Tallahassee's first wave of European settlers may have been more French than anyone thought. A local history symposium on Saturday dug into the sweeping influence of a famous Frenchman who never even visited Tallahassee.
That Frenchman was the Marquis de Lafayette. He's best known for volunteering to join the colonial army during the Revolutionary War. But it seems he also owned 36-square miles of land covering the area of what would be modern-day Tallahassee. Anna Burnley who organized the weekend symposium says lots of French folks soon bought into that development and their names persist to this day.
"Those French names can be found on the very early tax rolls from the territorial period as well as the land ownership and census reports from the territorial period. So we do believe there was a substantial group of folks who were coming over specifically through and under the auspices of General Lafayette."
In fact, one historian who spoke at the symposium suggested that Lafayette was the region's very first real estate developer.
