1835 – William Dunnington Bloxham, the 13th and 17th Governor of Florida, was born in Leon County on this date. After attending primary schools in Florida he was sent to Virginia, eventually earning a law degree from the College of William and Mary in 1855. While in the Florida House of Representatives, Bloxham formed a company of Confederate Infantry in 1862. Bloxham’s first term in office was marked by the sale of 4,000,000 acres of public land in Florida to Hamilton Disston for $1,000,000. His second term was consumed with finding solutions to the economic distress caused by the hard freezes of the mid-1890s, as well as the Spanish American War. He was the first native-born Florida governor. Bloxham died on March 15th, 1915 in Tallahassee.