Marianna, FL news and local guide

Marianna was home to Florida's Civil War governor, John Milton, a major planter who owned the Sylvania Plantation. On September 27, 1864, a Federal force of about 700 cavalry from Pensacola under General Alexander Asboth arrived to forage and enlist Black recruits. A few hundred Confederate home guards, many of them boys, older men and wounded soldiers, barricaded the streets and held off the first assault but surrendered when they were outflanked. Confederate casualties were 26 and Federal about 55; the town was spared, but St. Luke's Episcopal Church, in the middle of the fighting, was burned. On April 1, 1865, as the Confederacy collapsed, Governor Milton was found dead of a gunshot wound at Sylvania; the New York Times called it suicide, while a local paper reported a hunting accident. He is buried in St. Luke's churchyard. During Reconstruction, Ku Klux Klan violence flared in Marianna and the surrounding county, much of it aimed at Black freedmen who were gaining ownership of farmland. Today Marianna is home to Chipola College and calls itself "The City of Southern Charm." Sources The Historical Marker Database: Battle of Marianna (Florida Board of Parks and Historic Memorials) Wikipedia: Marianna, Florida