1899 church houses vital history

Mary S. Harrell Black Heritage Museum is
in a former Catholic church built in 1899.
(Photo credit: Google Maps - Street View)

The National Register of Historic Places application for the St. Rita's Colored Catholic Mission building in New Smyrna Beach includes fascinating historical details.

For purposes of this Catholic-oriented blog post, though, the following anecdotal excerpt paints a vivid portrait for me:

"Later, Sister Genevieve Stanislaus became the superior of the convent and Madonna House. Outraged and provoked by the blatant racism and discrimination still apparent in New Smyrna Beach - especially at the railroad station, public benches, and restaurants in the downtown - Stanislaus sat on 'colored only' benches at the depot, accompanied black children to the beach, and sat in the rear of buses."

I can almost see Sister Stanislaus sitting on a depot bench, draped in a demeanor that dared anyone to interfere.

Sister's resistance didn't take place in the late 19th or early 20th century, the focus of this blog She was a member of the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine, which ministered in the city's westside black community from 1941 until 1969, the year the local Catholic church (Sacred Heart) integrated. Madonna House was the name of the initial ministry structure, and St. Rita was the chapel name. Later the ministry became known as St. Rita's Colored Catholic Mission.

When I talk about my love of Florida history, it's an observation that's filtered through my viewpoint. Most resources readily available to me are primarily about white history, and often white history of the upper classes. The absence of an abundance of other historical perspectives is disheartening. So I appreciate snippets like the story of Sister Stanislaus. I thank the Mary S. Harrell Black Heritage Museum for saving that history. (The National Register application credits the museum for the information.)

The Black Heritage Museum is housed in the historic building that was St. Rita's Colored Catholic Mission. Named after Mary S. Harrell, who worked mightily to found and nurture the heritage organization, the museum tells the story of the city's westside community, race relations and Black culture.

The reason this shows up in my blog about Frontier Florida is because the building itself dates to 1899. That's the year it was built as Sacred Heart Catholic Church in New Smyrna Beach.

At the time, it was considered an outpost in Catholic mission territory. I'll write more about the church's founding in a later post. In 1956, a new Sacred Heart church building was constructed. The original from 1899 was moved to the westside community and used as St. Rita's Mission. The Diocese of Orlando deeded the building to the heritage museum organization in 1999.

I encourage all to read the full National Register application for its valuable history, and to visit the museum to connect facts on paper to actual artifacts and the local community. And perhaps to learn something new and grow in understanding, something we so desperately need today.

Quilts that inspire

This New York Beauty heirloom quilt was made
 in the 1860s and is featured on Page 60
of the book Florida Quilts.

I'm fresh from a visit to the American Quilter's Society Daytona Beach Quilt Week. I saw beautiful examples of fiber arts - both traditional piecework and art quilts - got inspired, and also got thinking about the threads of continuity that bind quilters.

The fiber arts today are a hobby for most enthusiasts and a career for some. I'm an experienced seamstress but a novice quilter, with one quilt, one star-themed block for the NASA quilt, and one table runner to my credit. (2022 update: I've reached intermediate quilt status, with several more done since I first wrote this post!) 

For women on the Florida frontier, quiltmaking was a necessity. Homemakers crafted bedcovers for family members and young women stitched quilts for their trousseaus. One such person was Sarah Asberry Brown Anderson.

Sarah's story is told in the 1992 book Florida Quilts, by Charlotte Allen Williams (University Press of Florida). Sarah lived in Wakulla County in North Florida when she started making the New York Beauty quilt pictured with this blog post. She was 12, and she dyed her homespun cotton fabric with tree bark solutions before cutting the pieces and hand-sewing the quilt. Sarah began the quilt in 1865 and finished it in 1869.

Williams writes that New York Beauty was a popular pattern in the late 1800s. Other designs popular in the late 19th century included:

• Friendship quilts that included embroidered signatures

• Log Cabin

• Irish Chain

• Album block quilts

• Crazy quilts

• Applique quilts that featured stylized flower designs

Sarah's descendants reported that she was proud of her New York Beauty quilt and preserved it through the years. One look at the photo and the level of craftsmanship is obvious. I'd be proud, too, if I'd cut and sewn together those hundreds of pieces into a beautiful finished whole. Having experimented with natural dyes, I can also attest to the quality of the fabric's colors.

The care given the New York Beauty is why it survived long enough to be documented in Florida Quilts. The book profiles some of the women and quilts uncovered during the Florida Quilt Heritage Project. That project, which I've written about before, did a remarkable job of bringing many women's lost stories back to life through their quilts.

Today, quiltmakers receive their just due and are credited for their work. The fiber arts are celebrated. This post is to pay homage to all the unsung needlewomen of the past.

View the Florida Quilt Project digital collection at The Quilt Index website. The Quilt Index is an open access digital repository.

Chocolate: sweet in any century

Illustration in The Chocolate-Plant is credited
to "an old engraving." The image depicts the
flowers, fruit and seeds of the chocolate plant.

February brings Valentine's Day, which brings chocolate. Yum.

Chocolate fandom surpasses century boundaries. I can imagine a character in one of my novels reading  The Chocolate-Plant (Theobroma cacao) and Its Products, an 1891 book similar to modern publications that trace a culinary product's history from the days of antiquity.

 

Author Mrs. Ellen H. Richards also provides "suggestions relative to the cooking of chocolate and cocoa." Of course, I flipped right to that section. Flipped digitally, I should say. I've discovered a wonderful world of digitized public-domain cookbooks on various library and other websites.

The "receipt" for Chocolate Ice Cream in The Chocolate-Plant is so complex I got tired just reading it. And I like to bake and make sweets. 

Chocolate was often a treat and a luxury for pioneers on a frontier. That might account for a 19th century cook's willingness to follow an intricate recipe. 

Here is the recipe, for historical interest only. I haven't tried it and don't vouch for it. Especially because the instructions assume the cook is using a wood-burning stove.

CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM

For about two quarts and a half of cream use a pint and a half of milk, a quart of thin cream, two cupfuls of sugar, two ounces of No. 1 chocolate, two eggs and two heaping tablespoonfuls of flour.

Put the milk on to boil in the double-boiler. Put the flour and one cupful of the sugar in a bowl; add the eggs, and beat the mixture until light. Stir this into the boiling milk and cook for twenty minutes, stirring often.

Scrape the chocolate and put it in a small saucepan. Add four tablespoonfuls of sugar (which should be taken from the second cupful) and two tablespoonfuls of hot water. Stir over a hot fire until smooth and glossy. Add this to the cooking mixture.  

When the preparation has cooked for twenty minutes take it from the fire and add the remainder of the sugar and the cream, which should be gradually beaten into the hot mixture. Set away to cool, and when cold, freeze.  

The Chocolate-Plant, published by Walter Baker and Co. of Massachusetts, is the second version of an earlier release. A publisher's note indicates the first one was so warmly received it was expanded and reissued. 

The book is a fun read. I recommend browsing through it while munching on a chocolate bar. Which, by the way, cost 2 cents to buy in 1908. (Thanks, Food Timeline, for that factoid.)

Blue suns and hollow earths

1918 photo from Florida Memory's Koreshan Unity Collection
shows a man looking at a  hollow-earth glass globe. Members
of the Koreshan Unity faith, who established a Florida colony
 in the 1890s, believed the universe existed in a hollow sphere.

Even a history aficionada like me looks ahead when something as exciting as #PlutoFlyby is taking place. Fresh from watching the latest press conference on the NASA Channel, what else can I write about but our final frontier? Specifically, how the topic fit into the life of our 19th century predecessors.

We expect great things to be found with each incremental step of space exploration. Did they hope for the same? Surely, some average dreamers pondered the possibilities of reaching other planets and worlds beyond. 

Yet I've rarely encountered the subject in any of the 19th century diaries and letters I'm so fond of reading. The night sky elicited the comments. People wrote of feeling awed or insignificant when staring at the stars. This was before light pollution dulled the brilliance of the view. And we still feel awed and insignificant when looking up.

Scientists then as now were hard at work. But there wasn't any Internet, no #askNASA hashtag, no television or radio. Word-of-mouth, print media, telegraph and, later in the century, the telephone were the means of communication. None was capable of connecting vast numbers of people simultaneously for a shared real-time experience such as #PlutoFlyby.

Pioneer Floridians were hungry for scientific knowledge, though, even if they didn't write about it in diaries. In 1898, the Ocala Evening Star reported that two public lectures by a Professor Burgess, titled "The Solar System" and "Other Stars in Space," were "largely attended." An 1895 issue of the Bradford County Telegraph reprinted a column of moon facts from Popular Science Monthly. One was that the moon was "thought to be the only member of the planetary system which is wholly devoid of the least trace of an atmosphere." NASA tells us we only found out otherwise fairly recently.

Then, like now, knowledge inched forward in fits and starts, with some wrong turns. Members of the utopian Koreshan community in Southwest Florida believed the universe existed in a hollow sphere. Really, they did.

 An 1886 article in the Palatka Daily News noted a professor's assertion that the sun was blue, and only appeared yellow because of atmospheric dirt. To inhabitants on Mars, the article's main focus, the sun would appear white unless distorted by volcano-generated lava dust. It was a bit surprising to learn the sun - to our eyes - really does appear white, according to the Stanford Solar Center. No word on the view from Mars. Yet.

Connecting through Mary

The lighting and shadows form what some people
 believe is an image of the Blessed Mother, Mary.

One of the early 20th century parishes established in Florida was St. Mary of the Lakes in Eustis, in 1912. 

Joyce E. Welch wrote a compact history, In the Beginning, which is an enjoyable read. It's the source for the historical elements of this post, with page numbers in parentheses.

My main points, for this blog post, concern:

• the church's naming in the early 1900s;

• the mission church in Mount Dora that grew from the Eustis parish in the 1960s;

• a photo that may or may not show a Marian apparition in the former mission's current church in 2013.

Our Lady's influence is the thread tying them together, in my view.

Before I go any further, let me note that the Catholic Church has a very conservative stance about apparitions. Supposed sightings undergo a rigorous review and investigation process that stretches years.

Very few reported sightings are deemed authentic. I'm writing as a Catholic historical romance author with a vivid imagination who enjoys considering the "what ifs".

We begin with Eustis's first Catholic settler, Charles G. Megargee. He arrived in the mid-1880s. Several years later, another Catholic named Jerry Ott settled in Eustis. Both were from the Philadelphia area. They would journey to Sanford to attend Mass - a 40-mile round trip that took up to eight hours total (15). Think about that the next time it seems like too much effort to get to Mass.

The two businessman were instrumental in establishing the Eustis church. They funded the land purchase and raised the money needed to build a  50x25-foot church debt-free in 1911 (18). As I've found with other Florida pioneer Catholic church stories I've researched, non-Catholics were generous in support.

Megargee and Ott drove parish formation and church construction, but not the parish/church name. A local donor secured a substantial contribution from a Northern relative. It came with strings attached: the church had to be named in honor of St. Mary (18). I don't often refer to Our Lady as St. Mary, but that is one of her titles.

The donation amount was $1,500. Had it been given in 1913, a few years later, it would compare to almost $36,000 today, according to the government's inflation calculator. That's quite a bit of money, and I assume the donor had a deep devotion to the Blessed Mother.

Fast forward to the 1960s. The Eustis parish that started with about 50 Catholics overflowed even the enlarged church in place by that time. The Eustis parish established a mission church in Mount Dora, which grew to become St. Patrick's parish.

Fast forward again to 2013. A friend sent me a smart phone image forwarded to her by the person who took the photo. The story that went with the photo was this: Our Lady had appeared in the Mount Dora church right after morning rosary on the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.

I stared and stared at the photo and saw nothing but an empty church. After my friend pointed Mary out to me, I could see nothing else.

Even today, when I look at the image, I find it hard to see anything other than Our Lady. Did she appear? Who knows. The image isn't doctored, except where I drew an arrow pointing to the appearance area. But the photo is blurry. Light, shadow, angles, soft focus  - all can distort reality.

The Mount Dora church sprang from the roots of the Eustis parish, which started with - and continues to have - a dedication to Mary. As do I. Our Lady led me back to my faith after I lapsed. 

We'll likely never know if an apparition materialized. But Mary appears to my eyes in the image. And that's what matters to me.

Persimmon Hollow: What's in a name?

The Wild West? No, early DeLand. This view from 1882
shows the corner of Indiana Avenue and Woodland Boulevard.
(Credit: Volusia: The West Side)

Before saleratus manufacturer Henry A. DeLand arrived from New York in 1876 to create an "Athens of Florida," and before his settlement became the City of DeLand in 1882, the area was known as Persimmon Hollow. 

The name has a quaint quality that appeals. My Catholic historical romance series, Persimmon Hollow Legacy (https://frontier-florida.blogspot.com/p/my-books.html), is built around a fictional town of that name. A DeLand-based craft brewer, Persimmon Hollow Brewing Co., adopted the moniker and is well-known.

Otherwise, vestiges of the early name are slim to none except in local history material. There used to be a Persimmon Hollow Village venue in Oklahoma, but Google says it's permanently closed. Its former website described it as a collection of stores grouped together to resemble an 1880s Western village.

DeLand once looked like an 1880s Western village, a real one. You need only view the West Volusia Historical Society (https://www.delandhouse.com) photo that accompanies this post to get the idea. The 1882 view of DeLand shows the downtown corner of Indiana Avenue and Woodland Boulevard, looking west. The image appears on page 243 of the historical society's 1986 book about local history, Volusia: The West Side, edited by William J. Dreggors, John Stephen Hess, and S. Dick Johnston.

One of the book's chapters is titled Persimmon Hollow. However, the clue to the origin of the region's early name is found in the previous chapter. It's the best explanation I've yet come across. The book's authors attribute the history to a man named "Hugh Vernon Bracey, who came to Beresford with his father in 1870" (page 237). Hugh reportedly explained Persimmon Hollow as:

...a place where the spring water caused wild persimmons to grow in abundance. When the fruit ripened, deer, quail and other wild animals would gather there to feed ... It was one of the prime hunting spots of the few adventurous souls who had settled here at that time ... (237)

What an idyllic verbal portrait, marred for my 21st century sensitivities by the mention of hunting. I do understand that homesteaders in 1870s Florida hunted as a means of survival, not for sport. That would come closer to the turn of the 20th century, when tourists slaughtered our wildlife just because they could, and locals decimated bird rookeries so society matrons could decorate their hats with feathers.

I digress. DeLand today doesn't have a spring and wild persimmons aren't common here - at least not in my part of town. Natural springs bubble to the north of me -  DeLeon Springs in the eponymous town - and to the south - Blue Spring in Orange City, Green Springs in Enterprise, and Gemini Springs in DeBary. The closest is eight miles from my home, the farthest is 19 miles away. They're all beautiful. I've put links to each at the bottom of this post.

That doesn't mean an equally jewel-like pool of water never existed in or near the heart of DeLand. Perhaps one did 150 years ago. Maybe it was closer to Lake Beresford, out by the St. Johns River about five miles from downtown. In the mid-1800s, settlers homesteaded in the Beresford area because the river was the main highway at the time. 

The allure of the name Persimmon Hollow lingers, despite the coldness of the trail. As with some mythical Shangri-La, we cling to what we can of a place none of us has ever seen.

Snippets of Christmas past

A look at Santa as he appeared in the Dec. 23, 1896
issue of the Ocala Evening Star newspaper.
Credit: Library of Congress's Chronicling America website

We may like to think Christmas of yesteryear was quieter, simpler, and perhaps more solemn than today's hectic festivities. In some ways, that may be true. In others, not so much. At least not in pioneer Florida. Else, the editor of The Gulf Coast Breeze (Crawfordville) wouldn't have felt the need to issue this caution in the paper's Christmas Eve edition in 1897:

"Christmas being the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ, who came to proclaim peace on earth and good will toward men, the day should be observed in all christian lands in strict accordance with that sentiment, and never as a day of drunken revelry and carousal."

Two years earlier, in 1895, the Bradford County Telegraph (Starke) spoke of the "festivities, the hilarities, the family greetings of earthly Christmas ..." in an editorial comment about how earthly celebrations will give way to "the great holiday of heaven."

Despite the emphasis on the holiday's religious significance in these two examples, some denominations were strangely quiet on Christmas in late 19th century Florida. At least in Ocala. The Dec. 26, 1895 edition of the Ocala Evening Star offered a recap of Christmas Day services. The content is worth quoting, for it surprised me:

• "The Baptists had no exercises at the church." 
• "The Methodist church had no Christmas exercises."
• "At the Catholic church the decorations were very pretty and the services beautiful and solemn."
• "The Episcopal church was nicely decorated in evergreens for the occasion, and the usual Christmas exercises were rendered, which were very beautiful and forcible."
• "No services were held at the Presbyterian or Christian churches."
• "Several Christmas trees were held among the colored churches."

I'm not sure what type of celebration is referenced by the Christmas trees being "held." If anyone knows, please add a comment. 

Although the Baptists didn't have a service on Christmas Day, the church youth presented a children's cantata on Christmas evening at the Baptist hall. The same Dec. 26, 1895 issue of the newspaper had a few lines about the event, and reported that the hall was "beautifully decorated with evergreens, and the nicely arranged tree was groaning under its load of presents for the children." 

The 1890s Florida newspapers carried no shortage of ads for Christmas gifts. Just like today, the ads ranged from the simple to the loud. Examples from the Ocala Evening Star editions of Dec. 12, 17, and 20, 1895:

• "Embroidery done to order at reasonable rates for Christmas. Cottage east of armory building."
• "You can make twelve elegant Xmas presents to twelve of your relatives and best friends by sitting NOW for a dozen of Gottlieb's unexcelled photographs. Studio opposite Montezuma."
• "My Christmas Slippers fit easy feet, fit hard feet, fit every taste and every pocket and are just the thing for a present. J.A. Rowell."

Economic indicators were closely watched, then as now. On Dec. 27, 1898, the Ocala Evening Star ran an article by a reporter who had canvased numerous merchants about holiday shopping. With one exception, all the merchants said business had been better than the year before. The drug store had sold out of holiday goods, and the candy store did a "huge business," 40 percent higher than the year before. As a side note, I noticed that the confectioner had run a large print ad for Whitman's Chocolates in the newspaper a few days earlier.

The sampling of vintage newspapers showed me more similarities than differences in the season, with one glaring exception. On Dec. 23, 1898, the Ocala Evening Star carried an article about holiday travel. The railroads had lowered rates for the season. On the Southern Railway, patrons paid one-third of normal fare for the return leg of a round trip. The Plant System's "Holiday Excursion Rates" advertised one-way fare for a full round trip. Granted, the Plant offer was good only in Florida, and the Southern Railway's deal covered only the Southeast. But, still. Imagine booking a flight for the holidays and seeing such a bargain pop up in your browser. What a ghost of Christmas past that would be.

The newspapers referenced in this post are from the Library of Congress's excellent Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers website. If you are a fan of old newspapers, you could spend hours there.

New facts in an old story

The upcoming grand opening of the Enterprise Heritage Society on Oct. 18, 2014, is great news for anyone interested in local history. The former county seat has pretty much been swallowed by the city of Deltona, with its 80,000+ people. Having a physical presence will help the historical group preserve the community's identity.

I've long known details of Enterprise's roots. One of the region's oldest communities, it has a well-documented history. As seems to be the case with many local histories I've traced in Florida over the years, available facts made no mention of a Catholic presence there.  I just assumed one didn't exist. So I was really surprised recently to discover a Works Progress Administration (WPA) record documenting a Catholic church in Enterprise from 1881 until 1929.

Page from the WPA record about a Catholic church
in Enterprise. Credit: Florida Memory

The church in a rectangular, frame white building on Clark Street was pastored by a Father McFall for the first five years, 1881-1886. A priest from nearby Sanford, Father P.J. Roche, oversaw the parish from 1928-1929. What about the years in-between? The WPA is silent. The parish and church don't even have a recorded name.

Among the people who provided details to the WPA field worker in 1940 were two former church members, Mrs. John R. Thursby and Miss Mabel Thayer, both of Blue Springs, and Father J. G. Litch, described as an "old resident" of Enterprise.

You can review the entire record, scant though it is, at the Florida Memory website's WPA Church Records Collection. As for me, I'll be taking a drive down to Clark Street, and then up to the Diocese of St. Augustine Archives, to find out more.

Hands across religions

As a child in the 1960s, I thought all people were either Catholic or Jewish. There was little evidence of other faith traditions in my New York City environs. When I moved to Central Florida in early adulthood, the known world appeared to be entirely Southern Baptist.

Those perceptions of were based partly on superficial observation of the surroundings as I went about my life. Yet it was true that the people in these - and probably other - faith traditions carved geographical niches at the time.

Sisters of St. Joseph at Cape Florida Lighthouse,
as shown in the book Miami 1909.
(Photo credit in book: Charles Mann / Miami Pioneers)

Our postmodern world has moved beyond denominational dominance in most areas of the United States. Interdenominational initiatives are a norm. What intrigues me is how my research on the social history of pioneer Catholicism in Florida continues to unearth similar modernist behavior. I keep finding exceptions in what I previously considered an era of isolationism among faith traditions.

As noted in other blog posts, those circles of friendships may be due to human needs on a sparsely populated frontier. But Miami wasn't exactly a backwoods settlement in 1909. Wikipedia cites the U.S. Census for the 1910 population count of 5,471. Yet 1909 Miami is when my latest example of religious intermingling occurs.

The 1984 book, Miami 1909, by Thelma Peters, (Banyan Books), is built around the diary Miami resident Fannie Clemons wrote that year. Peters, herself a Miami pioneer and a former president of the Florida Historical Society, established a rich sense of place in which to situate the diary excerpts. One of the places Peters mentions is St. Catherine's Convent School. In the photo caption for the picture of the school on Page 35, she says the following:

Some non-Catholic children were sent here because the sisters had a reputation for gentility and thoroughness.

I like the sound of that, having been the product of similar teachers at St. Brigid's in Brooklyn.

The Miami convent school was just east of the Church of the Holy Name, built in 1898 on grounds of what is today Gesu Church. The original, small wooden church was built on land donated by Henry Flagler, who I believe was Presbyterian. Peters relays an anecdote in which Flagler, at the time, said that "two institutions that never failed to do what they started out to do were the Standard Oil Company and the Catholic Church."

Flagler was busy extending his Florida East Coast Railway to Key West in 1909. Two of his business associates founded St. Catherine's school, which in 1909 was staffed by six Sisters of St. Joseph from New York, Florida, Ohio, and Ireland. Pupils that season closed the school year with a program that included the following:

• music by the school's music club, the St. Cecelia Club
• piano solos
• readings
• awarding of medals of excellence

And, we're sure, some heartfelt prayers.

Home on the trail

I just got back from the annual work retreat, where my department was held captive for a few days of team-building and productivity. This year, our location was the lakefront Future Farmers of America Leadership Training Center in south central Florida. The parklike complex is in rural farm and ranch country on the Lake Wales Ridge. The main lodge had copies of Polk County's agriculture magazine, In the Field, in which cattlemen's association news figures prominently. It got me thinking about how deeply intertwined cattle ranching and Florida are.

Bartow cattle drive. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory

A lot of information is available about the history of Florida ranching and cattle drives - numbers, dates, controversies, leaders, etc. I had to dig to find details about how cowhands ate on the trail. It's kind of a stretch to fit this topic into "Home Life," but if you think about it, the trail really was a type of home - particularly in the 19th century when drives conducted on horseback lasted weeks.

Dana Ste. Claire, in his book, Cracker: The Cracker Culture in Florida History (Museum of Arts and Sciences, 1998), surprisingly includes canned tomatoes among typical trail cuisine such as bacon, grits, sweet potatoes, cornbread and coffee. He also mentions how fried meat might be packed into tins, and then covered with hot fat for preservation. Not so yum, if you ask me. Both Ste. Claire and Jim Bob Tinsley's Florida Cow Hunter: The Life and Times of Bone Mizell (University of Central Florida Press, 1990), note how a cow or steer might be butchered, salted and smoked at the start of a roundup or drive. Ideally, meals were prepared at a chuck wagon, but the wagons couldn't always reach cowboys on roundups when they tracked cattle across wetlands. The workers had to carry rations in those cases. Food might include syrup cookies that they'd brought from home, and whatever game they hunted.

Home on the trail required resourcefulness. Obviously, on a drive, cowboys slept on the ground. But Florida is famous for its rains. Tinsley writes how, it wet season, cowmen dug parallel trenches, heaped the dirt in the middle, and piled palmetto fans atop the dirt. That became a bed.

One final note: A fascinating example of pioneer ingenuity is in Joe A. Akerman Jr. and J. Mark Akerman's book, Jacob Summerlin, King of the Crackers (Florida Historical Society Press, 2004): Black jack oak provided a salt substitute if the tree was cut green, burned, and left overnight so that a crust would form. The crust had to be scraped off the next morning before the dew dried.

Four families grow into a parish

Florida has a deep-rooted Catholic history that dates to the 1500s. But much of the peninsula was mission territory in the late 1800s. My parish, St. Peter Catholic Church, was no exception. In the early 1880s, it was a mission of the church in Palatka, a riverfront city almost 60 miles away. That was a daunting distance in days when roads were sandy ruts and horsepower had four legs.

A wonderful parish history in the St. Peter's archives tells the story of the earliest Catholic settlers. The typed document is an example of the locally written parish histories stored in offices and archives of faith communities everywhere. They are rich sources of local histories and deserve digital preservation and wider dissemination.

"Mrs. Charles Paiva, Historian," wrote the St. Peter Church parish history. She credits a Miss Emily Brady "who kept track of church history as it happened." Please leave a comment if you know Mrs. Paiva's first name. I'd love to add it here.

(Photo courtesy St. Peter Catholic Church)
The first Catholic Church in DeLand could seat 60 people.

The history relates how Fr. Willliam J. Kenny said the first Mass in DeLand on June 7, 1883, in the Kilkoff home, which still stands on West New York Avenue. Four families were in attendance - Kilkoff, Dreka, Ziegler and Fisher.  Less than a year later, a small Catholic church was constructed near the center of town. On April 19, 1884, Fr. Kenny offered Mass in the new chapel, pictured on this page. The next day, April 20, Right Rev. John Moore, bishop of St. Augustine, dedicated the parish "to the service of God under the patronage of St. Peter."

An interesting detail emerges from the chronicle about that long-ago day, and it bears hearing in our modern era of religious strife and intolerance. "Members spoke of it as a joyous occasion and spoke of generous help given by non-Catholic friends," writes Mrs. Paiva. The organ was a portable melodeon on loan from a local Methodist. And, "... members of other faiths" - formed the choir that sang the High Mass. Remember, it was all in Latin then. 

A year later, the parish had 13 families. Today, it has about 3,000 families. The first little chapel accommodated 60 people. Over the years it was enlarged, and finally replaced. The current church, on the same property, was built in the 1960s.