Madison Starke Perry

Madison Starke Perry, born in Lancaster County, South Carolina, moved to Alachua County, Florida, became a prosperous planter, and established a plantation about six miles east of Gainesville in the area of present-day Rochelle. He was elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 1849 and to the Florida Senate in 1850, where he gained a wide reputation as an orator. A Democrat, he served as Florida's fourth governor from 1857 through 1861. During his governorship, the Florida Railroad from Fernandina to Cedar Key was completed, a long-standing border dispute with Georgia was settled, and the expansion of slavery brought unrest that led him to call for a strong state militia and upgraded military resources. As the presidential election of 1860 approached, he warned that secession might be Florida's only option if the Republican Party won, and on November 27, 1860, he recommended calling a convention to consider secession. The Florida Convention adopted the Ordinance of Secession on January 10, 1861, after which he quickly ordered the evacuation of all United States troops from Florida military installations and their replacement by state militia troops. When his term ended in October 1861, he joined the Confederate army and was soon elected colonel of the newly organized Seventh Regiment of the Florida infantry, but illness forced his resignation in 1863. He returned to his plantation in Alachua County, died in 1865, and was buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery on land he had set aside in 1854 for the community, alongside his wife Martha Starke Perry, his daughter Sallie Perry, and his son Madison Starke Perry, Jr., also a Confederate veteran.

Florida · United States