William Whitaker (pioneer) dating history

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William Henry Whitaker (1821–1888) was an American Seminole War veteran and pioneer who, under the provisions of the Armed Occupation Act, established the first permanent settlement in what is now Sarasota, Florida. There he traded mullet with Cubans to bring the first groves of economically important oranges to the state. He later married Mary Jane Wyatt and with her raised Nancy Whitaker, the first child recorded in what now is the county of Sarasota and a family of eleven children. His father-in-law, William Wyatt, was a constitutional delegate who helped to originate, and signed, Florida's first constitution. At the end of the Civil War he helped Judah P. Benjamin escape to London.