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A History of Columbia County Florida (1996) Edward F. Keuchel 24/340

A History of Col inn bio Comity, Florida

or Alligator Town. O’Steen and his brother James located their
residence about two miles east of Alligator Lake on a creek
running into the lake. O’Steen’s brother-in-law Allen Parrish later
built a house on the site of the Indian Alligator Town.12
From such simple beginnings settlement grew rapidly. In
1830 the United States Census of Alachua County, which included
present Columbia County, listed twenty-seven households in the
Alligator community with a total population of two hundred and
twenty-seven. Of that number, one hundred and twenty-four were
white males, seventy-two white females, nineteen male slaves, ten
female slaves, one free black male, and one free black female.
Many of the names common in Columbia County at the present
time, such as O’Steen, Weeks, Niblack, Roberts, Douglass, Parrish,
Sparkman, Prevatt, Brown, and Gillett are found among the early
settlers of the Alligator settlement. Other names appearing in the
list of settlers living along the Suwannee, St. Marys and Santa Fe
rivers, and along Olustee Creek included Summerall, Williamson,
Collins, Raulerson, Powell, Charles, and Wells. Although Colum­
bia County did not exist as a separate county in 1830, that region of
Alachua County from which it was later carved had a population of
around five hundred at that time.13
Georgia and South Carolina were the two states most repre­
sented by the early settlers of Columbia County. Camden County,
Georgia, in particular was the home of many of Columbia’s pioneer
families. The Cone Family, for example, which settled in the
Benton community of northern Columbia County, was from Cam­
den County. William H. Cone came to Columbia County in 1835.
His father had represented Camden County in the Georgia legis­
lature in 1807, and Cone would represent Columbia County in the
State Senate of Florida in the sessions of 1854 and 1856. Cone’s son,

pp. 60-61.
13Unpublished Census Schedules, Fifth Census, 1830, Population, National
Archives microfilm M19, reel 15, Alachua County.
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