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Lake City, Florida: A Sesquicentennial Tribute (2009) H. Morris Williams, Dr. Kevin M. McCarthy

Chapter Four: 1800 - 1849

The Florida National Guard has long had a presence in Lake
City. Lake City’s 153 Engineering Company traces its history back
rd
to 1835, when workers built Fort Alligator in what is now downtown
Lake City. 1840 saw the formation of Captain George McClellan’s
Company of the Second Regiment, Florida Volunteers. Rosters from
that company had soldiers whose descendants are part of the 153 rd
Engineering Company today. In 1847, members of the Lake City
Militia, called Company C, Florida Volunteers, served in the Mexican
War under Captain Robert Livingston and fought in Veracruz be-
fore returning in 1848. (More about the local National Guard in sub-
sequent chapters.)

The local population grew steadily and by the 1840s had an
equal number of whites and blacks. The economy of the area relied
on farming.

Congress admitted Florida to the United States as the 27th
state in 1845, thus opening up the peninsula to steady growth and
great opportunities to those who headed south to the relatively
uninhabited land. Florida joined as a slave state since it depended
heavily on the use of slaves in the cultivation of crops like cotton.
The town, which eventually became Alligator and then Lake
City, was briefly called Lancaster, after Judge Joseph B. Lancaster.
According to Cracker Times and Pioneer Lives by James Denham
and Canter Brown Jr., Lancaster’s political party was called Locofers
(similar to today’s Democrats). Another political party, the Whigs,

had given their opponents the term “Loco Foco” in the 1840s. The
Locofers had a rooster as their political symbol, and - after the Whigs
defeated the Locofers in an election - the Whigs displayed a huge
placard showing an alligator swallowing a rooster. This placard so
pleased the Whigs that they, then being in power, changed the name
of the town from Lancaster to Alligator. 10

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