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Governor Benavides was left without a secretary
Source: The Governorship of Spanish Florida #122
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One position, the public secretaryship, was not appointive but salable. This official (escribano publico) was the governor’s scrivener. He wrote dispatches, filed correspondence, and performed other clerical chores in the colony. Once he had assumed his position, the secretary usually served until his death, a period that might last fifty or sixty years, and the problem of filling the office rarely arose. In September, 1727, however, the death of the public secretary, Juan Solana, left Governor Benavides with the task of securing a replacement. It was particularly vexing first because no resident of Saint Augustine desired the job badly enough to pay the minimum price of 300 pesos and second because few Floridians were qualified to fill the post. Those able to read and write already held responsible positions and were not anxious to become the governor’s clerk, particularly at a cost of 300 pesos. Benavides realized he would have difficulty finding Solana’s successor and took steps to secure one elsewhere. With his own colonists either too poor or illiterate to take the position, the governor asked the Council of the Indies to seek a secretary in Havana. [Note: Gov to king 9/28/1727] Sympathetic to Benavides plight, the Council ordered the governor of Cuba to send a public secretary to Florida. [Note: King to gov of Cuba 4/16/1729] In the meantime, however, Benavides became impatient. Having heard no word from either Spain or Cuba about the Council’s decision, he finally set up the machinery for selling the secretaryship in Saint Augustine. The events that followed resembled a comic opera. On May 23, 1730... (Tepaske GSF)
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