Andrew Skinner. Origin: Other

On Long Island, Andrew Skinner was granted 665 acres in the current settlement of Stella Maris on 13 March 1789; this parcel was bounded by the land of Neptune and Richard Curtis, George Bunch, the sea, and a salina. He also received 85 acres on an unknown date in the Lower Tatnall’s settlement, and then with partner Alexander Mair he received an additional 420 acres, date unknown, in the same area.

The Fitzwilliam Census of 1734 enumerates a Jonathan Skinner (with a family consisting of white parents and three children, plus one free mulatto or negro man, and one slave child), who was also shown on a Nassau tax list dating to 1734/5. A Samuel Skinner married Mary Lowe 5 January 1756 in the Bahamas.

We also found a letter from John Gilbert of Bermuda to request possible settlement for “poor inhabitants” of Bermuda in East Florida, 25 January 1765. Evidently, impoverished Bermudians were being settled in East Florida, along the St. Mary’s River before 1766. In 1768, Andrew Skinner received a commission as a naval officer in East Florida. A Skinner was also a Clerk of Accounts for East Florida in 1774. A 26 June 1775 account of expenses from Tonyn to Dartmouth was signed by Alexander Skinner, and a note was added which stated that before becoming a public official, Skinner had been a white overseer of black slaves on East Florida’s Governor James Grant’s plantations.

Andrew Skinner was classified as “Other” because he was settled in East Florida by the 1760s and does not appear to have had land confiscated as a Loyalist. There are no records of his involvement in any of the 13 American Colonies, so there was no side to choose, and he was simply a British subject. It is possible that his family was in the Bahamas early, and then by the 1760s he was living in East Florida.

References: DM; JR, Grant; www.amphilsoc.org; David Library of the American Revolution,
Official Correspondence