In 1767 travel into Florida was difficult. The Spanish held St. Augustine for almost 200 years as a military camp but now they were gone. British Governor James Grant wrote letters about his good friend, the Indian Grey Eyes who took 500 cattle from Georgia down into unmapped Florida. He helped to blaze a new road, one that would lead to the planned Minorcan settlement of New Smyrna to the south. It would be called The King's Road and would exist from 1774 to 1914 as the main entry into Florida
An early Florida adventure with Grey Eyes
See Colonial British Florida with the eyes of a Seminole Indian. The white men do strange things as a young boy meets the demands of passage and becomes a Seminole cattleman in Florida as so many really were. He will move through many adventures that describe the true history of early Florida. Reading I am Grey Eyes will bring you a better feeling for the often dry historical events that now will connect into a life story.
Florida author William P. (Bill) Ryan creates historical fiction based on real characters, letters and original documents. Grey Eyes will tell you of the terrible Seminole War of 1835, the destruction of the great Bulow plantation, Minorcan settlers, and the exodus of Seminoles and their black companions to the Indian Territory in the West.
Who was this Grey Eyes?
Discover the legend of The Lost Colony, a great Florida slave uprising, and other early Florida stories by following original maps and the stories of Grey Eyes.
Author William P. Ryan is a Director of the Flagler County Historical Society. He brings history to life with his first person style. The Old Kings Road Series of books include:
- The Search for Old Kings Road
- I am Grey Eyes a story of old Florida
- Osceola his capture and Seminole legends
- Bulow Gold
- Florida's Door to Time
Also available on Amazon Kindle books
About the Author: William P. Ryan (Bill) retired to Palm Coast Florida with his wife Pat after some 65 years in the high technology photographic industry. His technical interests and early experience as a journalist (Buffalo Evening News and Courier Express) later brought him some fame as a speaker and writer for groups such as The Professional Photographers of America, where he was awarded the degree of "craftsman," the White House Press Photographers, and other groups where he introduced new lighting techniques for color illustration.
He was CEO of several well known technical marketing companies and helped to develop one of the first digital color print systems for high quality photo color paper. Early in his career he worked in the Professional Products Advertising Department of Ansco, Binghamton, N.Y., one of America's oldest photo firms. Here he became involved in photo history via original plates and prints of Civil War Photographer Mathew Brady then at Ansco. His career and contacts took him to many European and Asian countries via the then international photographic industry.
Arriving in Florida in 1991 Bill helped to create Flagler County's first Internet site, back in the primitive days. This then brought him into the history of Flagler located between St. Augustine and Daytona Beach on Florida's Atlantic Coast.
Bill Ryan loves to collect stories, often those never told or known before. He writes in a first person style and tells how many of these stories arrived at his door often in a amazing manner. He is not a professional historian but writes what he believes "really did happen" based on his original documents and research. Door to Time in Florida is his latest and involves some time experiments by Nikola Tesla!
