The Jacksonville Historical Society

THE BROWARD FAMILY
FROM FRANCE TO FLORIDA: 1764 - 2011
by Robert C. Broward

This long-awaited volume is now available from the Jacksonville Historical Society.

Books are available to purchase at Old St. Andrews (Jacksonville Historical Society Headquarters) during normal business hours.

To purchase a book by mail order, call for information -- 904-665-0064 or email us at info@jaxhistory.com to place your order and to determine shipping cost.

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Written by fifth-generation family member Robert C. "Bob" Broward and designed by Wayne Wood, this meticulously researched work is profusely illustrated with many never-before-published photographs and the author's own drawings. It tells the story of this pioneer family's arrival in the Spanish colony of East Florida in the late 1700s through the Civil War, the Reconstruction era, the Governorship of Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, and up to present day.
It will be of interest to researchers, historians, and casual readers of Florida history. It will also be a prized volume for the numerous members of the Broward family, which is one of the oldest and largest in Florida.

Book Details: Price: $38.50; Size: 8.5" x 11" x 1" and 272 pages
Cover: High-gloss dust jacket over a leatherette cover with the title embossed with gold leaf on the front. Illustrations: It has 175 illustrations, including two full-color 2-page maps.
You are really going to love it.

In 1764, nine-year-old François Brouard stepped off the schooner at what is now Charleston, S.C., after a two-month voyage from France. He could not possibly imagine the journey that was yet to come.

His Huguenot family fled France to avoid religious persecution, transporting this boy to a British colony that was itself struggling for freedom. Little could young François have known then that he would fight in a war for American independence; that he would move his family to Spanish territory (a barely inhabitable wilderness known as “East Florida”); or that he would begat a litany of descendants so outrageous that someday someone would write a book about them.

By 1800, François Brouard was Francis Broward, and he came to Florida because the Spanish government was giving away free land to lure settlers. Like other pioneers, Francis saw that the quiet beauty and vast potential of this land outweighed the perils of life on the frontier. He raised a family, three boys and a girl, and made sure they received a good education. He imbued them with a love of the land and an affinity for the rivers and streams, the marshes and the ocean that surrounded their watery world. His children and their children and their children would become owners of vast tracts of this land and would use its waters to run sawmills and carry their boats to the rivers and the sea. Over the next century they would fight for this land in wars, and then they would fight their government to keep it from being taken away. (In the end, they also fought among each other over the land.)

Another hallmark of the Broward family from the beginning has been its cast of strong and colorful characters. Not just Congressmen, Senators, and a Governor, but this family has known snake-oil salesmen, guerilla fighters, prisoners of war, gun runners, inventors, teachers, post officers, and poets. Francis’ granddaughter created Florida’s flag at the outbreak of the Civil War. His great, great, great grandson flipped over Frank Lloyd Wright’s bulldozer.

The Broward family is one of the oldest, largest, and most famous families in Florida. Befitting such an extraordinary clan, this is not an ordinary book. At the heart of this volume are the stories and history taken from over 400 handwritten letters and documents, a precious collection of faded script that the author has painstakingly deciphered during the course of a half century in preparing for this book. There is an eloquent diary, which follows a young soldier through eight months and five major battles of the Civil War. There is a booklet, published here for the first time, for which a person could have been killed for possessing it in those turbulent days after the Civil War. There are love stories and poems, triumphs and tragedies. A major character in this book is the family tree, a twisting, branching tangle that is breathtaking in its scope and complexity.

This book, like this family, spans the amazing history of Florida.

For more information, call 904-665-0064