Justice Runs in This Family.

Under the Spanish Flag

The family has been Florida people since before there was a Florida. Philemon Bryan came south from New Bern, North Carolina while the territory still flew the Spanish flag. His grandson, John Milton Bryan, was born in Hamilton County in 1838, seven years before statehood.

The County-Maker

John Milton Bryan rode as a U.S. Mounted Volunteer in the Seminole Wars at seventeen. He built the first schoolhouse in Lake County with his own land and money, gave Osceola County the block its courthouse stands on today, and in the 1887 legislative session wrote the laws that created both counties. In 1897 he became the first Chairman of the Railroad Commission of Florida, built to protect the grower, the shipper, and the small merchant from the most powerful interests in the state.

When he died in 1911, the Governor ordered the state flag flown at half mast for thirty days. No other private citizen in Florida's history has been so honored.

Two of his sons, William and Nathan Bryan, served in the United States Senate. Nathan finished his career as Chief Judge of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Cattle Kingdoms

The other side of the family built Tampa and ran the river range. Rev. Capt. Leroy Gilliland Lesley organized the region's churches and its militia. His son, Capt. John T. Lesley, was a cattle king, sheriff, the 12th Mayor of Tampa, a state legislator in both chambers, a co-founder of Tampa Electric, and the man whose land became the ground under Plant's railroad and Ybor City. On the Kissimmee River, Eli O. Morgan ran more than twenty thousand head of cattle out of Basinger, where his wife Leacy kept the settlement's first post office.

When Morgan's granddaughter married Lesley's grandson, two cattle kingdoms became one family.

The Judge

John Milton Bryan Simpson, named for his grandfather, paid his way through the University of Florida College of Law working a cattle ranch. They called him Cowboy. In 1962 he ordered the desegregation of Duval County's schools. In the summer of 1964, when marchers in St. Augustine were beaten in the streets, Judge Bryan Simpson issued the first federal orders in the South protecting civil rights demonstrators, and when the Governor of Florida resisted, the judge threatened him with contempt and won. The death threats came by mail for years. He ignored them all.

In 2008, by Act of Congress, the federal courthouse in Jacksonville was named the Bryan Simpson United States Courthouse.

The Inheritance

The judge's brother, Arthur Allen Simpson, known his whole life as Jack, was a cattleman and a partner in one of Tampa's oldest law firms. His wife Geraldine, a Lesley on her father's side and a Morgan on her mother's, lived a hundred and three years: born in 1908 when the family still drove cattle, honored at the courthouse ceremony a century later.

Their grandson is Arthur Allen Simpson, the third to carry the name. He practices law in Florida. His son is called Jack.

Sources: Remarks of Bryan Simpson Jr., naming ceremony of the Bryan Simpson United States Courthouse (2008, U.S. District Court, M.D. Fla.) · "John Milton Bryan," remarks of Judge Bryan Simpson, Lake County Courthouse (1954) · Florida Times-Union, Aug. 17, 1911 · Tampa Bay Times obituaries (2011, 2013) · University of South Florida Sunland Tribune · Federal Judicial Center biographies · Judge John Milton Bryan Simpson Papers, University of Florida Smathers Libraries.