 Cooley was born in Maryland , but little else is known about his life prior to 1813 , when he arrived in East Florida as part of a military expedition . He established himself as a farmer in the northern part of the territory before moving south , where he traded with local Indians and continued to farm . He sided with natives in a land dispute against a merchant who had received a large grant from the King of Spain and was evicting the Indians from their lands . Unhappy with the actions of the Spanish , he moved to the New River area in 1826 to get as far as possible from the Spanish influence . 
