Giving thanks at table and pew

Even into the 20th century, people went to church before
sitting down to dinner on Thanksgiving. This photo shows
crowds leaving St. Patrick's Church in Washington, D.C.,
after the Pan-American Mass on Thanksgiving Day 1915.
(Photo credit: Library of Congress)

Thanksgiving in the late 19th century was as much a day of churchgoing as it was of feasting. I was surprised to learn that. Records show up in more than one Florida newspaper in online archives.

An article in the Chipley Banner on Nov. 26, 1898 reminded readers that: “In every State of the Union the people last Thursday, assembled in the churches and in their homes to render unto Almighty God their thanks for the blessings that had been vouchsafed to them, and to their country during the past year.”

Several years earlier, the Florida Agriculturist reprinted the governor's entire Thanksgiving proclamation in its Nov. 28, 1892 edition. The proclamation read, in part:

The past year has been replete with blessings to the people of Florida. 

In accord with a custom honored in its observance, I, Francis P. Fleming, governor of the State of Florida, do hereby appoint and set apart Thursday, November 24, 1892, to be a day of thanksgiving and recommend to the people of our State, on that day, to attend their respective places of public worship and render thanks and praise to the Giver of all good for bountiful harvests; for peace and prosperity, for freedom from pestilence; for health and happiness; for civil and religious liberty and all other blessings of His Divine Hand, and invoke the continuance of His mercies and protection. 

In the enjoyment of our many blessings, let us not forget those in need and distress...

After church, people dined at home or at places like the Montezuma Hotel in Ocala, where manager J.P. Galloway planned an elaborate Thanksgiving Dinner in 1901, as noted in the Nov. 27 issue of the Ocala Evening Star:

All who desire to partake of an excellent dinner and do not care to go to the trouble of preparing one at home are respectfully referred to the accompanying menu. Dinner served from 12:30 to 3 o'clock. Only 75 cents.

If you're wondering what was on the menu, here it is:

• Soup: Beef and Celery Bouillon; Cedar Key Oysters on Half Shell; Red Snapper, Genoese Sauce
• Relishes: Celery; Mixed Pickles; Chicken Salad, with French Dressing'
• Roast: Prime Ribs of Western Beef, Brown Gravy; Wild Turkey, Oyster Stuffing, Cranberry Sauce
• Entrees: Compote of Quail, with Olives; Veal Croquettes, with French Peas; Banana Fritters, Wine Sauce.
• Vegetables: Potato Croquettes; Candied Yams; Asparagus, Hollandaise Sauce; Turnip Greens, with Bacon; Steamed Japan Rice; Old Fashioned Corn Pone
• Dessert: Pumpkin Pie; English Plum Pudding, Hard Sauce; Frappe Creme de Menthe; Assorted Cakes; Assorted Nuts; Crackers; Fruit in Season; American Cheese; Iced Tea; Coffee; Buttermilk.

I hope no one went hungry back then, and won't go hungry today. Let us all pause and give thanks before taking the first forkful. Happy Thanksgiving.

Florida roses 'a joy forever'

Part 2 of 2 

"Think of a roof of white roses in February!" So wrote Florida newcomer Julia Daniels Moseley in 1882, in a letter to her friend Eliza in Illinois. Julia and her husband were en route to their new homestead in what is now the Tampa area, and had stopped overnight in Limona. It was south of Crescent City, but no longer exists. Julia wished she could send Eliza "a few yards" of climbing roses after seeing "beautiful old homes and more than one lovely old garden" (18) during a twilight stroll.

This Bermuda Spice, aka Hume's Blush, heirloom rose
grows in my yard with little care. (Gerri Bauer photo)

Rose references are threaded throughout the narrative in Moseley's Come to My Sunland: Letters of Julia Daniels Moseley from the Florida Frontier, 1882-1886. A friend once came to visit with her hands full of crimson roses (144). Another time, roses and oleanders decorated a room (81). 

These weren't the roses you see at the florist's or on Valentine's Day. They were old-fashioned roses, today known as heirloom or antique roses. Their blossoms are smaller, they don't hold their petals long when cut, and most have one or two peak flowering periods a year. They generally have rich rose fragrance. 

They also weren't what pioneers were growing up North. "As yet, they are hardly worth the ground they occupy; and whether they ever will do anything is a matter of doubt," (183) groused author Harriet Beecher Stowe in Palmetto Leaves. She was speaking about the "fine varieties of roses" she'd brought to Florida from her Northern home in the 1870s.

As her transplanted shrubs struggled, Stowe noted that: "Meanwhile we have only to ride a little way into the pine-woods to see around many a rustic cabin a perfect blaze of crimson roses and cluster roses, foaming over the fences in cascades of flowers" (183). "These are Florida roses, born and bred ..." she added. 

Easy-care heirloom roses beautified many a pioneer homestead. On March 2, 1892, a Pasco County correspondent wrote to the Floral Department of the Florida Agriculturist newspaper to praise Marechal Niel as a glorious rose. "Well pruned, watered and fertilized, it will richly repay you with its golden wealth of richly scented flowers; a thing of beauty, a joy forever" (135), said the writer, identified only as P.A.L.M.  (See Part 1 of this post for more on the Marechal Niel.)

Later in the year, on Nov. 30, 1892, another correspondent identified as New Resident wrote of being "encouraged by success rooting rose cuttings, several together, in large-mouthed, low glass bottles on a south window sill in the heat of May, and also in the open ground in summer in the partial shade of an allamanda" (759).

Pioneers were surrounded by roses during shrubs' heavy flushes of blooms in spring and fall. Some people may have made the rose-petal jams, rose-water cakes, and rose-petal sandwiches author Jean Gorden said were popular in Victorian times (Pageant of the Rose, 92). But Florida homes in that pre-air-conditioned era were open to the smells of the farm and homestead. I rather think more people followed the advice of one K.B.S of DeLand, who shared this Rose Jar recipe in the July 13, 1892 issue of the Florida Agriculturist:

"Gather roses, take the petals only; after well dried place them in thin layers in your jar with a light sprinkle of salt between layers. After your jar is full of roses, or petals, you mix an ounce of cinnamon, ounce of allspice and ounce of cloves with the roses; then put on five cents worth of essence of wintergreen from the druggist's, also five cents worth of lavender and another sweet perfume that you like, and you have your sweet jar that will perfume the whole room."

Now, as then, such scents become memories that linger.

Hangings as entertainment

This historical photo of the 1927 hanging
 was reprinted in the DeLand Sun News
 as part of a 1964 article about the hanging.

On this day of manufactured macabre, I'm reminded that real-life morbidity is never far from the surface. That was as true in pioneer Florida as much as it is in today's violent culture.

Although I generally prefer to write about cozier domestic doings, the reality of everyday life in frontier Florida included the occurrence of legal hangings. Illegal too, as in lynchings, but that's a topic for a different post. This post's focus is on legal instances, which some people considered a fine source of entertainment.

In 1907, a Catholic priest in Fernandina took to the pulpit to denounce the "morbid curiosity of the people who rushed and crowded around the jail" during the execution of a man named John Brown. Father John O'Brien chastised those who craved a look at the man or a chance to "see him as the trap was sprung."

The priest had been the former rector of St. Monica's Catholic Church in Palatka. The report of his sermon was first printed in the Fernandina paper and then carried in the Palatka Daily News on Dec. 27, 1907. Under the headline "Roasts Morbidly Curious," the article said Fr. O'Brien spoke with kindness but "severely condemned those who were present upon occasions of this kind only to see a condemned felon die."

Fr. O'Brien had provided spiritual counsel to Brown, which was why he was present at the hanging and noticed the crowd's attitude. In a comment years ahead of his time, Fr. O'Brien told his congregation he felt capital punishment "ought to be abandoned if people looked upon it as they appeared to do when Brown met his fate."

The article concluded by saying O'Brien's sermon met with approval not only from his congregation, but from the people of Fernandina in general.

But memories can be short. Several miles downstate, and exactly 20 years later, a large crowd gathered for the last hanging of a state prisoner to be carried out in Florida. It took place in downtown DeLand in April 1927.

In eerie coincidence, the condemned man in the 1927 hanging was also named Brown. That name, though, was an alias. Charles Brown's real surname was some variation of Pisella, Pisellia or Piselli.

In a 1964 writeup about the hanging, the DeLand Sun News noted that more than 2,000 people attended the execution in the heart of DeLand. The city's population in 1920 was 3,324, and in 1930 it was 5,246. You do the math.

The spectator count was at least the equivalent of 38% to 60% of the town's population, if not more. The crowd swelled the city. To compare, had that hanging taken place in 2014 it would have drawn between 11,000 and 17,500 people to the center of town, or more. That's a sorry statistic. No wonder Fr. O'Brien got upset back in 1907.

At least, in 1927, spectators seemed somewhat cognizant of the event's seriousness. In Sun News staff writer Bernard Bishop's 1964 history article about the 1927 hanging, he wrote, "The crowd was silent as the rope swung back and forth ..."

May they all rest in peace.

Heirloom roses bloomed for pioneers

I've started a Pinterest board of the roses mentioned
in an 1892 Florida newspaper gardening column.
Visit the board on my Pinterest page.

Part 1 of 2

Roses aren't the easiest flowers to grow in Florida, but that doesn't stop any of us from trying. Through trial, error, education, and a fondness for heirloom varieties with scented flowers, I've learned that the China, Tea, and Noisette classifications are the best old-style types for Florida.

These are also the ones pioneer Floridians relied on. But there are thousands of varieties within these classes. It's a challenge to learn what the frontier rose aficionado grew after watching Northern-grown imports languish. A treasure chest opened for me the day I read the many varieties named in a Jan. 20, 1892, garden column in the Florida Agriculturist newspaper.

Local lore has long crowned Louis Philippe as the Florida Cracker rose. I can attest to its perfection. Two plants I dug from a friend's yard lived for years in mine, until I transplanted them one too many times. Another word-of-mouth favorite is the yellow climber Marechal Niel. When I finally tracked down a specimen, it died soon after transplanting. Modern strains of this beautiful rose are believed to be weakened by a virus.

Both these varieties are named in the Florida Agriculturist Floral Department column by R.B. or R.H. Burr, whom I haven't yet identified. The first two initials are fuzzy and hard to read. The writer gave a rose named Agrippina equal status with Louis Philippe:

Louis Philippe rose from my garden.

"Agrippina and Louis Philipe [sic] are both excellent ... fair growers and profuse bloomers. They cannot be dispensed with."

That was the first time I've ever heard of Agrippina. A Google Images search turned up a flower that looks much like Louis Philippe, only with a deeper crimson color. No word on its scent. Louis Philippe has a fruity-spicy aroma that's part of its charm.

Mr. or Ms. Burr's list was lengthy and apparently based on his/her personal Florida garden experiences. Most of the varieties are unfamiliar to me, and Old Blush - another favorite that did beautifully for me until I tried to transplant its 6-foot-tall mass - isn't even included.

A partial list of Burr's is below, with additional information added by me after referencing Best Rose Guide by Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix. Those notes are prefaced by the letters BRG and a page number.

• Bon Silene: fair grower, constant bloomer, spicy fragrance, single flower. BRR, 91: color varies from bright pink with deep yellow in center to crimson; sweet fruity scent.
• Madam Berard: half climber, vigorous growth on own roots, "... in favorable weather produces buds as near perfection as a lack of fragrance will admit."
• Caroline Kuster: fairly good bloomer. "Good rose of its color which is much lighter than that of Isabella Sprunt."
• La Sulphide: good grower. "Buds are superb in favorable weather but have little odor."
• Madam Alfred Carriere: vigorous grower on own roots, constant bloomer.  BRG, 103: white with flush of warm in center; Noisette rose.
• Queen of Bedders: poor grower but a profuse bloomer. BRG, 117: double flowers, excellent scent; Bourbon rose.
• Red Malmaison: "Doesn’t come up to expectations, too poor a grower to lose time with."
• Madam Caro: strong grower, constant bloomer, flowers large.
• Perle des Jardins and Coquette de Lyon:  Burr found these two very similar, and advised gardeners to instead choose Isabella Sprunt and Marechal Neil.
• Agrippina and Louis Philipe:  both excellent, fair growers, profuse bloomers. " (Burr spelled Philippe with one p.)
• Empress Eugenie: strong grower, flowers beautifully formed.
• Duchess de Brabant: good grower, constant bloomer, good rose of its class. Burr expressed a preference for Madame Caro. BRG, 98: nodding flowers of salmon or shrimp pink. Duchess de Brabant is a secondary name of a rose identified as Comtesse de Labarthe.

I'm still deciphering spelling and names on the Burr roses not included here; I'll try to write about them in the future. In Part 2 of this blog post, we'll look at how pioneers used roses. Right now, I'm going out to smell the roses of my Bermuda Spice shrub, which I learned in BRG was rediscovered in Bermuda after dying out in Europe, where it was known as Hume's Blush Tea-Scented China. You gotta love the detective work!

Stitching lives together

This 1899 image from the Library of Congress shows young
women in a sewing class at the Agricultural and Mechanical
College in Greensboro, N.C. The scene was similar at Florida 
schools. Women predominated in the needle trades in that era. 

Part 2 of 2

In my first post about the 1890 U.S. Census, I reviewed the primary fields of employment nationally and for Floridians. This second post addresses some of the other jobs held by Florida pioneers that year.

Because I come from a long line of women skilled in the needle arts, I'm especially interested in that line of work. My ancestors were plying the trade in Central and Southern Europe in 1890, and in New York City sweatshops and garment factories in the early 1900s. My grandmothers and great-grandmothers were tailors, seamstresses, and milliners. Not sure what the difference is between tailor and seamstress, but the former was a label held by my maternal great-grandmother in Sicily. From what I understand, it was a title of honor. She was specifically known as a tailor and not a tailoress. She was said to create fitted garments for clients without needing a pattern.

No matter where the trade was practiced, its elements and processes were similar. Women bent over needles in Florida the same time my ancestors did elsewhere, in much the same way. The heroine of my second novel, Stitching a Life in Persimmon Hollow, is a seamstress who works by hand and on a treadle sewing machine in late 1880s Florida. In the novel, she apprentices with the town dressmaker. Most towns had a dressmaker, sometimes known as a mantua maker in the earlier years of the 19th century. Many tradespeople took in apprentices.

No one reported being a milliner or dressmaker apprentice in 1890 Florida, although two men were tailor apprentices.  No one in the state was employed as a corset-maker, glove-maker, umbrella- and parasol-maker, or shirt-, collar- and cuff-maker. Instead, people in the Florida needle trades were doing the following:

• Hat- and cap-makers:  8 men, 4 women
• Embroiderers and lace-makers: 3 women, 0 men
• Milliners: 109 women, 0 men
• Dressmakers: Either 604 or 654 women (chart numbers are hard to read), 0 men
• Seamstresses: 924 women, 0 men
• Tailors and tailoresses: 130 men, 80 women

Women predominated in the industry, as it was one of the few respectable trades for women in that era. What about some of the less common jobs held by Floridians in 1890? A sampling of what people reported to the census-takers:

• Actors: 2 men, 2 women
• Authors, and literary and scientific persons: 18 men, 7 women
• Journalists: 108 men, 7 women
• Musicians and teachers of music: 138 women, 56 men
• Theatrical managers, showmen: 30 men, 1 woman
• Bartenders: 188 men, 0 women
• Auctioneers: 14 men, 0 women
• Hucksters and peddlers: 145 men, 5 women
• Bakers: 178 men, 10 women
• Bookbinders: 15 men, 4 women
• Confectioners: 48 men, 8 women
• Photographers: 90 men, 4 women

Knowing a little something about how people passed their days brings their lives into sharper focus for me. When I pick up a needle and thread, select fabric for a jacket or quilt, brush up on my crochet skills, or stitch a seam on my sewing machine, I feel a sense of kinship with past practitioners. And that's a good feeling to have.

Off to work we go

Celery farming was a major occupation in frontier Florida.
This postcard is owned by the Sanford Museum and displayed
on the Central Florida Memory website.

Part 1 of 2

Each September, we observe Labor Day. A lot of interesting facts about how Floridians labored in the late 19th century are in the 1890s U.S. Census records. Some highlights:

• A huge chunk - 76.4% - of the farms in Florida were cultivated by owners in 1890.  In 1880, the percentage had been 69.1%
• Manufacturing and other industry more than tripled over the same decade.  In Florida, products had a gross value of $18.2 million, compared to $5.5 million in 1880. 
• 13,927 Floridians were employed in manufacturing and industry in 1890, compared to 5,504 in 1880. 

Women predominated within certain fields, primarily in the needle trades. On the national level, women made up:

• 81.4% of the workforce making corsets
• 78.8% of the employees making shirts
• 73.4% of the employees producing millinery and lace goods

Nationally, men made up more than 95% of the workforce in each of the following industries: agricultural implements, brick and tile, cooperage, cutlery and edge tools, flouring and grist mill products, foundry and machine shop products,  leather, painting and paper hanging, and saddlery and harness.

Depressingly, 13.7% of tobacco-industry employees were children, as was 10.6% of the cotton-goods workforce. I was somewhat heartened to see that children made up only 2.7% of the workforce, overall, in 1890, compared to 5.6% in 1880.

Also depressing was the wage disparity between men and women. The following Florida examples are illustrative of how workers fared in other parts of the nation. Per job classification, average annual earnings in 1890 in Florida were:

• Officers, firm members, clerks: men, $762; women, $443 ($11,200 in 2014 dollars)
• Operatives, skilled and unskilled: men, $419; women, $304; children, $114
• Pieceworkers: men, $626; women, $347; children, $120

Women did earn more than men in a few industries. These examples are from a national perspective. Women earned $720 a year in the "safes and vaults" industry, while men got only $566. And a job called "oilcloth, enameled," paid women $643 a year, and men $536. By the way, the $720 was the highest pay I saw for a woman, and it equates to about $18,200 in modern dollars.

Neither of those jobs appears to have been a mainstay in Florida in 1890. Of women 10 and older in Florida who listed jobs in the 1890 census:

• 47.3% were in domestic and personal service
• 37.0% worked in agriculture, fishing, and mining
• 4.5% were in professional service
• 1.5% were in trade and transportation

Of working men ages 10 and older in Florida in 1890:

• 51.1% worked in agriculture, fishing, and mining
• 17.0% were in domestic or personal service
• 13.2% were in trade and transportation
• 13.2% were in manufacturing and mechanical industries
• 3.8% were in professional service

In Part 2, we'll take a look at some of the specific jobs that occupied Floridians in 1890, and at the number of people who worked at them. Then, as now, construction industries boomed, but there were some niche fields. For example, 11 people reported jobs as piano and organ makers and tuners.

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.