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| The City of Daytona Beach featured this photo of Sarah Hunt on their website page about 2025 Black History Icons: https://www.daytonabeach.gov/1441/2025-Black-History-Icons |
Where to begin with the story of Sarah Hunt, aka Mother Hunt. The City of Daytona Beach and the Daytona Beach News-Journal honored this remarkable woman in February 2025 as a Black History Icon. She deserves the recognition.
A couple of big names tend to garner major Black history attention in Daytona Beach, with understandable reason. Mary McLeod Bethune and Howard Thurman are legendary giants, famous far beyond their Daytona Beach legacies.
But for every Bethune and Thurman in the world, there are a thousand Sarah Hunts. In Daytona, she saw orphans and elderly in dire need and she did something about it. She took in children -- sometimes left on her doorstep -- and guided frail elderly to safety and security by providing a home for them all.
She officially founded an orphanage in 1924 on what is now George Engram Boulevard. The home is believed to have been the first black orphanage in Florida.
The facility was first known as the Old Folks and Children's Home. It was later renamed the Florida East Coast Orphan and Child Caring Home. Sarah Hunt also founded a church across the street from the orphanage, the Mount Mission Missionary Baptist Church.
She received little to zero help from whatever state agencies existed in the 1920s and 1930s. Closely tied to her story are memories of her walking around the neighborhood with a basket on her arm, seeking donations to help keep alive those in need. She used her own funds and community donations to maintain the orphanage.
Little is known about the personal life of Sarah Hunt, yet the few details we have convey a sense of dignity, determination, strength and Christian love.
She was born in 1857 or 1865 or 1867 and came to Daytona Beach from Georgia in 1905. Why she moved here is unknown. She died in 1936 from pneumonia and is buried in Mount Ararat Cemetery in Daytona Beach.
One of her final acts - hours before her death - was to contact a local representative of the Florida state welfare system. She relayed her worries about the 25 children and six elderly people she looked after at that time. "She told the welfare worker the orphanage was totally without funds, that even the supply of food was limited."
That information is from a Dec. 19, 1936 Daytona Beach Morning Journal newspaper article about Sarah Hunt's death. The same article noted she had been well known both locally and to state welfare agencies as Mother Hunt.
The article explains that the Florida welfare department couldn't help because the orphanage wasn't licensed by the state. But Mother Hunt's plea traveled up departmental lines. The statewide director issued a statement encouraging private and church-led agencies to aid the orphanage.
On the surface, it sounds like red tape prevented the state from taking over the orphanage. Still. I'm a little suspicious. Surely they could have done something. There obviously was a relationship and an open line of communication. But this was the Jim Crow South. Just the fact that the state director issued a supportive statement was probably outside the norm.
The 1936 article says nothing about Sarah's life before she reached Daytona. We learn a little more from her death certificate, which someone uploaded to the Find A Grave website. The certificate says she was about 79 years old when she died in 1936. That would put her birth in the 1850s. Her exact date of birth is listed as unknown.
Sarah was born in Rabun County in northern Georgia, a state where slavery still existed in the 1850s. Was she born to enslaved parents? Free parents? A forced encounter? Her father's name and birthplace are listed as unknown. Her mother's birthplace is also listed as unknown, but her name is given. The first name is illegible but the last appears to be Hunt.
Interestingly, the death certificate also lists Sarah as the widow of a Robert Hunt or Robert Hugh. She's shown as homekeeper of the "colored orphanage," and as having worked at that occupation for 50 years.
That's far longer than she oversaw the formally established orphanage. That leads me to think she cared for others informally for decades before opening the dedicated home in 1924. It was her life's work. What led her to it? We may never know. But there is a clue in the 1910 U.S. Census.
The 1910 Census lists Sarah Hunt, age 45 (birthdate 1865), as a widowed dressmaker living on Daytona's Midway Street in a home she owned. If this is the same Sarah Hunt, she must have arrived from Georgia with some or all the money needed to buy a home. No local dressmaker could earn enough in five years (1905 arrival to 1910 census) to cover a down payment, mortgage and taxes. That she owned her home is significant. It was no easy feat for a widowed Black woman at that time and place.
That Census also shows Sarah as living with one adopted adult child. Then there is the shocker: Sarah is listed as having four children -- none of whom were still alive. What happened to them? How did they die? My gosh, to lose all four children? It's unthinkable. One of my grandmothers lost four of her eight children and it scarred her for life. And she still had four who lived.
Sarah shows up in the 1914 Daytona Beach City Directory as a widowed nurse living on 2nd Avenue in a house she owned. And in the 1920 U.S. Census as a 53-year-old (born 1867) rooming-house proprietor in a 2nd Avenue house she owned. I love that she attained and maintained home ownership in such a challenging time.
Census records and directories don't provide a full picture. They leave questions. Far more telling is the way the orphanage was renamed Mother Hunt's Orphanage soon after her death. It speaks to how much she was loved, respected and admired.
The orphanage remained in operation. A March 7, 1961 article in the Daytona Beach Morning Journal notes that it was "the only licensed orphanage for Negro children in Florida."
Mother Hunt's Orphanage eventually became the Sarah Hunt Methodist Children's Home. It merged with the Florida Methodist Children's Home in 1971. The two became the Florida United Methodist Children's Home, a longtime fixture on acreage near Lake Monroe in Enterprise. The Daytona Beach property later became part of Bethune-Cookman University.
In 2011, a new structure at the Children's Home was named the Sarah Hunt Home. It's so fitting that her name lives on. A March 30, 2011 Daytona Beach News-Journal article covered the building's dedication. In the article, a Rev. Walter Monroe is quoted as saying Mother Hunt "tried to provide a haven and refuge for that [each] person to become whole again."
And perhaps, in doing so, Sarah Hunt also became whole, herself.
