Hernandez, Joseph M. (Joseph Marion), 1788-1857

Joseph Marion Hernández (né José Mariano Hernández, May 26, 1788 – June 8, 1857) was an American politician, plantation owner, and soldier. He was the first Delegate from the Florida Territory and the first Hispanic American to serve in the United States Congress. Hernández served from September 1822 to March 1823.

Born in St. Augustine, Spanish Florida, he attended local schools run by Catholic priests and worked with his father in carpentry. As an adolescent, he was educated in Savannah, Georgia, and Havana, Cuba. He returned to East Florida in 1811 after studying law, most likely in Cuba. After returning to Florida, Hernández volunteered to join the Spanish military to defend the territory against American expansionists. Following his marriage, Hernández became a prominent planter, acquiring vast tracts of land. When Spain ceded the Floridas to the United States in the Adams–Onís Treaty in 1819, Hernández pledged his allegiance to the United States. After the organization of the Florida Territory, he was elected Florida's first Delegate to the United States House of Representatives, and was approved by President James Monroe on September 30, 1822, serving as Florida's at-large delegate to the 17th Congress. Hernández was unsuccessful in getting elected to the 18th and 19th Congresses. Returning to Florida, he was a member and presiding officer of the Territorial house of representatives from 1824 to 1825.

During the 1820s, Hernández established himself as a major territorial planter, producing some of Florida’s biggest cash crops, including sugar cane and cotton. Hernández returned to the battlefield in the Second Seminole War (1835–1842), a war thast brought him financial and political misfortune. He was appointed Brigadier General over a troop of volunteers during the war and was subsequently commissioned in the United States Army, serving from 1835 to 1838. Hernández was the commanding officer responsible for the imprisonment of the Seminole leader Osceola upon the orders of General Thomas Jesup, as well as the capture of Seminole chiefs Ee-mat-la (King Philip) and Seminole ally Uchee Billy. He retired with the rank of Brigadier General.

Following statehood in 1845, Hernández was an unsuccessful Whig candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1845. He remained active in local politics, serving as mayor of St. Augustine in 1848, but eventually left Florida to reside in the province of Matanzas, Cuba in his later years. Hernández died there, he is interred in the Del Junco family vault in Necropolis San Carlos Borromeo, Matanzas.