Jacksonville, Florida: Before Andrew Jackson, It Was the Cow Ford

Before Jacksonville, Florida, had a name, the spot on the St. Johns River was the Cow Ford, where cattle crossed. In 1822 it was named for Andrew Jackson. The man it honors may never have set foot there.

A ford for cattle

The best early account comes from Thomas Frederick Davis, who published a history of early Jacksonville in 1911 and expanded it in 1925. He writes that the place “was first known as the place where the Indians forded their cattle across the river.” The Spanish called the crossing the “Pass of San Nicholas,” but English speakers just called it the Cow Ford.

The crossing mattered because roads met there. Around 1765, during the British years, the King’s Road ran from the St. Marys River to the Cow Ford and on to St. Augustine. Davis says nearly all travel between St. Augustine and “the Colonies” passed over it, “and therefore through the site of Jacksonville.”

A town laid out in 1822

After Florida passed to the United States in 1821, travelers poured in and the few houses at the ford couldn’t hold them. Isaiah D. Hart, a settler who had bought land there, came up with the idea of laying out a town. According to Davis, it was surveyed in June 1822 under three commissioners: Francis J. Ross, Benjamin Chaires and John Bellamy.

Then came the name. In Davis’s words: “By unanimous agreement, the newly laid out town was called Jacksonville, in honor of General Andrew Jackson, the name being suggested by John Warren, who had served as a volunteer in General Jackson’s army during the Indian troubles.” His 1925 edition adds that Jackson was the “popular idol of that day in Florida” and that Warren lived nearby, though not in the town itself.

Did Jackson ever see it?

You might run across old accounts that put Jackson there when the town was laid out. Davis checked, and he didn’t buy it. In 1911 he wrote that he had “failed to find any authentic record of the General’s ever having visited the Cow Ford, and certainly not in 1822.” By 1925 he went further: there was “no authentic record that he ever visited this part of Florida at all.”

The old name didn’t vanish overnight, either. Davis says the place “was often referred to by that name even long after Jacksonville was founded.”

The founder who wanted to be remembered

If you’d expect a town to carry its founder’s name, Jacksonville is the exception. Davis gives the title of founder to Hart, who “at one time or another” owned nearly all of the original town. Hart’s family did get onto the map in a smaller way: Davis says three streets, Laura, Julia and Ocean, were named for Hart’s children, and Ocean was originally Ossian.

Hart died in 1861 and was buried in a vault in town. Davis copied the verse on it: “When this you see, remember me, / That I may not be forgotten.” After the fire of May 3, 1901, his remains were moved to Evergreen Cemetery. So the city’s name went to a general who may never have visited, and the man who laid it out asked, on his own tomb, to be remembered.

Sources & further reading

• Thomas Frederick Davis, History of Early Jacksonville, Florida (1911). The Cow Ford, the Pass of San Nicholas and the King’s Road (pp. 13–14); Hart, the June 1822 survey, the commissioners, John Warren’s suggestion, the doubt about Jackson’s visit, the street names and Hart’s tomb (pp. 29–38).
• T. Frederick Davis, History of Jacksonville, Florida and Vicinity, 1513 to 1924 (1925). The expanded edition. The Cow Ford name lingering after the founding (p. 25), Jackson as the “popular idol of that day,” and no record of his visiting this part of Florida (p. 56).
• GNIS feature 295003 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for Jacksonville, in Duval County. It doesn’t explain the name.