The History of Northeast Florida

               For Jonathan Dickinson, a prosperous Quaker merchant, a journey meant to secure his family’s future in Pennsylvania in the late summer of 1696 instead became a descent into a harrowing fight for survival. When his ship, the Reformation , ran aground on the shores of modern day Jupiter Island , Florida , it set off a chain of events that would yield one of the most vivid, terrifying, and historically significant tales of captivity in early American history. Jonathan Dickinson was not an adventurer by trade.  He was a man of commerce and faith. Born in Jamaica to a prominent English family, he had built a comfortable life managing plantations and trading goods. By 1696, however, the political and spiritual situation in Jamaica prompted him to relocate his family to Philadelphia , the rapidly growing heart of William Penn’s Quaker experiment. On August 23, 1696, Dickinson boarded a three mast vessel, the Reform...