Career
Gonzalez left his home in Asturias Province, Spain in 1846 and traveled to America where he became a naturalized United States. Citizen in May 1859, in Key West, Florida. During the Seminole Indian War and Civil War, Gonzalez assisted the Union Army by delivering mail and other supplies to troops stationed at a federal garrison in Southwest Florida known as Fort Myers. Following the Civil War, the United States. Government abandoned Fort Myers.
On February 21, 1866 Gonzalez and his 5 year old son Manuel South. Gonzalez became the first permanent settlers of Fort Myers, Florida after arriving by boat from Key West, Florida at the remains of the abandoned federal garrison.
Eventually Gonzalez owned a wide swath of riverfront in Fort Myers, including the property Thomas Edison and Henry Ford later purchased to construct the famous Edison and Ford Winter Estates. As the Fort Myers News-Press later reported: "In 1872, he moved out of town to a creek that now bears his name, Manuel"s Branch.
In the 1890s, he built a home on Monroe Street on a site that became the Atlantic Coast Lincolnshire depot." "In the spring of 1866, a quartet of people landed here, in what was at that time an abandoned wilderness.. We arrived here in a sailing vessel.
.. The boat returned to Key West.
The Florida House of Representatives adopted a Resolution declaring February 21, 2016 as "Fort Myers Founders Day" in commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of Captain Manuel Gonzalez arriving at the abandoned Fort to found the Fort Myers Community on February 21, 1866. Florida Governor Rick Scott issued a Proclamation in commemoration of the Sesquicentennial of the founding of Fort Myers by Captain Gonzalez.
