Lue Gim Gong deserved better

Screengrab from a 1922
issue of the Manatee River
Journal in Bradenton, FL

It's a joy to uncover instances when pioneers in Florida helped others make it through day-to-day life. And sad to find times when they don't. Today's post encompasses both.

Discrimination against people of Asian descent, again on the rise, marred Florida's frontier days. A visible case is that of Lue Gim Gong, a gifted and lauded horticulturist about whom I've written before.

We know basic facts about Lue's life (see this post from 2014). One of these facts is that he died in poverty in 1925. He was a brilliant horticulturist but a naive businessman. People took advantage of his generous heart and soul.

Lue's major contribution to the citrus industry -- the Lue Gim Gong orange -- was hailed as revolutionary upon introduction in the early 1900s. It earned a federal agricultural award. Then drifted into obscurity. Some industry leaders decided it was simply a strain of the better known Valencia orange. 

I'm no botanist, but after learning how sad and lonely Lue's final years were, I can't help but wonder if those citrus leaders deliberately pushed him and his discovery into the footnotes. Jealousy? I found a 1912 newspaper account proclaiming the orange's greatness - and explaining why. And I found other articles mentioning Lue's other botanical achievements.

Bigoted competitors wouldn't want a Chinese immigrant stealing any of Florida's citrus glory. Florida in the 1920s wasn't known for its tolerance, as black, Catholic and Jewish people can attest.

Thankfully, the state's agriculture industry included people who stood by Lue. Some neighbors in DeLand and the surrounding area likewise supported him. One man who'd grown up in DeLand spoke loudly and eloquently on a statewide platform about Lue's mistreatment. 

The words of those who supported Lue are what I wish to share here. In most cases, I don't have individual names. The information was printed and reprinted in various newspapers.

Lue died in 1925, but he needed help years earlier. The Miami Herald on January 31, 1917 carried a reprint from "The Lancer in Florida Grower," an industry publication. The headline stated, "Hard Luck for Lue Gim Gong."  Lue is described as "a poor, inoffensive, loveable, Christian Chinaman who lives a lonely life on a little citrus grove, his only company being a pet horse and a rooster." 

It says Lue's name was known throughout Florida, and that prominent fruit growers from throughout the state had visited him and "learned to admire his honest and earnest character." 

The article says Lue had only left his farm once in the past seven years, meaning since 1910, "not even visiting his nearby city of DeLand."

Perhaps DeLand wasn't always welcoming to Lue, especially after the woman who adopted him died and left him her land and house in the early 1900s. His grave in DeLand's Oakdale Cemetery was left unmarked until a New York historian place a bronze marker on it five years after Lue's death. Yet the Orange County Regional History Center's webpage about Lue says prominent citizens served as pallbearers. So who knows. I do know Lue's grave didn't have a headstone until 1999. 

The 1917 Miami Herald article continues by stating Lue was often defrauded and ripped off, to use today's terms, and couldn't pay his bills. The writer calls on readers to support a fund drive ($1 apiece) to raise money for Lue. And to "make him realize there is something more than mere words in the Christianity he has adopted..."

Did it help? Hard to say. Maybe for a while. But it wasn't enough. Five years later, on December 8, 1922, the Manatee River Journal-Bradenton Herald headlined an article with this: "Chinese 'Burbank' of Florida Going Broke." (Burbank was a noted horticulturist of the times.) 

The article reports that the aged - he was 63 - and internationally known Lue was dependent on the generosity of friends. It describes him as "feeble and broken," with a heavy mortgage on his property and in danger of foreclosure.

It also notes that Lue had only visited downtown DeLand four times over the past 16 years. That's four times between 1906 and 1922. 

By the end of the month, The Florida Grower was fundraising again for Lue. A Florida Grower article was reprinted in the December 28, 1922, Manatee River Journal. It urges readers to pledge $100 each to help Lue meet a payment deadline and secure a new mortgage on his property. A large amount was coming due - $5,700 on January 1, 1923. That's the equivalent of about $95,000 in 2022.

I don't know the end of the story. Haven't yet found more vintage newspaper coverage. But I did find an article about one man who supported the fund drive, contributed $100 and pledged to give more if needed. That person was Bishop Frederick Leete of the Episcopal diocese of Florida.

The family name of Leete was one of the oldest and best known in DeLand at the time. Its members contributed to the city's founding. Bishop Leete grew up in DeLand and had known Lue. He also knew Lue had faced discrimination.

The DeLand Sun on January 5, 1923, carried a reprint from the Tampa Times in which Leete is quoted. Leete lauded the Florida Grower fundraising effort, urged others to contribute and lamented that Lue had reached such a low point. His next statement is poignant:

"I do not need to tell you that Lue has not been altogether well treated by the Philistines.* He is also a little too good for this wicked world."

Leete closed with what could be taken as an admonition to DeLand: "The home of my boyhood is too splendid a city to allow any serious calamity to happen to this remarkable man."

Some people in DeLand rose to the occasion. Others didn't. Today, DeLand embraces Lue and pays him the tribute he deserves. 

Rest in Peace, Lue. Your contributions are not forgotten.

Digging up veggie varieties of past

Early settlers knew the value of kitchen
gardens, as this photo from Florida's state
archives shows.

A head of iceberg lettuce costs $2.79 to $4 or more right now. Yikes. Time to grow my own like the pioneers did.

Fall and winter in Florida are prime growing seasons for many vegetables, including lettuce. Head lettuce can be tricky in home gardens, but leafy kinds grow really well. 

Large kitchen gardens were common sights in early Florida homesteads. I used to have a fair-sized vegetable garden, about 8 feet by 10 feet. Now I have container gardens because arthritis dictates my moves.

You can do a lot with containers. My husband's Earth box of scallions is looking good. Some of my buttercrunch and romaine lettuces, grown from transplants, have already shown up on the dinner table. Seedlings of leaf and romaine lettuces, radishes and carrots have sprouted and are ready for transplanting. Sounds like a haul, but it isn't and doesn't require a lot of space or time.

Still, I can run to the supermarket if I have a crop failure. Vegetable gardening wasn't a hobby for pioneer Floridians. Healthful survival often depended on what could be procured by a settler's own hand. Of course stores stocked and sold food. Many settlers relied on stores only for staples they couldn't produce themselves, such as flour, coffee and tea. 

I've always wondered what varieties of vegetables Floridians grew in the 1800s and early 1900s. Among the many things lost to the past are numerous distinctive vegetable varieties. Some modern companies and organizations specialize in heirloom seed stocks, thankfully. But many regional varieties are long gone.

Bermuda onions are
an old favorite. This
drawing is from the
1885 garden book.

That's sad, because regional varieties are known for having adapted to their locations over generations of growth. These sturdy plants didn't require coddling and they produced good yields. 

Over the years, I've grown some old-timey varieties with varying degrees of success. It's always fun to experiment with them. I like searching out old garden guides to see what types of vegetables were recommended for Florida. One gold-mine book was published in 1885. Gardening in Florida, A Treatise on the Vegetables and Tropical Products of Florida, was written by J.N Whitner, A.M. He was a professor of agriculture at Florida Agricultural College in Lake City in north Florida. 

Professor Whitner gave cultivation instructions for numerous vegetables and suggested certain varieties of each. Here are his choices for Florida gardeners in 1885:

• Asparagus - Colossal, Defiance
• Bush Beans - Early Mohawk, Golden Wax, Black Wax, Red and White Valentine, Long Yellow Six weeks
• Pole Beans - Giant Wax, Dreer's Improved Lima
• Beet - for the table: Egyptian Turnip, Early Blood Turnip, Early Yellow Turnip, Pine Apple; for feeding stock: Mangel Wurzel, Long Red, Long Yellow Mangel Wurzel
• Borecole (known today as Kale) - Dwarf German Greens, Green Curled Scotch, Purple Borecole
• Broccoli - White Cape, Purple Cape, Early Walcheren
• Cabbage - Early Jersey Wakefield, Early Winningstadt, Fottler's Improved Early Brunswick, Early Giant Bleichfield, Flat Dutch, Henderson's Early Summer, Improved American Savoy
• Carrots - Half Long Red, Danvers, Long Orange Improved
• Cauliflower - Early Snowball, Extra Early Paris, Extra Early Dwarf Erfurt
• Celery - Incomparable Dwarf White, Incomparable Dwarf Crimson, Boston Market, Golden Heart, White Plumed
• Corn - Egyptian Sweet, Sewell's Evergreen, Mammoth Sugar, Tuscarora
• Cucumber - Improved White Spine, Green Prolific, Long Green
• Eggplant - New York Improved, Black Pekin, Scarlet Fruited, White Fruited
• Lettuce - Green Fringed, Black Seeded Simpson, All the Year Round
• Okra - Giant, Dwarf
• Onion - Giant Rocca, New Queen, New Neapolitan Marzajola, Bermuda (the Bermuda was so popular it had its own separate write-up)
• Parsnip - Hollow Crown
• Parsley - Carter's Fern Leaved, Fine Triple Curled, Myatt's Garnishing
• Pea (green pea not field pea) - Ferry's First and Best, Bliss' American Wonder, McLean's Little Gem, Carter's Little Wonder, Prize-Taker Green Marrow, Fill Basket, Veitch's Perfection, Champion of England, Early Dwarf Wrinkled
• Radish - Long Scarlet Short Top, Scarlet Turnip, White Tipped Scarlet Turnip, Yellow Summer Turnip
• Spinach - Improved Round Leaved
• Squash - Yellow and White Bush Scalloped Squash, Boston Marrow, Hubbard
• Tomato - Acme, Hathaway's Excelsior, Golden Trophy
• Turnip - Early White Dutch, Early Red Top Dutch, White Globe

Some of those names are mouthfuls. I was surprised at the number of pea selections and mystified by the minimal tomato choices. Tomatoes usually take up pages in modern vegetable seed catalogs. I was happy to see Black Seeded Simpson among the lettuce options. That variety is part of my current crop of lettuce seedlings because it's a proven winner. It's neat that it's been grown in the state for over 125 years.

I recognized the Danvers carrot and Snowball cauliflower because the varieties are still around and I've grown them in the past. I once tried Sewell's Evergreen corn as an experiment. It wasn't very sweet at all. Most of the other heirloom variety names are mysteries to me.

I may envy these past gardeners the seed choices lost to us today. But other aspects of gardening in Florida are best left in the past. The book's section on fertilizers offers specifics on how to dissolve bones to create bone meal for working into the soil. It was a days-long process. Just reading about it made me tired. And glad a bag of balanced organic fertilizer is sitting on the garden shelf in my garage. 

Tracing birth of Key Lime Pie

Key Lime Pie photo by Marc Averette
from Wikimedia Commons

Key Lime Pie is pretty much the Florida dessert. Of course it's fitting that the pie's provenance traces to Key West. I mean, where else? Of a less flippant note is the story behind its creation.

Legend says a woman named Aunt Sally created the now-famous pie recipe in the late 1800s in what is today the historic Amsterdam-Curry Mansion Inn. Older versions of the story suggest that Sally was a cook who worked for the Curry family that owned the property at the time.

When I first heard the story, I wondered if Aunt Sally was a woman of color. Kitchen jobs in that place and time were almost always filled by women of color. They didn't have many employment options from which to choose. Unless they ran their own business, they were usually pushed into cook, maid, nanny and other domestic jobs.

Also, in the post-Civil War South, mature woman of color were often called Aunt or Auntie. I thought it sad no one knew the full name of the woman who created such an amazing pie. It seemed insulting to just credit it to Aunt Sally.

But we do know Aunt Sally's full name, or at least we think we do. She wasn't an employee. She was a member of the Curry family.

She dreamed up the delicious dessert in the Caroline Street home built in the 1860s by patriarch William Curry. The structure predates the current Amsterdam-Curry Mansion Inn on the same site. The current mansion was built in 1901 by William's son Milton, according to the inn's website.

The online history says Milton demolished everything except the cookhouse in 1901. Today, the only parts of that once-saved structure to remain "are the brick chimney and tiled hearth that once contained the wood-burning stove." One can imagine Aunt Sally standing on that spot and perfecting her pie recipe.

So who was she? The best theory is that she was Sarah Jane Lowe Curry, wife of one of William Curry's other sons, Charles. 

A 2019 article in the Keys Weekly by David Sloan dug into the background. David unearthed census records and more in his quest to find a cook named Sally in late 19th and early 20th century Key West. He came up empty. 

His father, a genealogist, picked up the trail and found Sarah Jane. She and her husband lived next door to the William Curry/Milton Curry house. Sarah Jane was white and is believed to have been Bahamian. She was affectionately known as Aunt Sally by the numerous Curry nieces and nephews. It was a large extended family. 

I lean toward this story rather than the one put forth in 2018 by an author who claimed Key Westians did little but improve a Borden company recipe for a condensed-milk citrus pie. David Sloan is the author of the Key West Key Lime Cookbook. He ought to know.

So there you have it. An unproven but plausible story about the birth of Key Lime Pie. Now you need a recipe to go with it. I have an old -- 30 years? more? - recipe sheet from what was then known as The Curry Mansion Inn. The paper is old enough to contain the early version of the legend. The recipe, however, remains timeless. 

INGREDIENTS

4 eggs, separated

1/2 cup key lime juice

14-oz. can sweetened condensed milk

1/3 cup sugar

Graham cracker crust in 8-inch pie pan

Beat egg yolks until light and thick. Blend in lime juice, then milk, stirring until mixture thickens. Pour mixture into pie shell. Beat egg whites with cream of tartar until stiff. Gradually beat in sugar, beating until glossy peaks form. Spread egg whites over surface of pie to edge of crust. Bake at 350 degrees F. until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Chill before serving.

I know, meringue. It's a lot of work. That's the traditional recipe, though. If you don't like that version, there are lots of other ones floating around online. Just be sure to always, always, always make Key Lime Pie with the juice of the small, round, greenish-yellow key limes, never ever with those bright green limes usually seen in supermarkets. If you're going through the trouble to make the pie, you want the real thing.

Cheap fabric and oversized sleeves

The seamstress heroine of my 2nd novel
was too fashionable to fall for this trend

I spent so much time paging through an online 1896 Sears Roebuck catalog that I gathered enough for two blog posts.

Last month, we looked at the catalog's grocery section. Today I'm focused on the fabric department.

Both posts connect to how the characters in my Persimmon Hollow novels would have been familiar with Sears catalogs. I've just reprinted Books 1 and 2 with a new publisher and new covers that fit the theme of Book 3's cover. 

The novels are set in the late 1800s. Fast fashion as we know it today didn't exist in 1896 pioneer Florida. Yes, a person could buy ready-to-wear clothing in stores and from catalogs. But each item was purchased with an eye toward longevity. Most women and probably a lot of men knew how to sew and make garments. They spent quite a bit of time doing so. Far more than today. 

The heroine of my second novel is a seamstress named Josefa. She perfects her craft through an apprenticeship with the town dressmaker. Any author will tell you their characters seem like real people to them. I'm no exception. I can imagine Josefa poring over the fabric selections of the Sears catalog.

The section wasn't named "Fabric." No, it was the Dress Goods Department. It started on page 136, right after a page selling cheese box machines and creamery butter tubs.

Dress Goods depicted “all the newest and choicest products of foreign and domestic looms for the fall and winter season of 1897.” That wasn't all. There also was material touted as year-round fabric and a promise that “all the popular new up-to-date fancy brocades, Jacquards, two toned effects” were always in stock in great variety.

The prices almost made me swoon. A two-color diamond pattern brocade sold for 11 cents a yard. A wool serge was 25 cents yard and scotch wool plaid 29 cents.

Silk was an uptown price, hovering at 98 cents a yard, while soft, fleecy flannel went for 6 and 3/4 cents a yard. If you wanted basic, unbleached cotton flannel, you could have it for 4 cents a yard. Gingham was slightly more expensive: 4 and 1/2 cents a yard. Percales were double that price, or 9 cents a yard.Don't ask me how they figured change when dealing with half- and quarter-cent pricing.

My astonishment grew as I reached the pages that advertised quilts. One seven-pound bed quilt measured 72x78 inches. It was made of twilled sateen, red lining and carded cotton fill and it featured something called "fancy quilting." The price was...are you ready...$1.50. I searched to discover the equivalent of that price in purchasing power today. The result: $52.91.

Seamstress Josefa would definitely have spent time perusing the quilts, household linens and ready-to-wear sections of the catalog. She would have looked for fashion trends, judged the latest styles and determined what would and wouldn't work in her frontier Florida environment of Persimmon Hollow.

One fashion at the peak of popularity at that time was the ridiculous bubble sleeve that puffed out four or five times the width of the wearer’s arm. I’d have skipped that trend had I lived back then. Just like I skipped the whole cold-shoulder blouse trend of recent years.

My seamstress heroine had better fashion sense than to wear those massive winglike sleeves. She had style and taste. Of that I'm sure. I know her pretty well. :) 

1896 Sears catalog Amazon of its day

Detail of a page from the 1896 Sears catalog

I stumbled across the 1896 Sears Roebuck catalog on—of all places—Ancestry.com. Of course I proceeded to spend too much time there. 

My main interest lies in how old catalogs depict items used in everyday life. Another reason is the time period. Paging through the catalog digitally reminded me that characters in my novels would have thumbed through the real thing. The 600-plus-page catalog was the Amazon of its day.

My novels are in my mind because I’ve just re-released the Kindle version of Books 1 and 2 in the Persimmon Hollow series. I got the rights back from the publisher, who no longer sells the books. Now I’m scrambling to get them reprinted with new covers. So far, the Kindle versions are available on Amazon. Paperback is coming soon, as well as versions for other ebook platforms.

The characters in my novels live in a late 19th century world. They would have received the Sears catalog in the mail. And even ordered groceries from it. The 1896 catalog included an entire grocery section, much to my surprise. 

It’s like the “everything old is new again” adage. People 125 years ago ordered groceries from home just like people do today. On paper, not online, true. And who knows how the shipments arrived in areas outside regular mail delivery back then. It’s fun to think about.

In addition to groceries and household items, the catalog featured a sizable pharmacy section. All kinds of tinctures, potions, lotions, oils and other ingredients were offered, enough to stock a  pharmaceutical factory. You could even buy laudanum (23 cents for a 2-oz. bottle). 

The pharmacy section’s offerings were a cross between a modern drugstore’s selections and the homeopathic remedies found at health food stores. Except it’s now illegal to purchase some of the ingredients that old catalog sold.

I noticed another indication of the same-but-different mantra. Customers in 1896 could order tea that came from Japan, China, Formosa and Ceylon. People living in the time of my novels would have recognized all four locations. Today, we’re most familiar with Japan and China. Formosa back then was a name associated with the island of Taiwan. Ceylon was the British colonial name of the now-independent country of Sri Lanka. 

Sears particularly touted its Golden Tips Ceylon and Ungalora Ceylon teas as the healthiest, best flavored and most economical of all teas. But customers could choose from among several types of teas. Prices ranged from 19 cents to 51 cents per pound, depending on grade and quantity.

There was no popping a cup of water in the microwave to heat up tea water in those days. If you want to brew tea the way they did in 1896, the catalog shared the following instructions:

“Make it at the table; heat the pot, then pour in water that has just come to a boil (not water that has been boiling for some time), put the tea on top of water, let stand from 2 to 7 minutes and pour into cups or other pot; do not let it stand on leaves as that destroys the delicate flavor so much desired.”

I think I’ll go make myself a cup of tea. With some help from the microwave.

Here are the new covers for my novels. 

Building the Florida dream

Aerial image of early Deltona

I'm expanding the parameters of my blog today. The 1960s in Florida pretty much seem like pioneer history at this point. 

OK, I know, it's a bit far-fetched to write about the 1960s when I describe the blog as having a late 1800s-early 1900s focus. But Florida still wasn't heavily developed in the early 1960s.

One of the most interesting aspects of that decade is the way planned communities took hold in the state. One of the companies that led the movement was the family-owned Mackle Company.

I recalled their influence when my hubby found an amazing 1960s video in which one of the Mackle brothers spoke at length about the company's many initiatives in the state. The video seems to have been filmed in the late 1960s or possibly early 1970s.

Mackle mega-developments have taken some rap over the years. But on this video you'll hear some prescient comments. Frank E. Mackle Jr. predicted water as the resource needing the most careful shepherding. He spoke about the need for what we today call greenbelts and about how the Mackles included parks in their planned communities. 

The Mackles' Florida communities were launched more than half a century ago and today are some of the state's large cities. The one I'm most familiar with is Deltona, as I live near there. The photo with this blog post shows the community when construction was in full boom, in the late 1960s. The empty land at top right helps illustrate the before-and-after. 

Today, Deltona is a city of more than 90,000 residents. It's the most-populous city in the county I live in. My city of residence, founded more than a century earlier in the 1870s, has about 35,000 residents.

The other Mackle communities across the state also mushroomed - Spring Hill, Marco Island and others. Marco Island was the upscale one, but the others offered truly affordable housing.

In the early 1960s, a one-bedroom house with lot included cost just under $7,000 in Deltona. That comes in at about $79,000 in today's dollars. Today's tiny houses in planned communities tend to start somewhere in the $300,000s.

The Mackle-built communities faced growing pains, as you can read in a 1985 Orlando Sentinel* article. But they continued growing. The Mackles did a lot of advertising and public relations, and people responded.

The company even displayed one of their Florida houses at the 1964 World's Fair in New York. I remember. I saw it and walked through it. My eight-year-old self was mightily impressed. Didn't known at the time it was a Mackle house in Deltona. I only saw a bright, airy depiction of the Florida dream. 

That dream is still bringing people today.

---

When gold grew on trees

A homestead grove in pre-modern Florida
might have looked like this 1904 one.
Credit: Library of Congress

Oranges are on my mind. I just finished reading Florida Oranges, A Colorful History, by Erin Thursby (American Palate, 2019). What a delicious book, pun intended. It's an enjoyable journey that illustrates just how deeply citrus and Florida are intertwined.

One of the hardest things for me to grasp was how much citrus dominated the state and its people in the past. When some people stampeded to the West to strike gold, others flocked to Florida where a different type of gold grew on trees. 

Advice for the Florida bound was plentiful. Books and pamphlets shared all kinds of details. One of these books in my online library is The Florida Settler, published in 1873. It covers more than citrus, but that’s the section I zoomed to. 

Lemons and limes were plentiful and productive in the state at that time. The author says the following about lime production in South Florida: “So profuse is the yield of fruit that in some places the ground is literally covered with it.” (49) Lime juice, the author adds, is “unquestionably the best remedy that can be employed in scurvy.” (49)

But oranges were king, and they grab the most attention of the fruits listed. The author says that, in the two years before the book’s publication - 1872 and 1871 - more than 2 million orange trees were planted in counties that bordered the St. Johns River. 

A person could get in on the action fairly easily. A “man of means” could set up a 10-acre citrus grove for $1,150, a little more than $28,000 today.* The price assumes the grower contracts out all the work. The valuation of the various components boggles me. The land itself - the 10 acres - cost only $25. The inflated worth of that amount is still only about $630 today. Imagine, 10 acres for less than the cost of a new smartphone. You could secure an online loan for that amount in minutes. 

Land clearing is budgeted at far more - $200 for the 10 acres. Breaking the ground after clearing is another $90 and fencing the property also another $90. That $380 amounts to nearly $10,000 today. 

The largest expenditure was $600 for 600 orange trees, each four years old. That’s $1 a tree. It equates to about $25 a tree today. Buying 600 at a time would put a dent in your budget: $600 in 1873 is some $15,000 today. 

Costs for moving and planting the trees were estimated at $100 ($2,500). Let’s not forget a year’s worth of fertilizer: five sacks of Peruvian guano at $9 each, for a total of $45. That would be expensive today - the $9 sacks would each cost $225. But we don’t know how big a sack was in 1873. It had to be large, because only five of them would last a year.

The "Man of Means" price chart is on page 41 of the Florida Settler book. It assumes the best of everything. The author points out that land clearing could be half the estimated account if the foliage wasn’t too thick. Two-year-old trees could be bought for 25 cents each. 

And who needs fences, when, as the author states, “the most successful of the old planters actually herd their cows around the young trees for weeks at a time, and maintain their trees by ‘cow-penning,’ using a fence for the purpose of keeping the cattle in the grove, instead of keeping them out.” (Emphasis included in the original text.)

The author helpfully follows luxury grove expenditures with a plan for those of lesser means. (42) “Cost for a Poor Man” began with free homesteaded land. Out of those 160 acres, 10 acres would be chosen for a grove. Existing trees would be deadened instead of removed, for $4 ($100). This man would raise his hundreds of trees from seed, from an initial outlay of $25 ($630). The biggest costs were for plowing, $50 ($1,260) and for planting and manure, $100 ($2,500). 

In all, the "poor man" could start his grove for $193 ($4,860), less if he did his own plowing, planting and other field work. 

Aside from the hard physical labor, a big difference in the two types of groves showed up in payback. A citrus tree starts to bear fully at about eight years old. The luxury grove would provide good returns in four years. The economy one wouldn’t show a profit for eight years. But it could be done. 

Within a decade, the economy grove would generate revenue between $5,000 ($126,000) and $10,000 a year ($252,000), according to the book. What that man needed most to get started was “patience and industry.” True words even today.

The author based his revenue estimates on the era's long-established groves. The famed Dummitt’s grove on the Indian River yielded 600,000 oranges in 1872. Dummittt earned $11,000 and production and maintenance had only cost $1,000. A grower named Hart in Palatka earned $15,000 to $20,000 a year from his grove, and another grower in Mellonville (now Sanford) earned $12,000 to $15,000 a year. These are all in 1873 dollars. The groves were sized between 1,100 and 3,000 trees.

The author happily noted the lack of problems with citrus, with scale being the most prevalent concern. No citrus canker, and certainly no citrus greening. 

The groves that once blanketed the state are long gone except in South Florida. Even within my lifetime, I remember seeing massive groves in Central Florida, but no more. What the freezes didn’t destroy, bacteria, viruses, and land developments did. 

In other blog posts, I’ve lamented the loss of abundant harvests from my backyard Meyer lemon and Robinson tangerine trees. Greening felled both trees. I’ve got a peach tree in their place now. The fruit is delicious. But it doesn’t say Florida the way citrus does - or did. I’m not sure anything can.

If you enjoy learning about citrus, read both the modern book and the older one. The full, cumbersome title of the 1873 one is: The Florida Settler, or Immigrants’ Guide; A Complete Manual of Information Concerning the Climate, Soils, Products and Resources of the State. 

Although I’ve cited the author throughout this post, the man who penned the book doesn’t call himself that. The title page says the book was “Prepared by D. Eagan, Commissioner of Lands and Immigration." It was printed in Tallahassee on July 1, 1873. I just realized that means it was printed a year shy of 150 years ago. Such a distant past is hard to conceptualize. So much has changed. But citrus has endured.

Give thanks for libraries

Are you a fan of libraries as I am? They've been part of my life since I learned to read. Right now, Catholic authors and publishers are hosting a Stock the Shelves campaign to encourage readers to ask their local libraries to stock books that reflect Catholic and/or Orthodox perspectives and worldviews. And Lord knows the world needs more of the moral compasses on which those worldviews and perspectives are built. 

You can read more about the campaign on my website. The official campaign dates are May 15-June 1, 2022 but I'm going to keep the Stock the Shelves page live on my website. There's no deadline on the idea of adding more good books to libraries.

Working on my campaign webpage made me wonder about the history of libraries in Florida. Superficial research revealed some immediate surprises. The Marion County library website said that two other nearby counties - Levy and Citrus - plus the Marion County city of Ocala formed the Central Florida Regional Library in 1961. That's right, 1961, practically modern times. 

Meanwhile the city of Seminole's website notes that the Seminole Community Library was founded in 1960. Another midcentury America founding. What took so long? What were Floridians doing about libraries in the 1880s, 1890s, and early years of the 1900s? 

My guess is early libraries were small and scattered, hosted in the homes or clubs of civic-minded individuals or set up via subscription. Libraries have to evolve to survive. One look inside a modern facility tells you that. So the Florida library of 100 or 120 years ago must have been vastly different than anything I can imagine. 

I browsed a bit more and was delighted to find a document titled Florida Library History Project - Volusia County Public Library in the University of South Florida's digital collections. Delighted because of what I learned and because Volusia County is the county in which I live. And, because finding that link led me to the entire Florida Library History Project's digital files. These types of discoveries are what make the rabbit hole of research so enticing.

But the first paragraph of the document chilled me. The first sentence says that, before the federal Library Services Act was enacted in the mid-1950s, "libraries were frequently substandard or non-existent, particularly in rural areas." I give thanks to have been born and raised in crowded Brooklyn, N.Y, where libraries were established early and where branches were often within walking distance. I visited my local library every week in the 1960s. And I know my parents did the same in their Brooklyn youths.

I especially appreciated my youthful access when I read the document's next sentence. Before the mid-1950s, in Florida, more than 2 million people had no access to libraries. And only 25 percent of the state's population had adequate access. I could cry at reading that. What did the poor, rural, intelligent child hungry for books and knowledge do?

I had no idea libraries were such latecomers to many scenes. Volusia County's countywide effort began in 1949. The document's explanations about earlier efforts likely mirrors what occurred in other places in Florida. Women's clubs, membership associations, or small municipal reading rooms served as local libraries. Books were often second-hand and donated by the sponsors. 

Go visit your nearby library and be thankful it exists. Join the local Friends of the Library if you can, to support supplemental projects that aren't funded through other means. I love online libraries but nothing beats a browse through the shelves in person. Shrinking though those shelves might be. I realize - as I already said -  that libraries must continue to evolve if they want to continue to exist. I get it. Just have to remind myself sometimes.

But right now, I'll go spend too much time cruising through the Library History Project's online collection. I know it has to be rich in period details about libraries starting small and starting as labors of love and community-mindedness. 

Most - if not all - of today's precious libraries have roots in the hearts and minds of regular people who loved to read, loved to learn, loved books, and loved to help others gain access to the same. For that, we all can give thanks. Support your local library. It's a treasure. And ask them to stock books you'd like to read.

Happy reading!

Melancholy a depressing subject

Detail from 1860s Degas painting titled
'Melancholy.' Credit: Phillips Collection

What pioneers would have called melancholy has been stalking me lately. I've lived on the depression/anxiety spectrum for decades. My condition is controlled but I'm fairly certain it'll never be cured. That's okay. I deal with it. 

At least now, in the 21st century, we can talk about mental health issues. That wasn't done when I was younger. I was told I was sensitive and moody. 

So, if the subject was taboo as recently as my youth - a half century back - what did people do about melancholy in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries? Especially on sparsely settled frontiers?

I hopped over to Project Gutenberg to see what publications of earlier eras might have to say. If you're not familiar with Project Gutenberg and you love old, public-domain books, please get acquainted! You'll be delighted. 

My first perusal predated the years I discuss in this blog. Observations on Madness and Melancholy by John Haslam was published in 1809 in London. The author was an apothecary and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons.

Oddly, the text coupled madness and melancholy. Every chapter and sub-heading was about insanity. Melancholy didn't seem to be a separate topic. 

I left Dr. Haslam's 350-page tome unread after searching for mentions of melancholy and finding only eight, including the one in the title. I searched for other offerings. The Anatomy of Melancholy looked promising. But it turned out to be a 19th century edition of a 1683 book. It, too, contained little about depression. Plus, I couldn't get past the fussy, overwritten prefaces and the frequent use of Latin.

Then I found a gold-mine, an abstract of a 1986 research paper originally written in German. It explained why those early books avoided discussions about depression. Turns out that use of the word melancholy as a euphemism for depression was a fairly recent development - within the last century (dating from the time the paper was written). 

The academic paper featured historical notes about depression therapy. The abstract is short but fascinating. The Arabs had separate wards for mentally struggling patients as far back as the 8th century. Renaissance doctors emphasized the importance of diet for depressed patients. Eggs, meat, fish, and grapes were particularly recommended.

Opium was widely used as treatment in the 19th and into the 20th century. Doctors in the 19th century also relied on many other treatments. Some made sense to my 21st century eyes: baths and massage. Others, not at all: arsenic. You can read the abstract at the National Library of Medicine's website: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3541174/

People in pioneer settings often lacked access to extensive medical care. I like to think they discovered the same self-help ideas I stumbled upon through the years. Exercise, at least in my case, is guaranteed to lift spirits. It's an after-effect. You have to exercise first. Staying busy is a tool in my arsenal. Sunshine helps, too. Lots of sunshine. Gratitude and prayer, too. 

They're not complete answers but they're worth doing along with what doctors recommend. I'm turning my face toward the sun.

Health landscape was no picnic

This journal edition celebrated
the centennial of public health
care in Florida

Family health matters are claiming my time, energy and focus right now. I'm distracted and not thinking about my monthly blog post. But the deadline is here. 

Since health is foremost in my mind, I did a Google search about Florida's health history. I found an interesting Florida Department of Health PDF created in 1989 to mark the centennial of public health care in the state. It's a reprint, with permission, of an article that ran in the Florida Journal of Public Health that same year. 

The author, William J. Bigler, Ph.D., had been with the state health department since the 1950s and had a firm grip on the facts. Some of those facts, though, were scary. 

I like to think about the sunnier side of life in pioneer Florida. Diseases, pests, unsanitary conditions and lack of medical knowledge remind me there were other sides to life. The document's information made me thankful for progress made in healthcare and medical technology since the late 1800s and early 1900s. We've come light years, really. 

Here are some of the issues early Floridians encountered at various times and in various parts of the state: smallpox, yellow fever, dengue fever, tuberculosis, malaria, cholera, typhoid, black plague. The plague struck just once, at least according to records. But that once was in the twentieth century - 1920 to be exact. Yellow fever, on the other hand, terrorized Floridians repeatedly. In one example, the PDF recounts how all but 100 of Fernandina's then-population of 1,600 were infected in 1877. Hundreds of them died. 

And, of course, there was the 1918 influenza pandemic, known at the time as Spanish flu. It lasted a few years, as our COVID one is doing. But they didn't have a vaccine that worked in 1918. In one month alone that year, the death rate was 29 percent. Over a four-month period, it was about 25 percent.

Well, this blog post has certainly been less than cheerful. I'm distracted by family matters and sad about the war victims in Ukraine and weary that yet another COVID variant is rearing its head. At least it's not causing severe illness. I'll take any good news I can get.

If you've a mind to read more, take a look at the documents available on the Florida Health Association's website page devoted to the history of Florida's public health. And be glad we live when we do.

Sicilian needlework stories wait to be told

My grandmother Rose Russo embroidered
this in the early 1900s. 

Maybe I'm not looking in the right places. Dig as I might, I find little about the cutwork embroidery and other needlework done by immigrant Sicilian and other Italian women in early 20th century Florida. Yet I know it was being done.

I wonder where those works of art are today. Handed down in families? Or are they the pieces I see for sale on eBay, Facebook and elsewhere online?

The question arose after I recently took out and refolded the family heirloom linens I inherited. My Sicilian immigrant grandmother created them in New York City between 1910 and 1918. In the same era, a sizeable cluster of Sicilian immigrant women lived and worked in Tampa's Ybor City. Information about their role in the city's cigar-making industries is fairly easy to locate. Information about their domestic lives, not so much.

Yet, as historian and USF professor emeritus Gary Mormino pointed out in a 1983 Florida Historical Quarterly article about Ybor City Italian women, it was family - not work - that was the primary focus of these women. That was true even when they worked outside the home.

Everyone labored to ensure the family survived and thrived. In the early 20th century, Sicilian children routinely were pulled from school and sent to work. My grandmother had only a third-grade education. Her counterparts in Florida had similar experiences.

Mormino's article isn't about needlework. But within it, a sentence tells me how much the traditional and cultural Sicilian skill remained an integral part of immigrant life in Ybor City: "While at home, Italian women somehow found time to continue the handicraft arts of sewing, crocheting, and embroidering."

My Sicilian grandmother worked in a sweatshop, yet turned out beautiful embroidered needlework including the piece pictured with this blog. She was from the same region of Sicily as most of the Sicilian women in Ybor City. Needlework was an important part of their lives. It wasn't a hobby as it is today for me. They were making bed and table linens for their trousseaus. They were preparing for future family life.

So, I have a lot of questions. Did these women in Tampa sit and sew together? Did they bring handworks-in-progress to community outings? Did the needlework provide cultural closeness to all they'd left behind? Where did the designs come from? What stores supplied the fabric and thread? Were the materials mailed to the women by relatives? 

Above all, where did all that beautiful cutwork embroidery and other needlework go? I speak of the pieces that were special, not the everyday ones used until threadbare. Some of the fine needlework is artistic and belongs in museums. Is it showcased anywhere?

Traditionally, the finest pieces were handed down. But even that practice is fading. Younger generations aren't as interested in the heirloom linens. Yet each piece has a face, a life, a story behind it. They cry out to be remembered.

Digging up the past

Shards give tantalizing glimpse of life on
Tick Island. Photo credit and copyright:
Florida Museum of Natural History

Last month, I wrote about historical facts surrounding the life of the heroine of my new novel, Growing A Family in Persimmon Hollow. This month, I do the same for the hero.

He's an archaeologist who's fascinated by the pre-Columbian history of the novel's Central Florida setting. True enough. The time and place intrigued scholars and amateurs in the late 1800s. But I had to stretch historical truth. The hero is the son of Italian immigrant parents who own a produce market in the Northeast. It's doubtful such a person would ever have breached the academic firewalls of the era's Ivy League.

In the novel, he's mentored by an eccentric, now-retired professor unusually free of the biases found in elite academia at the time. And the hero reached college only because a teaching sister in Catholic parochial school noticed and nurtured his intelligence.

Such individual attention in elementary school also would have been hard to come by in reality. Both my parents were the children of immigrants in the early 20th century. There were 30 to 40 children to a classroom. Many raced home after school to help their parents so the family could survive. My father did manage to get a college education, but he did so by attending night classes at a Catholic college while working full time during the day. He chose a business major that would lead to a staid career. I suspect he would rather have been an artist. It became a hobby.

I think I better plan some future blog posts about immigrants and education. Back to the novel's topic for now. In real history, archaeological remains suffered indignities in 19th century Florida and elsewhere. Then, as now, scholarly controversies and debates raged. So I imagine some archaeologists were sensitive to the humanity behind the findings. Others, not so much.

Burial and trash-filled shell mounds left by former civilizations were leveled in the name of scientific discovery. Professionals occasionally boasted about how quickly their workers demolished a site. They crowed over the number of artifacts unearthed. 

Amateur pot-hunters were busy then, too, and did serious damage. Untold numbers of artifacts were carted off. On the plus side, some scholars of the time recorded their findings meticulously. I could spend hours paging through The East Florida Expeditions of Clarence Bloomfield Moore. 

That was in the late 1800s and very early 1900s. By the first decades of the 20th century, town officials got involved. They viewed shell mounds - many still existed then - as free road-fill and paving material. 

When I worked in print journalism, local history stories were among my favorite assignments. I'll never forget one interview. An elderly gentlemen recalled youthful days of riding his bicycle behind trucks that were hauling shell into town for use on roads. He and his friends scooped up the artifacts that fell, literally fell, out of the trucks. He said town leaders  were proud of themselves for using the shell to pave roads. They were saving tax dollars.

The novel's hero learns the true 
value of archaeological discoveries.

Yes, it makes us cringe today. In the novel, a secondary character of Seminole and European descent points out what the hero doesn't want to see and what other characters don't realize. The hero's increasing awareness is part of his character growth. 

Much was lost in Florida before scholarly approaches changed and protective laws were passed. As late as the 1960s, dredging, pot hunting, and archaeological expeditions were simultaneously taking place on Tick Island in the middle St. Johns River valley. An estimated 175 burials were found along with numerous artifacts that made their way to museums or private collections. I've heard old-timers say that boxes - boxes! - full of priceless artifacts were hauled away. Local belief is that only a percentage of what's there has been found.

This important archaeological site is closed to the public today. Luckily for history and humanity, there's a good reason for the island's name. The place is also hard to access. And home to many alligators and poisonous water moccasin snakes. 

Tick Island seems to have been a significant ceremonial site. Perhaps someday, modern mapping tools, ground-penetrating radar, and other archaeological methods can tell us more about the people who once lived there. And do so without disturbing or harming anything on site. We can hope.