George W. Scott Plantation
The George W. Scott Plantation was a 1036-acre (4 km2)
in 1852 and located 2 miles (3 km) south of Tallahassee.Plantation specifics
The Leon County Florida 1860 Agricultural Census shows that George W. Scott Plantation had the following:
- Improved Land: 60 acres (¼ km2)
- Unimproved Land: 50 acres (¼ km2)
- Cash value of plantation: $4000
- Cash value of farm implements/machinery: $1500
- Cash value of farm animals: $5000
- Number of slaves: N/A
- Bushels of corn: N/A
- Bales of cotton: N/A
The owners
Colonel George W. Scott, merchant and farmer, came to Leon in 1852 from Pennsylvania. He was said to have a model farm. Scott fought in the American Civil War as head of "Scott's Cavalry".
In 1868 Scott ran for governor as a Democratic-Conservative but was defeated. Scott experimented in a variety of crops and planted 12 acres (49,000 m2) of
Scott came up with a revolutionary fertilizer which combined cottonseed with bone meal. Bone was obtained by black farm hands who earned a gallon of cane syrup for every 100-pound sack of animal bones. The bone were crushed with a heavy cast-iron stamp powered by a waterwheel and the meal mixed with sulfuric acid. This was then mixed with cottonseed cake to make a final product.
In 1870 Scott moved to
Around 1884 or 1885 the Scott plantation was sold to a J. P. Castleman, who had moved to Tallahassee from the Dakota Territory.
Sources
- Rootsweb Plantations
- Largest Slaveholders from 1860 Slave Census Schedules
- Paisley, Clifton; From Cotton To Quail, University of Florida Press, c1968.