Corrupt politicians nothing new

Sarasota house built in the 1850s belonged
 to the earliest white settler, Bill Whitaker,
according to Yesterday's Sarasota author
Del Marth. This photo appears on Page 12.

In case you think our country's political shenanigans are a modern phenomenon, rest assured the Florida frontier had its share of nightmares. One occurred in what is today the South Florida city of Sarasota.

In the 1880s, elite politicians and corporations literally stole homesteaded land from settlers who'd already proved their claims. How? Politicians changed the law in order to circumvent the Homestead Act of 1862.

The Homestead Act granted ownership of 160 acres of federal land to a person who built a home on the acreage, lived in it, and farmed the land for five years. 

The 1973 book, Yesterday's Sarasota, by Del Marth, tells what happened next to Sarasota-region homesteaders who'd proved their claims, meaning they'd fulfilled requirements and now owned their land. 

In 1881, Florida politicians dug and found a  pre-1862 law that "gave the state all swamp and overflow lands in Florida," Marth writes. So they rewrote the state's land classifications and designated 22 million acres as swamp. Almost 700,000 of those acres were in the Sarasota area. 

Practically overnight, people's farmland was suddenly being called swampland. And, surprise, much of that new swampland ended up in the hands of land speculators.

The region was hardscrabble wilderness at the time, not the upscale city that is today's Sarasota. Still, for some people, it was home. The area was called Sara Sota, and it had a post office, school, and about 100 families. Suddenly, many discovered they were living in a swamp and that they no longer owned their land.

Things got darker. Twenty locals formed a vigilante committee and planned to retaliate against the speculators. In 1884, they killed two locals suspected of  cooperating with the land raiders. One, the postmaster, was shot while out gathering kelp, Marth writes. The other was shot off his horse. Stories like this are why frontier Florida is said to have resembled the Wild West in behavior.

As so often happens when individuals are pitted against larger, more powerful forces, the settlers lost. Marth writes that tax records of 1888 indicated the newly designated 700,000 acres of "swampland" ended up in the hands of eight companies. Three were railroad companies. One was a British company that Marth says "ultimately founded the town of Sarasota" by luring Scottish settlers with promises of estates in paradise. Things didn't go so well at first, as you can imagine. But that story is for another blog post.

Amish pioneered in Florida

Road sign is in the North, a traditional
 location of Amish settlements. But
an Amish community in Florida dates
 to pioneer years. Creative Commons
photo credit: Daniel Schwen

The word Amish makes me think of rolling farmland and horse-and-buggy transportation on rural roads in the North and Midwest. Not fun in the sun in Florida.

That, despite my knowing that Pinecraft in Sarasota is a popular vacation destination for many Amish. The surprise, for me, is learning that Pinecraft was established in the 1920s by an Amish man who had a celery farm.

Suddenly the Amish are part of Florida pioneer history.

The Anabaptist community's roots in Florida are traced to a farmer named Daniel Kurtz, according to the website Amish America. The website cites a book titled The History of Pinecraft, 1925-1960, by Noah Gingerich. I can't find a copy anywhere except online for $90+ dollars  - not an option! -  and in Sarasota-area libraries - a good three- to four-hour drive from me.

There appears to be no in-depth history within my reach. I did find a 28-year-old news item in the Tampa Bay Times. It mentions that two of the earliest residents were of the Yoder and Miller families, and that streets are named after them. Sorry I can't link to the article, as I had to log in to read it via the duPont-Ball research library at Stetson University. The March 7, 1989 item is bylined Pat Fenner.

According to the article, Daniel Kurtz was Old Order Amish, and he and his family moved farther south in 1925 after finding Tampa too worldly. He and his family settled "a long horse ride away" from Sarasota.

Others must have soon followed suit. The multi-author book The Amish (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013) notes that a "handful of farmers" (location 4424 in Kindle) bought land for celery farming on the outskirts of Sarasota in the late 1920s.

Florida land prices skyrocketed in the early 1920s during the Florida boom, which collapsed in 1926. Either Kurtz started his farm at the height of the boom, or he and the others scooped up acreage at reasonable prices after the market crashed. Both Amish America and Wikipedia mention that Pinecraft had previously been the site of the Sarasota National Tourist Camp. Perhaps the camp was a victim of the crash.

Word of Florida seems to have traveled quickly. In Amish Society (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, 4th Edition), author John A. Hostetler says elderly Amish began vacationing in Florida "as early as 1927" (page 358) for health reasons. Pinecraft became kind of a resort for them.

It remains so today. Thousands of Amish travel to Pinecraft by bus each year and, once in town, get around on bicycles. A resource about the modern-day scene is the blog Pinecraft-Saraosta by resident Katie Troyer. She writes about the regular goings-on in town and seems to know just about everybody.

So there you have the extent of my knowledge of early Pinecraft. Many questions, few answers. I'll keep digging. My husband and I have traveled throughout most of Florida, but not yet to the Sarasota region. Time to plan a mini-getaway. History awaits.

From Google Maps