Truth in advertising

Market gardening was grueling work in frontier
Florida. These19th century homesteaders
are harvesting cucumbers.

The destruction wrought by Hurricane Helene reminds me life in Florida can be challenging. My neighborhood was spared this time, but who knows what the future holds.

Florida frontier life was always challenging. Hurricanes were one obstacle among many. Newcomers learned the hard way. Many had been lured to Florida by promotional material that emphasized and exaggerated the state's potential.

That resulted in some seriously annoyed transplants. "Most of the market gardening in Florida, so far as we know it, cannot but prove disastrous," was the verdict of three Vermont brothers after a few years here in the early 1870s. 

They blamed the false promises fed to them before arrival. "Land agents and visionaries hold forth that great crops may be expected from insignificant outlays; and so they decoy the credulous to their ruin."

Those are sharp words. More surprising is that they appear in an 1873 book written specifically for new settlers in post-Civil War Florida. 

As usual for that era, the book has a weighty title: The Florida Settler, or Immigrants' Guide, A Complete Manual of Information Concerning the Climate, Soil, Products and Resources of The State. The contents were compiled by D. Eagen, commissioner of Lands and Immigration.

Eagen reached out to Florida locals and asked them to submit reports on their counties. They replied with specifics about climate, crops, terrain, industries, wages, transportation, economic outlooks and occasional descriptions of a town's business district. (Zero mention of domestic details that so interest me.)

As expected, positive aspects are highlighted. Some go beyond that, though. The correspondent from Madison County wrote that "Florida is in need of an energetic, thorough-going, stirring, enterprising, industrious class of men. The late unhappy and unfortunate civic strife seems to have dwarfed our energies, and as of yet we have been unable to shake off our lethargy or gain anything like our former vigor."

The "civic strife" was, of course, the Civil War. It had ended a mere eight years before the book was published. 

The Vermont brothers were among early post-war newcomers, as they were already planting in 1870. They bought 275 acres near Mandarin for $275. That's about $5,300 today. They - and/or their hired workers - cleared 35 acres for planting.

Mrs. H.B. Stowe recounted their agricultural experimentation in a Christian Union article reprinted in the 1873 book. I'm guessing Mrs. Stowe was Harriet Beecher Stowe, who owned a home in Mandarin.

Despite the brothers' harsh words, in the end they said their best market crops were "handsomely remunerative." That was after a lot of trial and error. They discovered the need for ample fertilization the hard way. They also learned what crops to plant and when to plant them.

Among the challenges they faced during their first three years:

• Cabbage seeds sowed in sandy soil without manure resulted in weak plants beaten down by rain. Entire crop was lost.
• Three acres of cabbage were half ruined by a Christmas frost.
• Four acres of cucumbers planted in "new, hard, sour land" produced a "wretched crop." 
• A hailstorm prematurely spoiled what had been the following year's otherwise good crop of cucumbers.
• Tomato plants were lost to rain, wet land and insufficient fertilizer. A heavy rain also  helped ruin the next year's crop.
• A Christmas freeze killed half an acre of blooming pea plants.

The Vermont natives improved cultivation methods each year. By the fourth year they saw a decent return on their investment. But they warned potential newcomers that growing good market crops required intense cultivation. They said market gardeners would spend as much on manure for one acre as they would to buy 100 acres of new land. 

That's real advice, the kind any potential settler in the 19th century would appreciate. Today's newcomers, not so much. For them, I recommend taking a good look at topographical maps before buying any house or land in Florida. Get acquainted with the flood plain and stay away from lowlands. Don't build on the waterfront. And evacuate when told to do so.

Little House on the Florida frontier, revisited

This 30-page booklet sheds light on the
Wilder family's brief stay in frontier Florida

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about how Laura Ingalls Wilder lived on the Florida frontier for about a year in the early 1890s. 

I'd been surprised to learn that she, Almanzo, and their daughter, Rose, had settled briefly in the backwoods of rural Florida. And unsurprised to learn they'd left rather quickly.

Yankees and Old South residents didn't mix well in that time and place. The Wilders' short residency in Westville, FL, wasn't a happy one.

I wanted to learn more than I could glean from the Internet. Thanks to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home Association, I have. 

The association has long overseen production and distribution of a 30-page booklet about the Westville years. First published in 1979, Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Westville Florida Years is in its 7th printing. I purchased it via the association's online store (along with a couple of quilt patterns Laura was known to have followed).

An even bigger thanks goes to author Alene M. Warnock and her husband, James M. Warnock. Her curiosity and perserverence uncovered gems of information about descendents and the Ingalls-Wilder legacy in Florida. His photographs provide additional context and his essay about Westville "today"  - meaning the late 1970s - depicts a time as distant to us in 2020 as the 1890s are. 

Westville in the 1970s was smaller than it had been in the 1890s. I've never been to the community, but I expect it's smaller now than even in the 1970s. It hugs the Florida-Alabama border in the middle of nowhere. I did visit the region, though, a number of years ago. The countryside is beautiful.

I don't know if either of the Warnocks is still alive. If they are, I hope they know of my and many Wilder fans' appreciation of their efforts. But I suspect they have passed. I found a legacy.com obituary for an Alene M. Warnock who died in 2011 and whose husband, James, had predeceased her. 

I won't provide a lot of details about what's in their booklet. It only costs $3.50 and your purchase would help support a nonprofit. In fact, the little book would make a great stocking stuffer for your favorite Wilder fan or for yourself! 

Why should you read it? Because you'll find - among other treats -  that the Warnocks met and interviewed Laura's - niece? cousin once-removed? The woman, named Emma, was elderly in the 1970s and an important link to the past and to Laura's life story.

I'm not exactly sure how to term the relationship between Laura and "Miss Emma." The woman was the daughter of Laura's cousin Peter Ingalls, the person on whose homestead the Wilders probably settled for their year in Florida. The Warnocks found no evidence that Laura and Almanzo filed a homestead claim of their own. That the Warnocks found such a close relative of Laura's in the 1970s is a wonderful thing. 

The Warnocks did a lot of diligent searching and interviewing and traveling on their own time and dime. They shed needed light on the Wilder family's Westville detour. For that, this Wilder fan salutes them. As I hope many other Wilder fans have done and will do.

---

Here's a link to the 2017 post I wrote about the family's sojourn in Florida. 

A possum in the applesauce

This pioneer photo on page 87 of Stuart on the St. Lucie, A Pictorial History
is credited to Robert Gladwin.

How I wish I had a photo to go with the headline: A possum in the applesauce. But Southeast Florida pioneer Homer Hine Stuart Jr. had other things on his mind the night he encountered the marsupial in 1886. Namely, ridding his bungalow of the critter before his visiting mother woke up and saw it.

Homer described the scene in a letter to his fiancee, Margaret, who stayed in civilized Athens, N.Y.  She declined his invitations to come to the frontier town of Stuart on the banks of the St. Lucie River. The city carries Homer's surname to this day. Yet Homer homesteaded on the river for only a handful of years. He and Margaret got married in 1888 and settled in the North.

This image appears on
the title page of  Stuart
on the St. Lucie.

Before I return to the possum story, I first want to credit the book in which I found it. Parts of Homer's letter are transcribed in the wonderful Stuart on the St. Lucie, A Pictorial History, by Sandra Henderson Thurlow (Sewall's Point Co., 2001).

The possum story gets better, and Homer's writing is all that's needed. So let me step out of the way:

"...At last I got to sleep but only for a little while, I thought all the dishes were being broken & there was a Possum on the table with his idiotic smile. Of course I had to make the best of it & while mother sat eating her breakfast & saying how delicious the applesauce was & in this climate what a perfect substitute for butter, I agreed with her & to prove it ate some more of the delicate flavored applesauce thinking all the time of what she would think if I told her the picture of the night before. An Opposum standing in the dish of applesauce & munching the wing of a chicken, his tail resting in the sugar bowl."

Truly, I couldn't have made that up. And I write fiction when not blogging.

Thurlow writes that Homer became disenchanted with pioneering soon after his widowed mother left. He homesteaded in Florida for only five years. Several other family members also owned riverfront land in Stuart, so the city name may also reflect their influence. Not a one, though, can top Homer's possum story.

Cracker architecture a native style

 Old Settler's House in Bradenton is at
Manatee Village Historical Park. The 1912
house has been called Cracker Gothic in style.

The calendar says November, but everyone in Florida knows late autumn can have as many toasty days as cool ones. 

Warm weather is year-round here. That's one reason for the development of the vernacular architectural style known as Florida Cracker. Such homes were designed to fit within their environment and help residents live comfortably in a challenging climate.

The word Cracker as it applies in Florida can refer to a lifestyle, customs, group of people, food, and, yes, architecture. It's the style of building constructed by many pioneer settlers. 

Cracker houses were wood-frame structures that made use of  Florida's abundant natural resources. Heart pine was particularly durable and readily available in the longleaf pine forests that blanketed the state years ago.

The houses almost without exception featured long, deep porches with extended roofs. Some buildings had detached kitchens to prevent fire and heat from affecting other rooms. And some houses featured what was known as a dog trot. A dog trot was an open passageway situated at the center of the house. The passageway was covered by the roof and porch, and interior rooms opened onto it. The design helped air flow through.

To learn about Cracker architecture from an expert, I recommend you read Classic Cracker, Florida's Wood-Frame Vernacular Architecture, a 1992 Pineapple Press book by architect Ronald W. Haase. The book is informative and filled with photos.

Living-history museums throughout Florida feature restored Cracker homesteads open for tours and self-guided visits. Until you have time to walk through one yourself, enjoy watching a video from the History of Central Florida Podcast Series.

This dwelling is shown in the Cracker House
video on YouTube.

Small museums preserve local lore

Florida is dotted with small museums and historic sites that depend heavily on volunteer love and support to stay open. These sites are well worth seeking out and exploring (and supporting). Here's a video overview of Florida Pioneer Museum in Florida City that I haven't yet had the pleasure to visit.

Small, local museums are great because they showcase what daily life was like for pioneers in a specific location. The docents are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about local history. More and more of these mini-museums are gaining a video presence. I'll start to share more videos on a regular basis.

Florida Pioneer Museum is near Homestead in South Florida. Next time you're in that part of the state, stop by.

Faith, stronger than greed

Historic St. Paul's AME Church building of Garfield may
be part of this Iglesia Cristiana de Deltona church complex.
Source: Google Images

I tend to favor historical tidbits that showcase tolerance, acceptance, and understanding among people struggling to settle a frontier. They're hard to find in the history of the  lost African-American community of Garfield. Hard, because many Garfield homesteads were lost due to back tax issues in the first half of the 20th century. The seized land was sold in the 1960s to the corporation that created Deltona, now the largest city in Volusia County.

Former slaves settled Garfield after the Civil War. I once saw one of the Homestead Act documents that granted 88 acres to a Washington Ferguson in 1888 "to have and to hold, he and his heirs forever."*  Forever lasted until the Great Depression in the segregated South, when descendants of the original owners starting having trouble meeting tax bills. In the 1980s, a then-elderly former Garfield resident told me the land was lost at tax sales in the 1930s and 1940s. He and about 60 other descendants of the original homesteaders were later sued in order to clear title to the land, so it could be sold to developers. Sad story, to be sure. 

The glimmer of light, if there is one, is in how the tight-knit faith community of Garfield held together even after the neighborhood fragmented. The church was organized in 1880, according to WPA records online at Florida Memory.  In 1887, Arthur Benson of Brooklyn, N.Y., sold two acres of land for $1 to some of the original settlers of Garfield, including July Jenkins. The land was near a pond that still bears the name Jenkins Pond, and the property was to be used for religious and educational purposes by members of the local African Methodist Episcopal Church.

But by the 1940s, community members had lost their land and scattered. No one lived near the church anymore. Trustees worried about fire threats to the now-aged building. So in 1948 they moved the small wood-frame structure, board by board, to a parcel they bought for $112 on Lakeshore Drive. Worship continued for decades, long after Garfield ceased to exist. The St. Paul AME Church members had praised God for 100 years by the time I met the last-surviving church trustee, Robert Poole. The congregation that once numbered about 200 had dwindled to nothing. He worried about what would happen to the historic building after he died. 

Another faith community stepped in. Within a few years, the building housed an active, Spanish-speaking Christian congregation, Iglesia Cristiana de Deltona. And, as far as I can tell from Google Images, the church's complex still incorporates the original Garfield church structure - allowing the spirit of Garfield to live on.

In the early 2000s, Garfield was in the news** when the church's original cemetery was rediscovered. I haven't heard anything in recent years about next steps, and the Internet turns up only the original stories. 

I close with a question that nags at me, a non-attorney. Church property isn't taxed. So how could it be lost to back taxes? Doesn't the original church site, that sliver of the larger parcel sold for $1 to five Garfield settlers in 1887, still belong to their descendants? Just a thought.

*Note about the quoted item in the second paragraph: The source is a 1989 article I wrote for the Daytona Beach News-Journal. 

**This GenWeb item includes text from one of the news articles: http://www.africanaheritage.com/uploads/256/GarfieldSettlementCemeteryfromBilluploaded.txt

Digging into citrus cultivation

Citrus from my yard, before
citrus greening moved in.

History filters down to us in a funnel. A wide world of people and events trickles through comparatively few sources. Sometimes forgotten is just how many diverse practices and opinions existed, even about something as seemingly homogenous as citrus cultivation.

Correspondence by a 19th century writer named Mrs. Leora B. Robinson of Orlando dispels any notion of past practices being narrowly defined. She comes across as plain-speaking and straightforward in the concise guidebook she wrote for Florida newcomers in 1884.  Living in Florida consists of letters Leora wrote for a Kentucky publication, Home and Farm, in response to readers' questions. And they had questions aplenty, particularly about the gold rush so peculiar to the Sunshine State: orange fever.

Everybody wanted to get rich quickly with
an orange grove. This one belonged to
Count Frederick deBary. Credit:
State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory

Readers wanted exactitude: how much to spend, what kind of land to buy, what rootstock to use, how many years until a profit would surface. Leora pushed back. It all depends, she said, on whether a homesteader worked the land or hired a manager, and on numerous other variables. "Before I begin estimating the cost of an orange grove I would call attention to the fact that the methods of cultivation and procedure are almost as numerous as the owners of the grove..."  she wrote. Among the citrus theories floating around Florida in the 1880s are the following, which she itemized:

• Orange trees do best on low ground.
• Orange trees die on low ground.
• Land that is too high is as bad as land that is too low.
• Don't use budded trees; always used seedlings.
• Never use seedlings.
• Don't transplant nursery-grown budded trees into your grove.
• Do transplant nursery-grown budded trees.
• Shaddock is the best rootstock.
• Sweet orange is the best rootstock.
• Grapefruit is the best rootstock.
• Lemon is the best rootstock.
• Don't plow the grove.
• The more the grove is plowed, the better.
• Don't plow in summer.
• Only plow in summer.
• Plant trees densely - no more than 15 feet apart.
• Plant trees 20-, 30-, even 40-feet apart.

Leora overflowed with practical common sense, some of it derived from the groves she managed for others. One of her takeaways from the conflicting advice was this: "You can hardly make a mistake." And if one did? There were other ways to make a living in pioneer Florida. She suggested the homesteader "...  plant arrow-root, raise melons, split rails at $1 per hundred, build cabins for your neighbors at $1.50 per day, raise chickens, catch fish and eat them, make fertilizers, shoot alligators on Lake Kissimmee and sell their hides .." For a person willing work, Florida was a paradise in more ways than one.