Seminole War Artifacts & a History of the Forts of Florida

I am a Second Seminole War period (1835-1842) researcher. This book was a reference in a bibliography I had seen and I purchased it based on the fact that it had good references, a solid bibliography, was well written and very well researched. This reference has been invaluable for the information that I have been able to obtain and use for my research. I would say that it is a must have for anyone researching Florida's Second Seminole War.

This book has some historical narrative in it, but its more like a collection of notes and data and photos, more like raw material. Which is pretty useful if thats what you are looking for. The first 156 pages are pictures of artifacts, like buttons, coins, horseshoes, etc., found at various sites. There is little or no commentary about these artifacts, like, when they were found, where, what their significance is. It would be nice to know what the year of the coins were and how that relates to the site they were found in, for example. But they are numbered and there is buried in the book a legend which tells you what the numbers mean, ie., site they came from. In the preface the author explains how a local preservation society presented him with a box of unrestored artifacts from 30 sites around the state and tasked him to restore these. Makes you wonder how much of Florida's history is lying around in boxes. The rest of the book deals with the attempt to locate mostly third Seminole war related forts in South West Florida. I had not previously heard the story of Collier County engineer in the 1940s who apparently located and set up monuments at a number of important sites, which was really intriguing. Its unfortunate that in the past 60 years some of these have gone missing or cant be found in any case. The book is a good read into trying to understand the difficulties of reconciling 19th century maps, oral histories, anecdotes, archeological evidence, with modern mapping and GPS. That kind of nitty gritty will appeal to some readers.

many misspellings and poor sentence structure. It is basically a summary of the history of Seminole wars, with nothing really new.