1st Florida woman voted in 1915

This photo from Vero Beach Magazine shows
 Zena Dreier in elder years. She was the first
 woman to vote in Florida. In 1915, she voted
in Fellsmere. (Credit: Vero Beach magazine)

It's a busy election season in Florida, in case you haven't noticed. Perfect timing to remember the lady believed to be the first woman to vote in Florida. In 1915! Five years before the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote.

I stumbled across this information in Vero Beach Magazine. I love local publications. They often provide historical information unavailable in larger media outlets. The story details what led to Mrs. Zena Dreier's vote in Fellsmere in 1915, and is fully available online. I first read the article in the print version of the magazine's June 2018 issue, while visiting relatives.

Fellsmere is hardly a metropolis even today. Wikipedia puts its 1920 population at 333 people. I'm guessing the 1915 population was even smaller. But Fellsmere was incorporated even then.

The settlement was launched by Fellsmere Farm Company. Magazine article author Mary Beth Vallar writes about the influence of activist Marian Fell Vans Agnew on incorporation. She was the daughter of Fellsmere's founder and wife of the attorney who wrote the city charter. That charter authorized women's right to vote in municipal elections.

Florida state legislators likely snoozed through charter review, the article theorizes. The article of incorporation that granted suffrage for women in Fellsmere received what appeared to be rubber-stamp approval in April 1915.

Two months later, Zena Annetta Matthews Dreier cast the first woman's vote in a Fellsmere city election. It was a big deal. The newspaper in Jacksonville - 200 miles from Fellsmere - even covered the news. A screengrab of the article is on the city clerk's website.

Zena, too, had connections to the Fellsmere Farms Company. The article says her husband was the company's top salesman. It's unknown whether she was a suffragette. It doesn't matter. She voted.  I hope all of you do, too.

Drexel sisters' philanthropy touched Florida

 St. Peter Claver Church in 1950.
(Photo credit: St. Peter Claver community)

The St. Peter Claver Catholic community in Tampa is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year (1893-2018). It's a fitting time to remember the roots of this community, plus its links to St. Katharine Drexel and her sister, Louise Drexel Morrell.

Catholics in other areas of the country don't always realize Florida was Catholic mission territory well into the 20th century. I've encountered Catholic history publications that gloss over Florida's rich Catholic history. The authors don't understand the heroic efforts of religious and lay settlers to make sure the "Cross in the Sand"* stayed put.

Historian and pastor Fr. Michael J. McNally helps us remember. In his excellent book, Catholic Parish Life on Florida's West Coast, 1860-1968" (Catholic Media Ministries, 1996), he writes that, in Florida's early years:

"Winter visitors who came from places where Catholicism had a complex infrastructure were often appalled at Florida's lack of ecclesiastical institutions." (142)

These visitors, plus clergy, religious sisters and brothers, and local lay Catholics successfully worked to change that. McNally relates numerous examples. The Drexel sisters are two of the best known. They are widely recognized for philanthropic and spiritual work on behalf of Native Americans and African Americans in the western and southern United States. Less well known is that Florida was among their beneficiaries in the South.

McNally writes that Louise Morrell visited Tampa in 1911 and "conceived the idea of erecting a Catholic church for Tampa's black community" (143). At that time, the community already had St. Peter Claver School, which dates to 1893. (Arsonists torched the first school building.)

McNally says that in 1899, Mother Katharine Drexel, as she was known at the time, gave $2,000 to support the educational initiative (189). That's about $57,000 in today's dollars. Saint Drexel also gave more money at later dates and visited the school in 1904.

The St. Peter Claver Mission's church building was erected in 1915 with money donated by Louise  Morrell. No one in the Tampa business community would loan the pastor of nearby Sacred Heart parish the $3,000 needed to build St. Peter Claver church (189). That's equal to about $75,000 in 2018. The first Mass was said on Christmas Day 1915, in the new mission church that was large enough to seat 200 people.

Louise Morrell supported the St. Peter Claver community into the 1930s. She visited again after 1911. Through the years, donated statues, books and school desks in addition to giving financial support. Mother Katharine Drexel is known to have visited Tampa only once - in 1904 - to see St. Peter Claver School. On the same trip, she also journeyed to St. Benedict the Moor School in St. Augustine, another school she helped financially.

Leading ladies of the secular community also supported Catholic efforts in frontier Tampa. McNally mentions such notables as Henry Plant's wife, Margaret K. Plant, and community leader Kate Jackson (143).

But so did regular folk. In nearby San Antonio - Florida not Texas! (It's about 30 miles from Tampa) - a determined settler started a home school. Marie Cecile Morse was a mother of six who tired of waiting for community leaders to start a Catholic school in newly settled San Antonio. So she started one herself, in her home, in 1883 with 14 students. I'll tell that story in a future blog post.

---

*Cross in the Sand, The Early Catholic Church in Florida, 1513-1870, by the late historian and  former priest Michael Gannon, and Fr. McNally's books on church history in South and West Florida, should be required reading for those interested in Florida's Catholic history.

Quilts, a novel, and the Florida scrub

My article about the meaning of quilts in
South Moon Under is in the 2018 Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida
Literature, vol 26. (Gerri Bauer photo)

Florida in the 1920s and 1930s was filled with hidden backwoods homesteads.

The frenzied activity of the era's Florida Land Boom may well have been on another planet for anyone visiting these pioneer settlements. One such visitor was author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

Rawlings moved to Florida in 1928. As part of her research, she trekked into the Florida scrub near Ocala to live with a Cracker family named Fiddia in 1931.

Her experiences and meticulous notes evolved into her 1933 novel, South Moon Under, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. (Her best-known novel, The Yearling, won the Pulitzer in 1939.)

South Moon Under is my favorite Rawlings' novel, not least because a thread about quilting runs through it, as hidden as those old homesteads were. More about that later. This blog post is now going to split into two threads, no pun intended.

One thread highlights a video featuring the granddaughter of the woman Rawlings stayed with in the Ocala forest. The other is about the novel's quilting aspect and about the article in which I explore quilting's place in the narrative. The article is published in the 2018 issue of The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature, Volume 26. The journal is published by the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society, of which I'm a member.

Rawlings' hosts in the forest were Piety Fiddia and her son. Rawlings learned about and tried her hand at many aspects of the Fiddias' self-sufficient pioneer life. She then gave the name Piety to the fictional mother in South Moon Under. 

The real Piety's granddaughter, Carol Fiddia Laxton, said Rawlings' writing captured her grandmother so perfectly, she could almost see her on the pages of the novel. 

That comment, and others about life in pioneer Florida and Carol's childhood memories of Rawlings, are in the wonderful video linked below. The video was filmed at Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park in Cross Creek and was sponsored by the Friends of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Farm.

Back to the novel and its quilts: My curiosity about the bedcovers' role was sparked the first time I read the book years ago, but went dormant. About three years ago, I re-read the novel and the quilting again jumped out at me. I knew I wanted to write about it, but why? What did the quilting signify and why was it featured enough in the narrative for me to notice?

Rawlings didn't use words indiscriminately but she did use metaphors. I let my ideas percolate for several months and periodically did some research, but still came up empty.

Then my mother fell gravely ill, and I started driving back and forth through the Ocala National Forest two, sometimes three, times a week. My mother died and the trips continued as I settled her estate, relocated my ill father to DeLand near my husband and me, and sold my parents' Ocala house.

This was an emotionally hard time for me, as you can guess. Each time I drove, the forest portion of my journey soothed my psyche. And each time, I'd think of the novel and the quilting, especially when I passed the sign for the Big Scrub turnoff. The road leads to a now-abandoned homestead that once inspired Rawlings' writing.

I'd see the sign, think of the author, think of the novel, and circle back to quilts. For I come from a long line of women who plied the needle, sometimes to keep themselves and their families alive. They sewed as peasants in Europe and in sweatshops in New York City, not as Crackers in the Florida scrub. But some things transcend physical boundaries.

On my drives, I thought about mothers and daughters, needlework, communities, connections, so many things. And one day, on one of those drives, the missing link I sought was ... just there, in my mind.

I had just passed State Road 19 and noted one of my journey's landmark sandhills as I rounded a curve. Before I reached the Big Scrub sign the answer came to me in a flash. The quilting in the novel connects women. It helps the fictional Piety thread her extended family together in a way that ensures survival in the scrub beyond basic necessities.

Finally, I was able to write the article that became "Piety's Quilts: Stitching Family and Fabric in South Moon Under." Finally, the meaning of the quilts was clear.

Quilting is a multifaceted art and craft in the 21st century. It encompasses all genders, a range of genres and applications, and collective endeavors such as the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, which I was privileged to see about 20 years ago. 

But in the story world of South Moon Under and in the daily life I try to uncover in this blog, quilting was part of the pioneer woman's domain. It was something that gave her agency. And that's important no matter what the era.

Here's the video:

Watch the video at https://youtu.be/jI4IsV6chR4

A life in belongings

19th century estate inventory lists
 were often highly detailed.

I'm so enjoying Lucy Worsley's book, Jane Austen At Home, because it focuses on "everyday things from an ordinary life" (16). That's how I try to focus this blog: on the everyday parts of daily life among regular folk. Finding those details can be challenging. Always interesting, though.

Wills and their associated inventories are one way to view an ordinary life framed by its things. A treasure hunt through such public records occasionally provides insights amid the legalese, generalities, and scribbled or faded cursive writing. You see what was materially valued by people.

The older the record, the generally more detailed it is. The belongings of a man or woman named B.P. Johnson of the Florida panhandle's Jefferson County were detailed down to the number of teaspoons (nine) in 1880. This person's two quilts were deemed important enough to note each's value, $1.50. One inflation calculator tells me that's about $33 in modern dollars, not very much. It's a fair assumption that those quilts were handmade, and I hope they were treasured.

A man named Fred, whose surname is unreadable in the record, had one pair of pants, one vest, two suits, and shoes when he died in 1882 in Monroe County, in the Florida Keys. No other possessions are documented. He left chunks of change to heirs. Seven each received more than $3,000, close to $70,000 apiece today. Others received from $100 to $1,500 ($2,275 to $34,000), nothing to sneeze at in that era.

Then, as now, inequality existed. The differences between the estates of two unrelated people who died in the panhandle's Leon County in 1853 are one example. The inventory of a "Mrs. Mary Ann B" (surname unreadable) lists more than 100 items including a gold watch, silver thimble, several volumes of books, at least seven quilts and seventeen cane-bottom chairs. She had more mundane items, to be sure, such as a mosquito net, a soap box, and a snuff box. Hers was the only list I saw that included a Bible among belongings.

Compare that to a Mr. Jenkins in the same county, same time. He left behind far fewer items, including a set of crockery and milk pans, some books, one pitcher and cup, two pairs each of pants, shirts, and coats, one hat, fourteen turkeys and one brown horse.

Both these Leon County residents also had what we'd consider the basics: bed, bedding, tables, etc. Neither was what we'd call rich. Mrs. Mary Ann's assets totaled $252 (about $7,600 today), and Mr. Jenkins' belongings were worth $79 (about $2,400). They were unequal, but both would be considered as living below the poverty level today.

So what can we glean from such records? Maybe consumerism wasn't as widespread back then. Perhaps goods weren't available or weren't affordable. Or just weren't wanted or valued as much as they are today. Hard to say. I'm sure some people in pioneer days over-consumed and lived beyond their means. And I don't want to go all nostalgic about so-called "simpler" times that weren't simple at all. Life was downright harder back in the day.

One thing I can say. The older I get, the less attached I'm becoming to things. Or trying to become less attached. My goal is to downsize to what's really meaningful (to me) and needed for a comfortable but basic life. I won't end up with seventeen cane-back chairs, but I might keep nine teaspoons.

Records cited in this blog post are from Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org online public records. 

Hardly perfect

Detail of the cover of the 2006 El Scribano.

I didn't want to write this post. So I delayed, and delayed, and procrastinated some more.

Why? Because I like to write about the strengths of the pioneer Catholic community in Florida. Not its weaknesses.

But the Holy Spirit prodded me to post. Humans are flawed. Amid the many people trying to do right in pioneer Florida, some did wrong. Possibly, they didn't realize it. One can hope. But just as we stumble along on our paths today, so did the Catholics establishing a foothold for the faith in Florida. They, like us, hopefully realize(d) faults and make/made amends.

In this case, the positive is that the Church and its representatives in Florida educated children of color in an era when it wasn't popular and when laws made it difficult. The negative is that within that educational system, some people engaged in racist behavior. 

That truth emerged from recollections written by a former pupil of St. Benedict the Moor Catholic School in St. Augustine. They are published in the 2006 issue of El Scribano, the St. Augustine Journal of History.

I wrote about the St. Benedict the Moor school in this blog in March 2017. I particularly noted how three religious sisters were jailed in 1916 because they were white women teaching children of color. The memoir in El Scribano focuses on a slightly later time period -- the late 1920s and early 1930s. The article's author, Barbara Vickers, was born in 1923 and attended St. Benedict school from kindergarten through eighth grade.

The overall article is about family and neighborhood life in the St. Augustine community of Lincolnville, with school a part of it. Some elements are familiar to Catholic schoolchildren everywhere and in every era: "The sisters stressed catechism, multiplication tables, and literature, and they were very stern." I remember as much from my years of Catholic school.

Other aspects, however, were worlds apart. Listen to what else Vickers writes: "Items discarded from the white Catholic school, St. Joseph's Academy, were considered good enough for black children." That included desks and schoolbooks, which were about three years behind, "but sold to black students nonetheless."

Part of me rises to defend those early religious sisters. I imagine their funds were severely restricted. Vickers writes how the sisters would varnish the old desks before sending them to St. Benedict's. But there's no excusing some things. Vickers remembers that only light-skinned children of color were chosen to crown a statue of the Blessed Mother each May. And that a choir teacher, a Sister St. Matthew, told Vickers that "all colored people can sing," when the young pupil tried to explain that she couldn't carry a tune.

Vickers doesn't write with bitterness. She includes details about happy times, in fact, the memoir is more positive than negative. She tells how everyone in the community crowded into the school yard to decorate floats for the Emancipation Day parade each year. And she remembers that: "It was always a pleasure to attend the nine o'clock mass at St. Benedict's and see the sunlight coming in from my favorite stained glass window..."  Her grandmother and great-aunts had donated the window in memory of their mother. 

In its contributor notes, El Scribano lists Vickers as having been a "vocal leader in the town's civil rights movement." I don't know if she is still alive, but I thank her for penning her remembrances of school years. I like to think at least some of the sisters were free of prejudice, but I have to accept that some weren't. As with all history, we have to know of past wrongs in order to learn from them.

Relic road was modern marvel

Vehicles aren't allowed, but you can hike a one-mile section
of the 1917 Pershing Highway. (Photo credit: Gerri Bauer)

A sign at the trailhead explains the history of the road once
known as Pershing Highway. (Photo credit: Gerri Bauer)

We're super-sized in so many ways in our modern lives. A giant, single-serve soft drink comes close to the size of a whole bucket used to haul water back in the day. Okay, that's an exaggeration. But serving sizes are, to me, the most obvious sign of our gluttony for bigger, better, more, more, more.

I never considered highways as testaments to the oversizing of our culture. Yet one close look at the 1917 Pershing Highway archaeological site makes me think otherwise.

What a narrow strip of a road. Certain 21st century vehicles would hang off its edges. The tiny-car movement I noticed in recent years seems to have dwindled, no pun intended. In my region, at least, I see far more large pickups and SUVs than I do small cars.

Automobiles were basically one size when Florida inmates built the Pershing Highway, part of which is now an interpretive trail between DeLand and Daytona Beach. Using the bench in the first photo for scale, you can see how narrow the brick roadway is.

In its heyday, the highway was a marvel and technical achievement that served as the main route between the two cities. Before the road connected them, a trip from one to the other could take an entire day. Even though we call it a highway today, in its time it was simply known as either the DeLand Road or the Daytona Road, depending on which way you were traveling.

Think for a minute, what it must have been like to travel the brick paved road in the 19-teen years. Nothing but a slim brick path across sandhills, tangled hammocks, and wetlands. No street lights, traffic signals, gas stations or convenience stores.

The signage at the trail's entrance says the "pea gravel" concrete on each side of the brick was added in the 1920s, likely to allow two cars to pass one another. The initial road was one-lane. Even widened, it remained unlighted. A trip at night must have been a lonely journey through a densely wooded, unpopulated area. The highway still looks isolated today.

The road that appears so desolate to me was a sign of progress in the early days. So much so, that it was featured on Volusia County's 1917 license plates, according to author Ronald Williamson in his excellent book, Volusia County's West Side: Steamboats & Sandhills (History Press, 2008). The book is a collection of history-focused columns Williamson wrote as a journalist. In the article about Pershing Highway, he says the old road was uncovered when wildfires burned through the region in 1998.

Before that, vegetation had swallowed and hid this vestige of an earlier time. Today, you can hike a one-mile section known as the Pershing Highway Interpretive Trail. The trail is part of what is now Tiger Bay State Forest.

Named after World War I General John Pershing, the highway was abandoned in 1947. Adjacent U.S. 92 made for much easier traveling. You can see the parallel roadways in the third photo in this post.

I'm far from an expert on automobiles, but the cars of the late 1940s had to be boat-like in comparison to vehicles of the late teens and early 1920s. So, too, the difference between narrow Pershing Highway and four-lane U.S. 92.

Even the grassy median on the modern highway is wider than the old road. Both are dwarfed by roads and bridges being constructed in the 21st century. Size marches on.

The old highway was abandoned when U.S. 92, seen behind
the sign, opened in the 1940s. (Photo credit: Gerri Bauer)

One-stop shopping of yore

You can visit this historic general store
(Photo credit: Florida Trailblazer)

Old-time general stores offered one-stop shopping to pioneers and settlers. Kind of like Amazon and big box outlets do today. With some differences. Personality, for one. The general store of yore functioned as a community news hub, post office, and gathering place. The multiple roles made each general store unique and far more than just a place to buy coffee. Proprietors knew patrons by name.

True, the merchandise selection was limited. Overnight shipping didn't exist for special orders. General stores filled the needs that existed in their time. The one pictured with the post and featured in a Florida Trailblazer video is the C.C. Smith store from the 1920s.

You can visit the Smith general store at the Pioneer Florida Museum and Village north of Dade City, which is in Pasco County. The video description says the store served the Lacoochee area. Wikipedia describes Lacoochee as a "census-designated place," but it seems to have a rich history that can be explored via links at a History of Pasco County webpage.

I've yet to visit the Pioneer Florida Museum and Village. When I do, I'll be sure to sit down in that chair on the store's front porch, and rest awhile.