida, 1784-1790. Tanner, Helen Hornbeck, 1980)