The History of Lafayette County

The First Peoples Along the Suwannee

A state park plan says Native peoples relied on the Suwannee River for its plentiful resources and used it as a route for travel and trade. The plan cites a 1994 study that sorts the region's past into periods from the Paleoindian era through the Spanish mission and Seminole periods.

Few sites inside Lafayette Blue Springs State Park have been recorded, so little is known about its archaeology. One of them, a scatter of prehistoric stone artifacts at the spring, may once have been a campsite. Judge Guy M. McClain's 1940 county history said the Native people the settlers met were likely Seminoles and were usually friendly.

Sources: Florida Department of Environmental Protection: Lafayette Blue Springs State Park, Park Chapter (unit management plan); Florida Memory: History of Lafayette County, by Guy M. McClain, County Judge (September 1940)

Settlers, Cotton Plantations and a Ferry Road

About 1800, Judge McClain wrote, families began moving into the area from Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas. They brought their work animals and enslaved people with them. One group from Alabama, made up of the Brantley, Hankins, Henderson and Church families, settled at Cooks Hammock. They brought enslaved people there and had large cotton plantations.

Outside the park, on the Suwannee's east bank, a stretch of the Old Bellamy Road is tied to the Charles Ferry crossing, which dates from 1824. An 1826 survey of the Florida territory shows a main road between Tallahassee and St. Augustine crossing the river at that spot. Inside today's park, a 19th-century gristmill called Mosely Mill once stood beside the spring run. The plan suggests the mill was perhaps the center of a bigger community in the mid-1800s, with a trading post and a ferry.

Sources: Florida Memory: History of Lafayette County, by Guy M. McClain, County Judge (September 1940); Florida Department of Environmental Protection: Lafayette Blue Springs State Park, Park Chapter (unit management plan)

The Steamboat Madison and the Civil War

Captain James M. Tucker owned and ran the steamboat Madison, which was built in 1854. It was built to float in shallow water, so it could keep running on the Suwannee as the river rose and fell. For years it carried the mail and served as a floating store for towns along the river. Its landings included Troy, Branford, Luraville, Wilcox, Fort Fanning and Fort McKoon, the 1940 county history says.

When the Civil War began in 1861, Confederate forces turned the Madison into a privateer and improvised gunboat. Another state park article says it had no guns and hauled food and supplies to Columbus, where trains carried them to the troops. Judge McClain's 1940 history says Tucker sailed the Madison out of the Suwannee's mouth with a company of mostly Lafayette County men and captured a Federal gunboat. In Virginia, the history adds, his company was known as Company H, 8th.

In 1863, on Tucker's orders, the Madison was sunk on purpose in Troy Spring to keep it out of Union hands. Metal spikes and pieces of the hull's keel ribs can still be seen below the surface in the spring run at Troy Spring State Park.

Sources: Florida State Parks: Wreck of the Madison; Florida State Parks: Troy Spring State Park, History; Florida Memory: History of Lafayette County, by Guy M. McClain, County Judge (September 1940)

Mayo Becomes the County Seat

John B. Whitfield founded Mayo in 1874. The town's name honors James M. Mayo, a Confederate Army colonel. The 1940 county history adds that the name came from a post office run in the home of a Mr. Ramsey, near Ten Mile Pond.

Fire destroyed the courthouse at New Troy, and the county seat moved to Mayo. One state marker dates the move to 1893, and another gives 1892.

A two-story wooden courthouse was finished in 1894. In 1907 that building was moved to a lot where Fletcher Street meets Bloxham Street, to make room for a new courthouse. The present Lafayette County Courthouse, in the Classical Revival style, was completed in 1909. Judge McClain's 1940 history dates the present courthouse to 1908. The marker also notes the turn-of-the-century buildings in the small business district near the courthouses.

Sources: Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources: Mayo, County Seat of Lafayette County (historical marker); Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources: Lafayette County (historical marker); Florida Memory: History of Lafayette County, by Guy M. McClain, County Judge (September 1940)

A Smaller County After 1921

In 1921 the lower part of Lafayette County was made into Dixie County. Judge McClain wrote that the split followed a quarrel over road bonds between the county's upper and lower parts. Nathan Mayo, son of the colonel the county seat was named for, was the state's Commissioner of Agriculture from 1923 until 1960.

County Judge Guy M. McClain wrote a history of the county dated September 1940. By then, he wrote, tobacco and livestock had become the chief money crops. More people were turning to farming, he added. Schools were joining into larger ones, and rural electric service reached a good part of the county.

Sources: Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources: Lafayette County (historical marker); Florida Memory: History of Lafayette County, by Guy M. McClain, County Judge (September 1940); Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources: Mayo, County Seat of Lafayette County (historical marker)

Since 1995: A New State Park, Two State Titles and a Horse Trail

In 2005 Lafayette Blue Springs joined Florida's state park system. The park service says people had used the spring as a public park for a long time before that.

The Lafayette Hornets softball team of Mayo was state champion in 2012, WTXL reported. Lafayette's baseball team was state champion in 2016. By March 13, 2017, the Suwannee River Water Management District had opened its Crossway Branch Trailhead to horseback riders on the RO Ranch Tract. Riders can take the Home Trail, and more experienced riders can try the Swamp Trail or the River Trail.

Mallory Swamp Wildlife Management Area lies southwest of Branford, in the southeast part of Lafayette County. The Suwannee River Water Management District helps manage it. Hurricane Helene came ashore in Taylor County on September 26, 2024, and nearly all power customers in Lafayette County lost electricity, the National Weather Service reported.

Sources: Florida State Parks: Lafayette Blue Springs State Park, History; WTXL: Vero Beach Bound: Lafayette softball looks to bring home Class 1A State title (May 20, 2019); WTXL: Lafayette baseball confident as they look to win a state championship (May 16, 2023); Suwannee River Water Management District: RO Ranch Equestrian Trail Open (March 13, 2017); Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission: Mallory Swamp Wildlife Management Area; National Weather Service Tallahassee: Post Tropical Cyclone Report for Hurricane Helene; National Weather Service Tallahassee: County Impacts Associated with Hurricane Helene (2024)