From the mundane to the weird

Photo of the Astor Hotel facing the St. Johns  
River in Astor, FL, is on the front cover of a 
local history booklet published in 1982.

This month, I continue my look at the hamlet of Astor, which hugs the St. Johns River in north Central Florida. Last month, I gave an overview of the settlement, based on information in a 40-page local history published by the Astor Kiwanis Club in 1982. The History of Astor on the St. Johns, Astor Park, and the Surrounding Area was compiled by A. Wass de Czege.

This post looks more closely at slice-of-life details as explained by early residents and visitors whose memories were included in the booklet. I love the small details because they give a sense of daily life, and that's what I'm most interested in. Occasionally, these looks behind closed doors turn up more than a person bargained for.

1880s: We start with everyday details about town life in the late 1880s and perhaps 1890s. An early settler named J.G. Cade arrived from Kentucky in 1884 when he was 11 years old (26). Later in life, he recalled there had been two general stores on opposite sides of the river. People used rowboats or the ferry to cross the St. Johns. On page 26 and 27 are Cade's account of what shoppers could find at the stores: groceries of all kinds, tobacco, snuff, firearms, harnesses, calomel, quinine, calico, brogan shoes.

He also reports that each store had three wooden barrels in the rear. Each had a faucet. One barrel "contained liquor, one vinegar, and one cane syrup, all sold by the gallon" (27). Shoppers had to bring their own containers ... "and, furthermore, [you had to] drink your one dollar per gallon liquor at home" (27). Barter was a common form of exchange. Items that shopkeepers accepted, in lieu of monetary payments, included hens, chickens, eggs, fruit, and hides of alligator, deer, and cow.

1912: In 1953, a retired U.S. Army captain shared his recollections of a 1912 trip to Astor, where his father was building a home at the time. Capt. Lewis Lawton penned his recollections for a 1953 issue of the Astor News, the booklet explains. Lawton stayed at the Manhattan Hotel. (Astor founder William Astor originally called his new town Manhattan.) The Manhattan Hotel was one of two hotels in town. Lawton says breakfast at the hotel was at daylight and consisted of "Ham, real ham, and eggs" (29). Not sure what he meant by real ham.

1918: In some ways, this account is my favorite because of its Gothic overtones. Newly appointed school principal Margaret W. Doss arrived in Astor, by train, in the middle of night in 1918. "It was dark and raining," she notes in her recollections (31). 

John Gibson, a section foreman with the railroad and a man Doss describes as a famous hunter, led her from the train depot to the Railroad Hotel. Doss again notes that everything was dark, even at the hotel. They knocked on the door and waited "a long while" before an old woman holding a lantern answered the door. The woman didn't speak a word to Doss, just led her upstairs to a guest room and left her there with the lantern.

"I was so scared that I dragged the heavy dresser across the floor to barricade the door," Doss recalls (31). All this mental picture needs for completion is wads of Spanish moss dripping from dark trees and unrecognizable night sounds coming from the surrounding wilderness.

Her story gets better. The unfriendly woman ran the hotel with her husband, and Doss described the couple as "acting very strange" (32). They sheltered what Doss called a mysterious family member, who was in a wheelchair and whose face and head were heavily bandaged.

According to Doss, two years later the FBI burst in and arrested the man in the wheelchair because he was a wanted bank robber. There was nothing physically wrong with him, she writes. The wheelchair and bandages had been a disguise. The hotelkeepers were his parents, and they also were taken away.

Florida's modern reputation for weirdness is built on solid ground.

Manhattan in Florida

Floridamemory.com labels this photo as a view from the depot
of two hotels in Astor in the late 1800s.

Drive through the hamlet of Astor today. You certainly won't think about big city life. The rural community hugs the Ocala National Forest on one side and the St. Johns River on the other. About 1,500 people call Astor home.

Yet the settlement was once called Manhattan by one who knew what he was talking about - William Backhouse Astor. In 1874, the wealthy New Yorker bought some 12,000 acres in what is today Astor. He and two partners laid out a settlement that he named Manhattan. Astor poured energy, imagination, and funding into the community, but it never came near resembling its northern namesake. In fact, even in the early days, many people called the settlement Astor.

The region's settlement is explained in a 40-page local history published as a project of the Astor Kiwanis Club in 1982.  The History of Astor on the St. Johns, Astor Park, and the Surrounding Area was compiled by A. Wass de Czege. (There's an enlarged third edition with 64 pages, but I've never seen it.) I like the one I have because it includes some reminiscences of then-elderly people who'd been around Astor in much earlier days. I'll write about them next month.

As was usual in the late 1800s, the land and climate in Astor were extolled to northerners as abounding in healthful qualities. William Astor built a church, school and general store, set aside land for a cemetery, planted orange groves, and created a botanical garden. He built two hotels - one named the Astor House - but never stayed in either of them. He preferred to stay on his yacht (25). That gives you some indication of his standard milieu. He wasn't just any rich Yankee. His family was the famous - and famously rich - Astor clan. His wife ruled New York society during the Gilded Age.

Astor even built a railroad in his southern Manhattan. The Kiwanis Club's booklet says the settlement thrived for a while. Visitors reported finding no vacancies at the hotels. Astor's wealthy friends built winter cottages. Many new settlers invested in and grew citrus and bananas.

Then two things happened: Astor died in 1894, and a severe freeze in 1894-95 devastated the area's citrus industry and banana growth. Astor's son, John Jacob Astor IV, did what he could to reinvigorate the community, in part by turning to forestry industries.

But John Jacob Astor IV went down on the Titanic in 1912.  His son cared little for the town, and "the 'Astor dream' was over," (28) reports the Kiwanis booklet.

But the town survived. Astor heirs sold what was legally known as the Manhattan Grant to the Duluth Land Company (29), which marketed land to immigrants in Minnesota who'd come primarily from Finland. Periods of growth and recession followed, until the town settled into its current configuration. Today, small homes and fish camps nestle in a riverfront setting surrounded by the majesty of a national forest, and life unfolds in the way of small towns everywhere.

In some ways, better than Manhattan.