Florida as mission territory

This image of Fr. Patrick Bresnahan
is from his memoir of mission work,
Seeing Florida With a Priest

While researching an early 1880s Catholic colony near Sanford, I found a fascinating book by Father Patrick J. Bresnahan on the excellent Central Florida Memory website. The 1937 Seeing Florida With a Priest recounts his journeys through Florida mission territory in the first decade of the 1900s. What's doubly interesting is that Fr. Bresnahan afterward became the first resident priest at All Souls Catholic Church in Sanford. That church's roots are in the early colony, whose history I'm exploring. Nice circle.

The dichotomy between ecumenism and religious prejudice in frontier Florida continues to intrigue me, and is found aplenty in the 97-page book and elsewhere. At the Sanford church and elsewhere in Florida, local non-Catholics often supported the building of Catholic churches. That seemed especially true in the 1880s. 

Meanwhile, Fr. Bresnahan writes of his first mission in Madison, Fla., in 1904, that "bigotry and prejudice were then rampant in that pretty town" (page 14).  One man who secretly attended mission services was regularly accused of being Catholic by his neighbors, because he tried to dispel misconceptions.

By the time a church building was under construction in Madison in 1907, "all the Catholics contributed generously, and some non-Catholics" (page 15). But all was not completely well. On the same page, Fr. Bresnahan tells how the sheriff threatened to arrest the Catholic church ladies for selling tickets for a giveaway of a patchwork quilt.

The raffle was part of a fundraising bazaar and supper. The town marshal came to the rescue, the publicity generated attention and the gala raised $400. My go-to inflation calculator website doesn't go back to 1907, but were that $400 raised in 1913, it would be the equivalent of $9,483 in 2015 dollars.

Once the church was built, non-Catholics converged to help form a robust choir for a two-week mission. "I left Madison with a feeling that I had done something to remove prejudice" (page 16), writes Fr. Bresnahan humbly. Soon after, he was in Tallahassee, where he found little bigotry despite the occasional "vomitings  of 'cheap' politicians" (page 18).

The above is just a sampling of what can be found in this valuable memoir, which was published by Economy Print Shop in Zephyrhills. I've not yet finished reading the book, but can't end this blog post without mentioning Fr. Bresnahan's encounters with Florida Crackers in Sopchoppy, "which is real country and 'cracker' village" (page 23). His experience bears quoting, because it corrects cultural history that, at times, still depicts pioneer Florida Crackers as backwoods bigots.

"The great interest exhibited during the mission was remarkable; it was conducted in the public school building. The natives, all 'crackers', vied with one another, unlike any other place, in giving me hospitality; and, they went so far as to get up parties for my entertainment, even though many had never seen a priest before. Moreover, they all seemed glad to find out what they had heard concerning priests hitherto were 'lies'." (page 23)

Ignorant backwoods folk? Hardly. The Crackers exhibited a genuine human dignity that contrasts starkly to the antics of some of the era's movers and shakers. There's a lesson in that.

Passing the time

Cookouts in pioneer days often included the catching of the
entree, as at this 1906 fish fry. Credit: FloridaMemory.com

I'm watching the Oscars pre-show, at least until Downton Abbey comes on, and I wonder what early settlers did for entertainment. Turns out, they did a lot, with less than we have at our disposal today. There are many similarities. The pastimes just weren't as embellished or as high-tech as ours.

Music resonated with all social classes. So did various excursions and get-togethers that included meals. Differences could be vast, though, particularly between wealthy winter visitors and backwoods settlers.

Emma Gilpin and her husband and teenage son spent three months annually in the Palm Beach area in the 1890s. Excerpts from her letters and journals in Karen Davis's 1990  Public Faces - Private Lives (Pickering Press) highlight details of the social life they enjoyed. Emma once compared contents of her "plebian" picnic lunch with that of the neighbors, whose basket contained  deviled crab on the shell, whole rolls, and white grapes, among other delicacies (55). On another day, young women had an outdoor"afternoon chocolate" (56) in a piazza. Sailing parties, musicales with violin and piano, and card parties featuring such games as whist and euchre were enjoyed. Moonlight sails on Lake Worth were popular, as were daytime dips in the ocean.

Cracker settlers, on the other hand, would be more likely to gather at what archaeologist Dana Ste. Claire describes as a perleu, "an extended cookout of sorts" (Cracker, the Cracker Culture in Florida History, 94). The women brought chicken, rice, biscuits, and the pot to cook it in. The food stewed over an open fire, and was served with coffee brewed over the same fires. Other times, the men and boys would hunt game that was then cooked for the crowd. Grits and palmetto cabbage might be served as side dishes. In between the cooking and eating, "sings" took place. In his book, published in 1998 by the Museum of Arts and Sciences, Ste. Claire elaborates on another Cracker leisure-time activity, the evening dance. These get-togethers occasionally lasted for days (100). Fiddle music ruled, and the steps ranged from square dancing to clogging.

Both these popular Cracker activities were powerful draws among settlers. No one wanted to miss a gathering. People lived far apart, and spent most of their waking hours working at the business of living. Social breaks were treasured, and neighborliness appreciated. We may partake in many of the same types of pastimes as our pioneer counterparts, but we have a lot more leisure time in which to enjoy them. And perhaps, not quite as much appreciation for them.