Finding frontier joy

Citrus groves surrounded by pine forests
were a common sight in pioneer Florida.
Image credit: Florida Memory state archives,
https://www.floridamemory.com

Women in the 19th century had little legal or social recourse when husbands decided to move their families to frontier areas. Citrus fever caused more than a few such moves to Florida. 

Relocating from a settled, populated Northern or Midwestern state to a semi-tropical wilderness was a shock to many a newcomer. Many places have local history stories of a wife who spent her first months here crying. My own town has such a story. 

Prevailing attitudes at the time assumed that women who ended up here labored unwillingly and unceasingly and were unhappy and unfulfilled. The business of growing citrus empires and settling new towns was men's work. 

Or was it? Certainly, in some cases wives and daughters disliked living in Florida. But many women exhibited resilience, resourcefulness and joy in their new life. They discovered a freedom denied them by the social rules and structures "back home."

Even the woman in my town's history dried her tears and shook off her homesickness. She set out to find every settler she could in the vicinity. Why? She was fundraising. She wanted a church built. And she succeeded.

Come to my Sunland, the letters of pioneer Julia Daniels Moseley, likewise contains vivid accounts of how she first struggled, then came to love, the area near Tampa where she and her husband settled in the 1880s. It's a book worth reading.

These weren't outlier stories. Information in an article in the Summer 2012 (volume 91) issue of the Florida Historical Society Quarterly reinforces that. 

The main focus of the article by John T. Foster, Sarah Whitmer Foster, and Roscoe A. Turnquest is about a journalist named Ellen Augusta Morgan Hill. She expanded the depth and breadth of the women's page content she wrote for the Jacksonville-based Florida Dispatch in the 1880s. She engaged with her readers and shared her strong opinions. Among them:

• citrus-obsessed husbands needed to show more consideration, courtesy and affection to their wives.
• women shouldn't be limited to housekeeping and parenting (a radical thought at the time).
• men liked Florida much more than women did.

That last statement drew letters of disagreement from Florida transplants from the North and Midwest. "Rather than listing grievances many of the women along Florida's frontier described the simple pleasures of life," the article states.

Some of the comments are almost poetic. One woman wrote: "... to you who dwell among the pines of Florida I would ask ... Did you ever sit at dusk and listen to them, how they begin to whisper...?"  Did you ever, she asked, listen to them on a pleasant day "almost sing you a lullaby as you lazily swing to and fro in a hammock?"

I have listened to pines in the Ocala National Forest. I can indeed tell you the sound of wind through the boughs is beautiful and almost ethereal. 

Another woman wrote of loving how she found "... so much to occupy her time, from my little chicks to my little babe." She went on to list things she enjoyed, from vegetable gardening to tending all sorts of fruit trees. "I feel I am the happiest woman in the world," she wrote.

Even the ever-present Florida bugs and the famous Florida heat weren't problems for these pioneers. One transplant suggested readers head to Cincinnati if they wanted to feel oppressive summer heat. Others told how mosquito nets and screens repelled the insects. One reader offered a recipe for a boric acid mixture that took care of roaches. And more than a few shared tips for ensuring a safe water supply. 

If anything, these readers said they and their families were in better health in Florida than they had been elsewhere. Several had in fact relocated due to health. And yes, citrus factored into many, if not all, of these homesteaders' lives. 

Citrus in Florida has dwindled so much it's hard to remember when groves blanketed the state. Those days are history. But people still come here for their health. And a lot of women who relocate are happy here. This writer included.