William Eliott (1706-1779) was a London merchant, the second son of Sir Gilbert Eliott (ca.1680-1764) 3rd Baronet, of Stobs, a Member of Parliament from Roxburghshire, Scotland.  In 1767 Elliott received a one thousand acre land grant from the British government.  After acquiring additional one thousand two hundred acres west of the original tract that extended all the way to the marshes of the Indian River, he constructed a sugar mill described as “a complete sugar works: one large mill house, one boiling and curing house and twenty-eight Negro houses.”

The sugar mill was complete with rollers and crushing machinery, a firebox and chimney with boilers and kettles and two 120-gallon stills for making rum.  In addition, three dwellings were constructed for the white overseers, along with a kitchen and a wash house, structures for storing the sugar barrels prior to shipment, barns, stables, blacksmith and cooperage shops all of which were necessary for operating a sugar plantation.  An interesting recount of the establishment of this plantation and sugar mill can be read beginning on page thirty in the study titled Canaveral National Seashore commissioned by the National Park Service.

The sugar factory of William Elliott operated between 1767 and 1779 with more traditional work force of African slaves rather than with indentured workers as Turnbull did at the New Smyrna Colony.  It ceased operations as a result of a devastating plunder by raiders from a Spanish privateer, following Spain’s declaration of war against Great Britain in June 1779. Eliott's Sugar Mill was located south of Turnbull's New Smyrna Colony, it was the southernmost plantation along the Atlantic coast during the British occupation of Florida (1763-1783).   According to William Bissett who owned a plantation nearby, sugar was grown in that area with “tolerable success”.   Eliott’s sugar works were the first completed in East Florida during the British occupation and is Florida’s oldest standing sugar processing facility.  Indigo was also grown on the plantation, as evidenced in a letter from Andrew Turnbull to Governor Grant dated August 1769 stating that Ross (Elliott’s manager) would produce fifty pounds of indigo per acre.

These ruins, which are not accessible to the public, lie near the town of Oak Hill and the now extinct community of Shiloh, just north the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.   A terrestrial laser scanning was done in 2010 by the Digital Heritage and Humanities Center of the University of South Florida in collaboration with the National Park Service’s Southeast Archeological Center which shows the current status of these remains. The ruins of Elliot Plantation are located on federal property within NASA's Kennedy Space Center and are co-managed by NASA, the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  Information and pictures of the ruins are available on NASA's website which recounts how a group of preservationists positively identified them in 2008.