By Bob Davidsson
If not for a plague of rabbits in the 1880s, the barrier islands from Boca Raton to the Jupiter Inlet may have become a coconut plantation instead of rows of condominiums and mansions planted today along our coastline.
Ezra A. Osborn and Elnathan "E.T." Field of New Jersey created the "Field and Osborn Company" in 1880. They obtained venture capital from 60 investors to purchase 75 miles of coastal properties extending from Cape Florida to Jupiter for the purpose of growing coconuts as a cash crop.
The fruit or nuts from coconut palms (cocos nucifera) are harvested for their dried meat (copra), processed to make oils and flour, and their husk fibre (coir) used in the making of ropes and cordage, sacking, padding, woven mats and netting. Today, more than 250,000 tons of coir fibre is processed annually.
The Field and Osborn Company purchased the unsettled oceanfront land in Dade County for between 75 cents and $1.25 per acre from the U.S. government. The Palm Beaches were part of Dade County in the 1880s.
The coconut plantation investment was launched in 1882 when Capt. Richard Carney, the company's foreman, with 25 workers from New Jersey and a mule team, rowed ashore in surf boats and set up camp on Miami Beach. The schooner "Ada Dorn" was chartered to obtain a shipment of coconuts from Trinidad.
They were joined at their new base camp at Indian Creek in Miami by Frank Osborn, Ezra's eldest son, who remained in Dade County to oversee the agricultural project on the behalf of the company and its investors.
Charles Pierce, a pioneer on Hypoluxo Island, was hired as a stevedore to unload the coconuts. He later chronicled the enterprise in his journal. The first shipment of 100,000 coconuts were planted north of Miami in 1883.
A second shipment of coconuts arrived from Nicaragua the following year. They were planted on Virginia Key and Cape Florida. A third and final shipment of 117,000 coconuts from Cuba were planted north of Boca Raton, according to Pierce.
He wrote, "The winter after that (1885) another cargo was landed on the coast from Boca Raton north to the lower end of Lake Worth." Frank Osborn arrived with the schooner to observe the delivery of the cocounts to the Palm Beaches. He used the Orange Grove House of Refuge No. 3 (1876-96), located 10 miles north of the Boca Raton Inlet, as a temporary headquarters.
By the end of 1885 the liquid assets of the Field and Osborn Company were nearly exhausted. There were no funds available to maintain or expand the plantations. Pierce provided a colorful narrative about the sad end of the business venture.
"Unfortunately, as soon as the tender sprouts came from the ground," he observed, "the rabbits that infested the area found they liked the (coconut) sprouts better than their former diet of sea oats; the result was that there are very few trees growing today that came from the planting of these thousands and thousands of nuts."
Field and Osborn sold their land holdings in the Palm Beaches and other coastal areas of Dade County to cover their debts as the company became insolvent. Ezra Osborn continued his career as an engineer in New Jersey.
Captain Carney (1862 - 1941) remained in Dade County after business venture failed. He would later serve as the first sheriff of Miami Beach.
When Ezra died in 1895, surviving children Frank and Mary Osborn became co-executors of his estate, including the remaining properties in Florida. One of their last holdings, three acres at the Hillsboro Inlet, was sold in 1904 to the U.S. Department of the Treasury for $300.
Among the properites lost to the Osborn family was a section of land adjacent to a body of water bearing their name - Lake Osborn(e). The place name remains a part of their legacy.
(c.) Davidsson. 2021.
*NOTE: See related story titled "Lake Osborne: The Shining Spirit of Fresh Water" indexed and archived with other articles in Older Posts.
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