Florida Historical Markers Programs - Marker Detail

Description: One of the area’s early white settlers, Charlotte Crum is the first known burial in the Brooksville Cemetery. Her death occurred immediately following the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), and is symbolic of the epic collision that occurred in Florida as diverse cultures struggled for control of the expanding American frontier. Born 1792 near Savannah, Georgia, Charlotte married Col. Samuel Robert Pyles who in 1824 moved his family to what later became Alachua County, Florida. Following Pyles’s 1837 death, Charlotte married Richard R. Crum who secured this portion of land through the Armed Occupation Act of 1842, settling at Chuccochattie, less than one mile south. While traveling nearby September 12, 1842, Charlotte, her daughter Rebecca Harn, granddaughter Mary Catherine Harn and escort John Francis McDonnell were fired upon by a party of Seminoles who were unaware of the war’s end and evidently retaliating for recent aggressive acts by white settlers eager to remove the area’s native population. In the ensuing struggle, all escaped but Charlotte, who was killed and whose death received sensationalized attention. She is buried here, less than one-eighth mile from her home in a grave once entombed with brick.