What a difference 25 years makes

July 4th festivities in 1884 DeLand. Note the flag
with 13 stars. Photo credit: Florida Memory

I tend to consider the decades of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as one lump of time: Florida's pioneer era. Yet within that era people and places grew and evolved, much as we do in modern years. To illustrate, here are comparisons between July 4 celebrations in 1884 and 1909.

This photo depicts the holiday's festivities in DeLand in 1884. The Florida Memory webpage states that the image was captured on the holiday itself - July 4. I'd never seen this photo before and I've seen a lot of vintage DeLand images. At first I was suspect. The scene doesn't look like DeLand. The downtown buildings aren't recognizable to me. But the distant trees in the middle of the road give the photo credence. Early DeLandites did, indeed, plant trees in the middle of the main boulevard.

My guess is that the scene depicts the end of a parade, one that was slim on participation. Nonetheless, it was a legit holiday observance. Note the giant, 13-star flag on display. And how people came out to watch the procession. They're all gathered in the shady spots. What else did townsfolk do that day? Can't say from the photo. Perhaps a picnic. Games and music. Surely something more than one straggly parade.

Now listen to how folks in Pensacola partied on July 4, 1909. In a giant headline on its front page, the July 6 issue of the Pensacola Journal proclaimed that a record-breaking crowd visited Palmetto Beach for the 4th of July. "Pensacola and Pensacolans turned themselves loose in this year's celebration of Independence Day," the article breathlessly proclaims.

A giant picnic hosted by the Knights of Columbus was deemed the crowning feature of hours of festivities. The leading feature was a baseball game played by teams from Pensacola and Fort Barrancas. The city team won, 12-3. "A list of sports of other kinds was also pulled off, to the delight and amusement of hundreds of people," the article says.

The day didn't end there. Dancing, vaudeville, bathing, and music by a "highly efficient orchestra" added to the celebration's luster. Things didn't wind down until the "last moon-lit night hour." The article makes particular note of the smooth, orderly transit of people to and from festivities via the city's "electric line."

I'm not sure what the electric line was; perhaps a trolley. One thing is certain, the 1884 celebration relied on horsepower and solar lighting a la sunshine, not electricity.

Which event was better?  I'd venture to say each was a success. You can't compare the two, really. They're products of their time. In 1884, electricity and the year 1909 belonged to the future. In 1909, nobody thought about a world war soon to loom on the horizon. Still, though a quarter-century apart in years and culture, the celebrants were united in their appreciation of the United States. That sentiment still stands. Happy Fourth of July.

The 1880 Hurricane

NOAA satellite image, with sepia tone added.

Florida has been in a frenzy in recent days, as Tropical Storm Erika churned in the Atlantic. The system has dissipated but hasn't fully expired. Rain, wind, and some flooding are in store.

As unnerving as the steady stream of media coverage can be, I'm glad I can track every millisecond of a tropical system's activity. Pioneers couldn't. People often relied on weather lore, close reading of atmospheric conditions, and the lived experience of longtime residents.

Forecasting was still young when a  hurricane hit Central Florida in 1880. That particular storm interests me for two reasons: pioneer Girard M. Parce, a boy at the time, wrote about it in his late-in-life recollections; and the steamship Vera Cruz sank in it, just off the Central Florida coast.

The book Florida's Hurricane History notes that early 20th century assessments considered the 1880 storm a "Great Hurricane" with winds over 125 mph. Fairly recent re-analysis data from NOAA puts it at a Category 2 with maximum winds of 90 mph. Having lived through hurricanes, I can say that anything over 70 mph is very scary indeed.

Girard's recollections corroborate the book's comment that countless trees were downed in the storm, which made landfall between Palm Beach and Cocoa Beach, and then traveled northwest across the state. Girard was in DeLand, where he wrote that:

"... we were kept in the house for two days, not daring to go out except to feed the stock, because so many of the big pine trees were being blown down."

I wish he'd written more about the actual hurricane, which he referred to as "The Big Storm." He focused more on what happened afterward. It's fascinating. Because he says the storm wrecked three ships off the local coast, not just one.

"A short time after the storm I drove [by horse-drawn cart] a party of several men to Port Orange. While there we went up to Daytona and ferried over to the peninsula where lay on the beach the wreckage of a large ship, the Vera Cruz, and two lumber schooners. I believe one could have walked a half mile in either direction without stepping on the ground."

He notes that a salvage company "with a large gang of men" was busy on the scene, and that his older brother William thought the Vera Cruz had carried a cargo of mahogany. You can read a richly detailed account of the steamship - and some of its passengers -  on shipwrecks.com.

Girard recorded his memories in the 1920s at the request of his cousin - the daughter of the city of DeLand's founder. She (Helen DeLand) was collecting material for her history of the city, published in 1928 as The Story of DeLand and Lake Helen, Florida.