Juan Bautista Whitten (c. 1758 - c. 1834)

Juan Bautista “Big Prince” Whitten (sometimes spelled Witten) was a man with many names and titles, demonstrating, in part, the various transformations he experienced throughout his life. He was born in northwest Africa around 1758, somewhere along Guinea’s coast, and remained in Africa for fifteen more years in Upper Guinea. Once he was a teenager, British slavers seized him from his home in Africa and thrust him into slavery. After enduring the Middle Passage, in the early 1770s, he arrived at the slave port of Sullivan’s Island in Charleston, South Carolina. There, a Charleston planter, Peter Whitten, purchased Prince to work on his inland plantation in Camden, South Carolina. Peter Whitten, impressed with Prince’s stature, decided to name him “Big Prince.” On the plantation, Prince became a carpenter. In 1777, he met Judy, a slave at the nearby Cantey plantation, and they entered into a lifelong relationship. They had two children; Glasgow in 1778 and Polly in 1779. While Prince began a life with his new family, the American Revolution raged in the background and eventually entangled his family. First, in 1782, they became captives of Colonel William Young, a leader of a Loyalist force, who took them to Georgia. Then in 1785, they became slaves for a Lieutenant Colonel of Georgia’s Patriot forces, Jacob Weed. Weed moved the Whitten family further south to Point Peter, Georgia, close to the St. Marys River, an important water body that Prince and his family crossed to escape Weed’s enslavement on December 3, 1786. On the other side of St. Marys River, Prince and his family not only changed imperial jurisdiction by entering into Spanish Florida, but, most important, transitioned from slavery to freedom. Prince first worked on a plantation in an unspecified town in Florida, south of St. Marys River and north of St. Augustine. He and his family soon relocated to St. Augustine, Florida, to avoid recapture by their former enslaver, Weed. There, Prince and his family quickly integrated themselves into Spanish society. They became baptized as Catholics, and Prince took his baptismal name of Juan Bautista Whitten on January 11, 1792. He capitalized on the opportunities that being a Catholic afforded him. He became a popular godparent to newly baptized Catholics, diversified his work by obtaining contracts from the Spanish government, and rented a house on San Carlos Street, making him neighbor to some of St. Augustine’s most prominent residents. All of these actions bolstered Prince’s respectability within the Spanish community. Even more, as a healthy Spanish subject, he enlisted in the free black militia and reached the rank of sergeant. He fought with the militia multiple times, in 1795, from 1800 to 1803, and in 1812, during the Patriot War, where he became a hero for his service. On July 31, 1819, after twenty-six years of military service, Prince petitioned the Spanish government for recognition. When the Spanish lost control of Florida, on August 22, 1821, Prince led a majority of the freed black community with him to Cuba. He lived the rest of his life in Matanzas, Cuba, passing away on an uncertain date, but before 1835, when his claim to acquire his losses from the Patriot War was resolved.