Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: Ebyabe, via Wikimedia Commons
Taken: July 22, 2007
Caption: Former Marker: Foundation of Turnbull Palace
Additional Description: The "Site of Sheldon's New Smyrna Hotel" marker replaced this earlier marker also sponsored by the Jane Sheldon Chapter, D.A.R., which stood on the same spot from 1975 through at least 2009.
(Presumably, the former marker was removed due to its information on the ruins' origin being incorrect or unverifiable as fact.)

Inscription:
Begun around 1770 as the official residence of Dr. Andrew Turnbull, founder of the New Smyrna colony of Minorcans, Greeks and Italians, this palace was to have been a large coquina building. It was never completed due to the disintegration of the colony in 1777.

The massive foundation had been placed in the heart of a prehistory Indian mound, a commanding position which was noted as the Ais Indian Village of Caparaca on the Mexia map of 1803. Utilized by Ambrose Hull for his coquina home in 1805 - destroyed by radical "patriots" in 1812. The same site was chosen for the home of Thomas Stamps 1830, burned by Indians 1835. The home-hotel of John Sheldon followed in 1854, burned by Yankees in 1863, rebuilt after the Civil War.
Submitted: June 30, 2014, by Glenn Sheffield of Tampa, Florida.
Database Locator Identification Number: p277615
File Size: 3.481 Megabytes

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