Joseph, Son of a Yankee Spy

This is the story of my great-grandfather, Joseph Whitney. He was the third son of parents who moved to Florida from Maine in 1845, the year it became a state. He was born in Picolata on the St. John’s river eighteen miles west of St. Augustine in 1848. His mother died when he was only nine-years-old. He and his three brothers were then in the care of their fi fty-seven-year-old father who was very preoccupied with a mysterious life of his own. This is the story of one boy’s life as a Florida-pioneer in the years that led up to the Civil War