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Peter Timothy and the Original Alligator Alcatraz? [1]

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Date: 2025-07-17

Doing some reading for my professional life the other day, I was struck by the timeliness of the story of Peter Timothy, an established printer and involved citizen in colonial South Carolina who chose rebellion in 1776, and was eventually sent by the British to their version of Alligator Alcatraz, what they called Fort Mark (originally and currently known as the Castillo de San Marcos) in St. Augustine, Florida.

Peter was the son of Huguenot immigant Lewis (born Louis) Timothy, who had immigrated with his family to Philadelphia in 1731. He studied the printing trade with Benjamin Franklin, and eventually was contracted by Franklin to take over the printing business in Charleston, South Carolina in 1732. When Lewis died in 1738, his wife Elizabeth and 14-year-old son Peter ran the press until Peter took it over in 1746.

Peter Timothy was a successful printer and very involved in colonial affairs for three decades, including the revolutionary assemblies, starting in 1775. At about that time he also stopped publishing his newspaper, The South Carolina Gazette, fearing the British would destroy his press.

However, Timothy’s most famous print job came in 1776, when he began printing broadside copies of the new Declaration of Independence, identifying himself as its printer (and as a rebel) at the bottom of the sheet. (See this article’s image.)

His story took a tragic turn in 1780, however, when the British captured Charleston. Timothy was identified as a rebel and imprisoned at Fort Mark.

Fort Mark had the reputation as a prison that did not need guards, because situated as it was on the frontier in north Florida, it was said to be surrounded by alligators and by native peoples who had allied themselves with the British. I don’t know if this is something the British exaggerated so as to minimize the need for guards, but in any case St. Augustine was a pretty remote outpost at that point that mostly existed to house prisoners of war and serve as a staging area for British military actions.

Timothy lost his business and savings during the ten months he was kept at Fort Mark. He was allowed to leave and go to Philadelphia, where his family had resettled, but driven to desperation by his financial situation, he and some of his family sailed for Antigua (where he thought he could get his money back quickly). However, the ship sank and all on board died.

The reason Timothy’s tragic tale intrigued me, of course, is its resonance with the concentration camp that is now filling up with prisoners in south Florida. Though technically a prisoner of war, it’s easy to regard Timothy as a political prisoner of a despotic government, who sent him without trial to a remote prison because he put his name on the document of revolutionary principles that has since been used by many others to claim the founding freedoms of our country.

While the focus of state terror at the moment is immigrants, I think we can expect it to expand to other groups who the current administration regards as threats: opposing politicians, media and influencers who are asking tough questions, judges with a shred of integrity, advocates for social justice including clergy, election officials, college professors and other teachers (already declared “the enemy” by the VP), and anyone else who advocates for representative government and critical thinking. And other states (like the one I live in) seem excited about building their own versions of the Florida facility to handle the anticipated deluge of political prisoners.

So I’m thinking of Peter Timothy, not so much in how it ended for him--though anyone willing to be identified with resistance is likely at least in the short run to suffer similar losses—but rather in his willingness to be identified with revolutionary principles when he did not have to be. We’ll all likely be called on to declare in one way or another where we stand regarding this white supremacist autocracy, and for most of us the cost will be great.

As another American patriot and advocate of direct action Henry David Thoreau put it, “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” I hope when the time comes, I will have the courage to do what is required of me.

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