Tallahassee, FL news and local guide

The name, a Muskogean word often translated "old fields" or "old town," likely came from Creek migrants who found large cleared lands once farmed by the Apalachee; these Creeks and others became the Seminole. In the First Seminole War, on November 12, 1817, U.S. forces burned the nearby village of Fowltown after its chief, Neamathla, refused to move, and Andrew Jackson returned in 1818 to attack the Native village at Tallahassee. After Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821, the Legislative Council met first at Pensacola and then at St. Augustine, journeys of weeks by water for delegates, and decided to meet at a halfway point. Two commissioners chose Tallahassee, and the third session met there in 1824 in a crude log capitol. That year Congress gave the visiting Marquis de Lafayette a 36-square-mile land grant that now includes much of the city, and in 1845 a Greek Revival masonry Capitol was finished in time for statehood. Sources Wikipedia: Tallahassee, Florida