A New Capital

Dr. William Hayne Simmons

Dr. William Hayne Simmons, born in Charleston South Carolina in 1784, came from a distinguished family, a descendant of Dr. Henry Woodward, the first English setter of South Carolina, he was well educated and studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in 1806. Not much is known about Simmons after he finished school, but he apparently never practiced medicine. In 1816-1818 Simmons became involved with politics and served a term in the South Carolina legislature alongside his good friend Robert Y. Hayne who later was famous for his debate with Daniel Webster in 1830. In 1919, after reading Willam Bartram’s Travels, Simmons set off on his own adventure touring the frontier of the Creek Indian nation. In 1820 he anonymously published his story about his travel titled Onea; An Indian Tale. On March 22, 1821 his mother, Mrs. Hayne Simmons died at the age of 62.

Soon after the transfer of Florida from Spain to the United States in July of 1921, Simmons, single at the age of thirty-seven, left Charleston and moved to East Florida, settling in St. Augustine.  It is not clear when Simmons first arrived in Florida, but in September of 1821 he wrote an article that was published in the Charleston City Gazette providing a description of the country and Indians about St. Augustine.[1]

Although St. Augustine can never become commercially important, having neither a back country to supply it with the materials for exports, nor a bar of sufficient depth to admit vessels of burden, it must yet attain to some consequence as a summer resort, both for health and pleasure, from the extraordinary salubrity and amenity of its climate.

And in the same article he quotes an Indian chief:

"The Americans live in towns, where many thousand people busy themselves within a small space of ground, but the Seminole is of a wild and scattered race; he swims the streams and leaps over the logs of the wide forest, rest in pursuit of game, and is like the whooping crane*, that makes its nest at night, far from the spot where it dashed the dew from the grass and flower in the morning.

An hundred summers have seen the Seminole warrior reposing undisturbed under the shade of his live oak, and the suns of an hundred winters, have risen on his ardent pursuit of the buck and the bear, with none to question his bounds, or dispute his range."

What drew Simmons to Florida is unclear, perhaps for land, adventure, or from his experience with the Creek Indians, he wanted to see the Seminoles in Florida. Whatever the reason Simmons liked Florida so much that at after arriving in St. Augustine he wrote to his friend Robert Hayne[2] saying that he could, “spend the remainder of his days there." Dr. Simmons arrival in St. Augustine did not begin well when soon after arriving a yellow fever swept through St. Augustine killing Dr. Charles M’Coskey the army surgeon stationed at Fort Marion in St. Augustine. Dr. Simmons then volunteered his services to the post commander to run the army hospital until an army doctor could be found. In his “Notices of East Florida”, Simmons dedicated several pages on the cause and treatment of yellow fever. Vignoles also wrote about the yellow fever outbreak of yellow fever in St. Augustine saying in a letter to his wife back in Charleston, “the dread Malady which devastated this City, so long the abode of health, had the effect of stopping all business.”

Dr. Simmons believed that yellow fever struck when three conditions were present: a specific state of the air during the sickly season, an invisible vapor or foul-smelling gas, common in the crowded city with poor sanitation, and some other maritime factor not yet discovered. It would be another 70 years before it was determined to be caused by mosquitoes although the “sickly season” was partially right for mosquitoes are more prevalent in the summer. This was the only time that Dr. Simmons was known to practice his medical training in Florida although it is speculated that he may have temporarily practiced again during the yellow fever epidemic that stuck St. Augustine again in 1841. 

[1] Reprinted in the Niles Weekly Register, September 28, 1821, pages 69-70.
[2] Robert Hayne known for his 1830 debate in the Senate with Daniel Webster is considered a defining episode in the constitutional crisis which precipitated the American Civil War..

Updated: 2026-08-07

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