Francis Levett was an English trader, who worked as factor at Livorno, Italy, for the Levant Company until he lit out for East Florida in 1769 where his brother-in-law Patrick Tonyn of the British Army had been appointed governor of the English colony. Wielding connections from a lifetime of overseas trading, as well as family connections from a powerful English mercantile family, Levett built one of the first plantations in Florida, and then forfeited his investment when the English lost their foothold in Florida, forcing him to flee to the British colony in the Bahamas. Eventually his son returned to Georgia, where he (or, perhaps more accurately, his slaves) became the first to plant Sea Island cotton in America.