Locating Slavery's Legacies @ University of Virginia

Memorial Artwork

Sculptural Memorial

Enslaver

Fatio, Francis P.

Coquina Garden Bench to Francis Philip Fatio

The project to establish a bench dedicated to Francis Philip Fatio (an enslaver, see biography) was initiated by A.J. Hanna, College Archivist, from correspondence with a friend of his wife’s who was associated with the National Society of Colonial Dames of America in the state of Florida. Fatio and his descendant, Lina L’Engle Barrett, were considered suitable figures to honor in celebration of the college’s semicentennial in 1935. The coquina bench, sculpted by Leno Lazzari, was dedicated on December 14, 1935. Almost immediately though, college officials moved the bench from the Chapel Garden to the lawn between Pugsley and Mayflower Halls—where the bench sat for about fifty years. In the 1980s, the bench was moved again to a location behind the Mills Building. In 2018, the bench was finally disassembled and put away. For five years, the bench sat disassembled in storage.

In 2023, Betty Elmore Gilleland—a descendant of Fatio’s and an alumna of Rollins—inquired about the bench to college officials, who subsequently contacted the Rollins College Archives to determine the location of the bench. It was ultimately located in pieces in Facilities Storage, and after paying a stonemason to reassemble the bench, it was rededicated at a nonpublic ceremony presided over by President Grant Cornwell on December 1, 2023, at its original location in the Chapel Garden between Knowles Memorial Chapel and Annie Russell Theatre.

1935 - Established in Chapel Garden, moved almost immediately.
1935 to c. 1980s– between Pugsley and Mayflower Halls facing Holt Avenue.
c.1980s to 2018– behind Mills Memorial Center.
2018 to 2023– disassembled and moved into storage.
2023 to present– reassembled in Chapel Garden.

A coquina garden seat (12 feet long x 3 1/2 feet high), center section (4 feet wide x 7 feet high) with bronze plaque (3 feet x 2 feet).

FRANCIS PHILIP FATIO (1724–1811)
FIRST ADVOCATE OF CONSERVATION OF FLORIDA'S FORESTS AND
LINA L'ENGLE BARNETT (1859–1934) A COLONIAL DAME
WHO KEPT ALIVE THE DOCTRINE OF CONSERVATION IN FLORIDA
AND THE IDEALS OF HER DISTINGUISHED ANCESTOR.
ERECTED BY THE NATIONAL SOCIETY COLONIAL DAMES
OF AMERICA IN FLORIDA DECEMBER 14, 1935

Lazzari, Leno

Hanna, Alfred

Holt, Hamilton

Cornwell, Grant

December 14, 1935

December 1, 2023

1980

2018

1890-1945: Era of the Lost Cause, Jim Crow legal segregation and discrimination, and organized anti-Black racism

1976-2000: The Conservative Ascendancy and Retrenchment from Civil Rights Movement

2000-Present: Memorialization in the Era of Universities Studying Slavery and the Black Lives Matter Movement

National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Florida

Rollins College; Winter Park, Florida

Fatio, Francis Philip

Gallman, Nancy O. “Reconstituting Power in an American Borderland: Political Change in Colonial East Florida.” Florida Historical Quarterly 94, no. 2 (2015): 169–191.

Klos, George. “Blacks and the Seminole Removal Debate, 1821-1835.” Florida Historical Quarterly 68, no. 1 (1989): 55–78.

Strang, Cameron B. Frontiers of Science: Imperialism and Natural Knowledge in the Gulf South Borderlands, 1500–1850 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2018). 97–104.

Willis, William Scott. “A Swiss Settler in East Florida: A Letter of Francis Philip Fatio.” Florida Historical Quarterly 64, no. 2 (1985): 174–188.

Altered - Moved

Altered - Destroyed

The original program for the dedication of the bench to Fatio in 1935.

A transcript of the speech given by Betty Elmore Gilleland on December 1, 2023 at the rededication of the Fatio bench.