Jonathan Dickinson and the Wreck of the Reformation, 1696

On September 23, 1696 the British barkentine Reformation foundered off Jupiter Island, and its 24 survivors reached St. Augustine in November 1696, a Florida historical marker at Hobe Sound says (Florida Division of Historical Resources marker).

Jonathan Dickinson led a party of Quakers among those survivors (marker).

The marker, put up in 1961 at the entrance to Jonathan Dickinson State Park, places the wreck three miles to the east of that spot (marker). It says the Quakers were bound from Jamaica to Pennsylvania, and that the party was attacked by Indians and driven northward before it reached St. Augustine (Division of Historical Resources).

Dickinson described the group's trials in a book, and the Hobe Sound marker credits God's Protecting Providence as the first account of Indians on the southeast coast (marker).

Last verified: October 18, 2026, with both Dickinson markers on the Division of Historical Resources marker list, two Ais town markers, the Department of State page on the first contact era, and the federal Fort Matanzas and Loxahatchee River pages; the Florida State Parks pages answered with a captcha and are not used.

The Florida marker counts 24 survivors and says they included a party of Quakers headed from Jamaica to Pennsylvania, with Dickinson as the Quakers' leader (Division of Historical Resources).

A second state marker, on Fort George Island in Jacksonville, describes him as a Philadelphia Quaker who had been shipwrecked off the coast of Florida (San Juan del Puerto marker).

Neither marker names the other passengers or the crew, or gives any count apart from the 24 survivors, so this guide does not either. Details found in older retellings, such as the length of the journey in months or miles and the date the party finally reached Pennsylvania, are not stated on either marker (Hobe Sound marker; San Juan del Puerto marker).

The castaways were driven north to St. Augustine, and Dickinson also passed the Timucua mission town of San Juan del Puerto on Fort George Island, near present-day Jacksonville, the state markers show (Hobe Sound marker; San Juan del Puerto marker).

St. Augustine in 1696 had its stone fort. The National Park Service dates the building of the Castillo de San Marcos to 1672 through 1695 (National Park Service, Fort Matanzas).

North of St. Augustine the route crossed the Spanish mission country. The San Juan del Puerto marker says Franciscan friars founded the mission late in the 1500s to serve the Timucua living there, and that Father Francisco Pareja, working at the mission around 1600, prepared a Timucuan dictionary, grammar and religious books in that language (Division of Historical Resources).

Six years after his visit, in 1702, Governor James Moore of South Carolina tried and failed to take St. Augustine, the marker says, but his raid destroyed the Spanish missions from St. Augustine northward, San Juan del Puerto among them (San Juan del Puerto marker).

The state's own history lists the Ais and the Tekesta among the native peoples of Florida when European ships first landed, and a state marker places many Ais villages along the Indian River Lagoon (Florida Department of State; Pentoya marker).

The Hobe Sound marker does not name the people who stopped the Dickinson party; it says only that the castaways were attacked by Indians and driven northward (marker). The Division of Historical Resources marker in Melbourne's Ballard Park says many Ais villages stood along the Indian River Lagoon, that Pentoaya was one of ten towns on Alvaro Mexia's 1605 map of Indian sites, that artifacts there run as late as AD 1700, and that the paramount Ais village stood at the Kroegel homestead just south of Sebastian (Division of Historical Resources).

Spanish officials had traveled that coast long before Dickinson. A marker in Eau Gallie records that in 1605 Governor Pedro de Ybarra sent Lieutenant Alvaro Mexia from St. Augustine down the coast on a diplomatic mission to the principal Ais town near present-day Vero Beach (Division of Historical Resources). The two markers place the main Ais town differently: the Eau Gallie marker near present-day Vero Beach, the Melbourne marker at the Kroegel homestead just south of Sebastian (Eau Gallie marker; Melbourne marker).

By 1696 those peoples had already lost much. The Department of State puts the aboriginal population of Florida at about 100,000 when Europeans arrived and says disease, war and a slave trade that took Florida Indians as early as 1520 nearly destroyed it (Department of State). Against that record, the Hobe Sound marker singles out Dickinson's book as the first account of Indians on the southeast coast (marker).

Mostly, but their wording differs in small ways, and this guide repeats each as written rather than choosing between them (Hobe Sound marker; San Juan del Puerto marker).

The Hobe Sound marker says the Reformation foundered off Jupiter Island and that its Quakers were bound from Jamaica to Pennsylvania (Hobe Sound marker). The Fort George Island marker calls Dickinson a Philadelphia Quaker shipwrecked off the coast of Florida, without naming a place (Fort George Island marker). Neither marker gives the castaways a route by named stops between Jupiter Island and St. Augustine.

The 1961 state shipwreck marker stands at the entrance to Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Hobe Sound, three miles from where it places the wreck (Division of Historical Resources marker).

The National Wild and Scenic Rivers System lists Jonathan Dickinson State Park as the State of Florida contact for the Loxahatchee River, at (772) 546-2771 (National Wild and Scenic Rivers System). Park hours, fees and the street address are not given here: the Florida State Parks pages that list them answered with a captcha when this guide was checked.

The river that runs through the park has its own federal standing. The Loxahatchee was designated a Wild and Scenic River on May 17, 1985, from Riverbend Park downstream to Jonathan Dickinson State Park, and the federal listing notes that Loxahatchee is the Seminole word for turtle (National Wild and Scenic Rivers System). Farther north, the San Juan del Puerto marker stands on Fort George Road on Fort George Island in Jacksonville (Division of Historical Resources).