A letter written by Francis Philip Fatio, who settled in East Florida in 1771 and remained there until his death in 1811, was recently discovered among some papers in a desk given to The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Florida for use in the Ximenez-Fatio House in St. Augustine. Written by Fatio from New Switzerland, his plantation on the St. Johns River, to his wife in St. Augustine, the letter is dated October 18, 1800. It provides not only intimate glimpses of life on an East Florida plantation during the Second Spanish Period and information on the crops being grown, but also some personal perceptions of the troubled years following the American Revolution, in par titular the rebellion in East Florida in 1795 and the threat of invasion by William Augustus Bowles, self-styled director-general of the State of Muskogee, and his followers in 1800
