Beginning in 1783, seven years after the American Revolution in which Britain was defeated, some of those loyalist in America who had supported the British side found themselves in a difficult situation.

The had been stripped of their lands and holdings, and were forced to leave the former colonies. The bahamas at the time, lying off the coast of Florida, was severely under populated, and so the British Government offered some of the loyalists large tracts of land in the islands, in addition to financial assistance. some of those loyalists chose to settle in the Exumas, and since they were coming from places like the Carolinas, Florida and Georgia where the had been involved in the cotton culture, they wisely looked to continuing that culture in Exuma, especially since they were guaranteed high prices from English mills desperate for enough cotton to meet the demand. The concentration was in Great Exuma, where the vast majority of the land was divided into land grants to the loyalists who came in, slashed and burnt the shrubbery, and prepared the land for cotton growing.