'Picture City' Aspired to Become a New Hollywood

 By Bob Davidsson

        "When one crosses the South Bridge at Jupiter Lighthouse, the finest ocean driveway in the entire world is open for approximately the entire distance to the St. Lucie Inlet," a 34-page booklet promoting the planned community of "Olympia-Picture City" proclaimed in 1926.

        "Nowhere in the state - nor in any other state - nor in any other country in the world - will one find its equal," the real estate guide concludes.

        In 1923, the agricultural Indian River Association's affiliated company in Martin County sold 4,000 acres of land on Jupiter Island and the adjacent mainland at Hobe Sound to a new investment group called the Olympia Improvement Corporation. The property was originally part of the old Eusebio Gomez Spanish Land Grant during most of the 19th century.

        Malcolm Meacham (1884 - 1929) of Palm Beach and New York City, a prominent figure in South Florida real estate developments during the state's "Land Boom" of the 1920s, organized and served as the first president of the Olympia Improvement Corportation in Hobe Sound. The community was within the borders of Palm Beach County until 1925.

        The development plan for the Olympia Improvement Corportation was to create a community called "Olympia," in a Greek-revival architecture style, with two coastal subdivisions called Olympia Beach and Bon Air Beach  It would be supported by a suburb named "Picture City," where movies could be produced and filmed.

        Wealthy investors flocked to the project, including Philadelphia millionnaire and diplomat Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle Jr. (1897 - 1961), upon whom Meacham betowed  the title of  the company's second president in 1925.

        Meacham also obtained the financial backing of banks in Palm Beach County. The developer was  vice president of the Palm Beach National Bank which he helped establish in 1924-25.

        Swiss architect Maurice Fatio of the firm Treanor and Fatio relocated to Florida and signed a contract with  Olympia Improvement Corporation President Anthony Biddle in 1925 to design homes and business structures within the community. 

       His first project was the Olympia School, a Spanish-revival mission style building designed in 1925. He also designed a resort hotel with Greek temple architectural features to match Olympia's classical theme. The draft design was featured in the "Olympia-Picture City" promotional booklet, but the hotel was never built.

        Later in his career, Fatio designed the Town of Manalapan's historic "Eastover" and "Casa Alva" mansions for shipping and railroad heirs Harold and Consuelo Vanderbilt during the 1930s.

        One early 20th century movie mogul enticed to support Olympia's "Picture City" project was Lewis J. Selznick (1870 - 1933), the father of Hollywood producer David O. Selznick.

        Lewis Selznick founded the World Film Corporation in 1914 to produce silent movies at his New York studio. He later moved to California with his son, were he continued to make films under the studio names of Selznick Productions, Inc. and Selznick International Pictures.

        When his business ventures in California failed during 1925, the producer turned to the Olympia  Improvement Corporation's Picture City as a potential place of employment in the future.

The 'Olympia-Picture City' Community Plan

        Beginning in August 1925, Meacham, acting as the registered agent for the community, filed incorporation documents for the Picture City Studios, Inc., the Picture City Corporation and the Picture City Construction Company, Inc. with the State of Florida.

        The Olympia Improvement Corporation also lobbied the Florida Legislature for a charter encompassing an area "extending along the Atlantic Ocean for a distance of 7.5 miles," and "along the Indian River (Jupiter Narrows) for about nine miles."

        The Olympia-Picture City planners envisioned a community of 40,000 residents, supported not only by the film industry, but by winter tourism and real estate sales.

        In the 1926 promotional booklet, publisher Felix Isman wrote, "It is common rumor that when Henry M. Flagler desired to locate 'Palm Beach', he exerted every possible endeavor to obtain the Gomez (Spanish Land) Grant upon which to locate that city, and it was not until all his efforts had failed that he went elsewhere."

        "Such is the Gomez Tract (Hobe Sound and Jupiter Island) situated well outside the frost belt in fashionable, tropical, seashore Florida," the publisher concludes. "Its tropical venue cannot be excelled."

        The development plan for Olympia and Picture City, platted in Martin County after it was created out the northern third of Palm Beach County in 1925, featured lots of 50 by 100 feet, located on 10,000 acres of land. The homes would be located on streets and boulevards as wide as 100 feet, never less than 50 feet. The streets are named for Greek gods and heroes - Apollo, Zeus and Hercules etc.

       The Olympia section of the community was planned to "extend along the ocean from the St. Lucie Inlet to the Jupiter Lighthouse," according to 1926 promotional guide. "Along the westward portion of Olympia, the Picture City development of New Deauville, Picture City Park, Studio City and other developments are actually in progress - cities within a city."

        The community of Olympia-Picture City had highway and railroad networks planned to connect them with Palm Beach to the south, and major cities along the eastern coast of the United States.

        Their promotional booklet reported, "Starting at approximately 22 miles in a northerly direction from Palm Beach, Olympia-Picture City extends many miles along the Dixie Highway and has at the present time two railroad stations on the property, Olympia and Gomez. Two more, Picture City and New Deauville, are contemplated."

        "In the charter of the Florida East Coast Line," publisher Felix Isman wrote, "there is a provision that every passenger train must stop at Olympia Station."

The Demise of Olympia-Picture City

        The planned Olympia-Picture City township was doomed to failure by four financial and natural disasters beyond its control.

        The first was the collapse of the Florida "Land Boom" at the end of 1926. It was followed by the deadly Hurricane of 1928, the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and the Great Depression of the 1930s.

        The first sign of future financial troubles appeared in March 1926. The developers failed to make a loan payment to the Farmers Bank & Trust of West Palm Beach. The bank filed a foreclosure action in court six months later.

        The Biddle and Duke families, whom invested heavily in the project, foreclosed on Olympia-Picture City land holdings to acquire remaining unsold assets. They later sold their holdings to J.V. Reed and his newly established Hobe Sound Company in 1933.

        The Picture City Studios and Picture City Construction Company were dissolved in 1936, according to State of Florida business records.

        Pioneer Hollywood producer Lewis Selznick died of a heart attack at the age of 62. He never produced a movie at Picture City. His son, David (1902-65), continued the family's business in Hollywood, producing such classic films as "Gone With The Wind," "Rebecca" and "Spellbound".

        Following the demise of the Olympia-Picture City project, the Olympia Improvement Corporation President Anthony Biddle Jr. invested in several failed business ventures in the 1930s before changing careers and becoming a diplomat. He served as the U.S. ambassador to Norway, Poland and Belgium. Biddle was an officer in World War II, rising to the rank of major general.

        As for Olympia-Picture City developer Malcolm Meacham, he moved on to a new business enterprise in the Florida Keys, where he established the Key West Foundation Company.

        Meacham owned a Palm Beach home called "Casa Bougainvillea" on Barton Avenue, but in March 1929 he was residing at his New York City apartment on East 72nd Street.

        During the Stock Market Crash of 1929, a March 19 New York Times headline screamed, "Realty Man Dies in 11-Story Plunge: Malcolm Meacham Found Dead on Sidewalk in Front of Apartment on East 72nd Street."

        The newspaper reported "the real estate dealer with offices in New York City and Florida" accidently fell through an open window while experiencing a "dizzy spell".

        The name "Hobe Sound" was restored to the Martin County community in 1928 after bankruptcy and a category four hurricane flattened the dream of a new Hollywood.

         The "Olympia School" building on Apollo Avenue was used by the development company as a sales office and community center. It was acquired by Martin County and became a public school building until 1962. The building became a National Register of Historic Places site in October 2002.

        The historic school building, street signs bearing the names of Greek gods and heroes, and a few cement lamp posts remain today as a reminder of a time in the past when Hobe Sound was part of Olympia-Picture City.

(c.) Davidsson. 2021

*NOTE: Article was reprinted in the May 6, 2021 digital edition of the "South Central Florida Life" news service. Read additional articles archived below and in Older Posts.

'Floresta': Where Mizner Meets the Prairie School

 By Bob Davidsson

        The Floresta subdivision in Boca Raton has the unique distinction of being designed by Palm Beach County's renowned  architect Addison Mizner and completed by Hermann von Holst, a disciple and leading advocate of Frank Lloyd Wright's "Prairie School" suburban style of architecture.

        In October 1925, the short-lived Mizner Construction Corporation began building 29 houses designed by the architect on West Palmetto Park Road in Boca Raton. New York builder Dwight P. Robinson was awarded the construction contract for the project.

     Addison Mizner (1872 - 1933) planned a residential community featuring his iconic use of Spanish Colonial-revival style of archtecture. His use of barrel-tile roofs, rough-lined stucco walls and wrought-iron balconies have influenced building designs in Palm Beach County for more than three generations.

        Mizner's 94 historic structures built in Boca Raton and the Town of Palm Beach include the Everglades Club, the Arcade (Via Mizner) off Worth Avenue, the El Mirasol mansion, and the Cloisters Inn section of the Boca Raton Hotel and Club.

        Unfortunately for the Mizner Development Corporation and its chief architect, the Florida 'Land Boom" of the 1920s ended before he could complete his planned residential community in Boca Raton. His company became insolvent in 1927. 

        A group of investors holding the property's mortgage filed a bill of complaint against the developer and assumed control of the project.

Hermann von Holst and 'Floresta'

        The architect called upon to complete Mizner's 29-unit subdivision was Hermann Valentin von Holst (1879 - 1855) of Chicago. He also was one of the investors in the Boca Raton project.

        Von Holst was born in Freiburg, Germany, the son of noted historian Hermann Eduard von Holst. His family moved to Chicago in 1891, where the elder von Holst became a professor and head of the University of Chicago's history department.

       His son received degrees from the University of Chicago in 1893 and also from the M.I.T. architectural school in 1896. In 1906, he opened his own architectural firm in Chicago.

        Von Holst's career was influenced by architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 - 1959) whose Oak Park Studio was located near Chicago. Wright and his protégée designed the "Prairie School" style of architecture for their projects in the early 20th century.

        When Wright moved to Europe in 1909, Von Holst took over his unfinished architectural commissions and managed the Oak Park Studio company until his return to America in 1911.

        Von Holst is best known for the publication of "Modern American Homes" in 1912, followed a year later by the unabridged "Country and Suburban Homes of Prairie School Period," with its compilation of 424 photographic examples of this uniquely American architectural style.

        A World Catalogue review of his comprehensive architectural guide states, "The 1913 publication of Von Holst's collection of 'Country and Suburban Homes of the Prairie School Period' is one of American architecture's finest primary sources of residential design."

        Since its first printing in 1913, Von Holst's literary work has been released in 20 editions and is still a valued resource for architects more than a century later.

        The "Prairie School" of architecture was made popular in America by Wright and his designers between the years 1900 and 1914. It is considered the first distinctive American design valuing what Wright termed "organic architecture" that reflected the surrounding environment and local history.

        When Von Holst relocated in Boca Raton to supervise the completion of Mizner's subdivision, he wisely recognized that the Spanish-revival style homes designed for the community were compatible with Florida's indigenous Hispanic colonial architectural history dating back to the 16th century.

        Von Holst named the suburban community "Floresta," meaning  a "delightful rural place" in Spanish. The 39.7-acre subdivision was officially platted with street names listed by Von Holst in November 1927, according to Palm Beach County Clerk of Courts records.

        By enhancing Mizner's designs with narrow tree-lined streets and lush subtropical landscaping, Floresta also met the "Prairie School" goal of blending with the local environment.

        Von Holst was so impressed  with Floresta that he chose to live the remainder of his life at his "Lavender House" home in the subdivision. His two-story Spanish colonial-style house was built between 1926-28. It was selected as a "National Register of Historic Places" site in 1995.

        The architect retired in 1932, and lived with his wife, Lucy, at the Lavender House. He became active in civic affairs, serving on the Boca Raton City Council from 1934 to 1949, and as chair of the Boca Raton Planning Board in 1940.

        A grateful City Council granted him an honorary emeritus life membership in 1953. Von Holst was lauded by the City of Boca Raton "in recognition of faithful, loyal and unselfish service." The architect died two years later while residing at his beloved Floresta home in Boca Raton.

        The "Old Floresta Historic District" became the first subdivision to received this designation in 1990 by the City of Boca Raton. An historic marker was placed in 2008 by the Boca Raton Historical Society and Florida Department of State at the intersection of West Palmetto Park Road and Cardinal Avenue.

(c.) Davidsson. 2021

*NOTE: Read additional articles archived below and in "Older Posts".

South Florida's 'Saltwater Railroad' to Freedom

 By Bob Davidsson

        For more than 40 percent of Florida's population living in slavery during the early 19th century, the paths to freedom converged along the coastline of the Palm Beaches and led south to Cape Florida, where a dangerous voyage across the Florida Straits was rewarded with sancutary in the Bahamas.

        Located at the southern end of Key Biscayne is the "Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park." Between the years 1821-61 the historic site was a secret meeting place for escaped slaves and Black Seminoles awaiting sea transport to the safety of the Bahamas.

       In September 2004, Cape Florida was designated as a "National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Site." The park also is the site of the the historic Cape Florida Lighthouse, first completed in 1825.

       The lighthouse was a beacon guiding Bahamian fishing boats and abolitionist sailing vessels to Key Biscayne, where escaped slaves could gain passage to the British island chain.

        The "Underground Railroad" network, extending from southern slave states to Canada, was the well-documented road to freedom operated by abolitionists and freed African-Americans. It also had a lesser-known southern branch called the "Southern Underground Railroad," or more commonly the "Saltwater Railroad," along the southeast coast of Florida with an overseas route to the Bahamas.

        Slavery has a long history in Florida, but during its historical timeline the state was a sanctuary in the 18th century and offered a path to freedom in the early 19th century for its most oppressed population.

Slavery and Freedom in Spanish Florida: 1565-1821

        African slaves arrived with the fleet of Spanish colonists when the Adelantado Pedro Menendez de Aviles founded the City of St. Augustine on Sept. 8, 1565. A census conducted in 1602 by Florida Governor Gonzalo Mendez de Canco recorded 52 slaves living in the colonial city.

        Between the years 1672 and 1695, African slaves and mission Indian laborers built the Castillo de San Marcos out of coquina stone. The historic fortress is the oldest permanent structure in Florida.

        Unlike instiutionalized slavery in the English colonies to the north, Spanish laws allowed slaves to marry, own property and purchase their freedom through contractual agreements with their owners. As a result, St. Augustine had a diverse population of European colonists, native Americans, and both free African-Americans and slaves.

        On Nov. 7, 1693, King Charles II of Spain issued a royal decree providing sanctuary and protection in Florida to escaped slaves from the English colonies of Virginia and the Carolinas. Escaping slaves could request permanent asylum and Spanish citizenship in Florida by accepting baptism in the Catholic Church, enlisting in the local militia, and obeying the laws of Spain.

       The "King's Edict" to Florida Governor Laureano de Torres y Ayala (1693-99) states, "As a prize for having adopted the Catholic doctrine and become Catholicized, as soon as you receive this letter, set them all free and give them anything they need, and favor them as much as possible."

        "I hope this to be an example, together with my generosity  of what others should do," the King's letter concluded. "I want to be notified of the following of my instructions as soon as possible."

       To no surprise, Spain's lenient policy resulted in an influx of escaped slaves to Florida from  neighboring English colonies, and ongoing political tension between Spain and England. The issue of Florida's sanctuary policy for slaves was inherited by the United States when it gained its independence in 1783.

Florida's Freedom Trail by Land and Sea: 1821-61

        The United States purchased Florida from Spain for $5 million as part of the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1821. Florida became a U.S. territory on March 10, 1821. Spain's tolerant sanctuary policy for slaves was scrapped by the new territorial government.

        A series of "Black Codes"  (Article XVI) were codified in the Florida Constitution of 1838. The article prohibited the territorial General Assembly from passing laws to emancipate slaves.

        A plantation system was established in northern Florida as far south as the Suwannee River along the west coast and the upper St. Johns River near the eastern coastline. Central and southern Florida was the domain of the Seminole nation and a few scattered military outposts.

       On March 3, 1845, Florida was admitted as the 21st state of the Union. It joined the United States as a slave state.

        By the year 1860, Florida had a population of  about 140,000 persons. Of this total, 61,475 were African-American slaves. There were only 700 black Freedmen living in Florida, mainly in the cities of Key West, Jacksonville and Pensacola.

        The Saltwater Railroad to freedom was created by abolitionists and native Bahamians, with the tacit approval of the British government in Nassau which allowed sanctuary in the island chain. England abolished the slave trade in 1807, and the Emancipation Act of 1833 formally abolished slavery throughout the British Empire. 

        By contrast, slavery continued in Cuba until abolished by royal decree on Oct. 7, 1886, making the Bahamas the destination of choice for fleeing slaves in Florida and southern Georgia.

        Several inland freedom trails converged east of Lake Okeechobee, and continued along the coastline south of the Palm Beaches to Key Biscayne. African-American slaves were joined at Cape Florida by Black Seminoles - former slaves adopted into the Seminole nation, where they created their own unique culture.

        Faced with deportations during and after the Seminole Wars, about 200 Black Seminoles used skills acquired from the Indians to build dugout canoes capable of completing the voyage across the Florida Straits. They founded their own settlement on Andros Island.

        The exact number of African-Americans that followed the Saltwater Railroad to the Bahamas is unknown. One estimate is as high as 6,000, which would have been 10 percent of the slave population in Florida.

        Whether escaping slavery in Florida by Bahamian fishing boats or dugout canoes, they had to survive tropical storms, strong currents in the Gulf Stream, coastal pirates and slave hunters during voyages of more than 100 miles at sea.

        The U.S. and Florida governments conducted a 40-year campaign to capture fleeing slaves and Black Seminoles between 1821-61. The State of Florida offered a $350 reward for the return of "lost property". Florida also financed a network of "patrollers" to track fugitive slaves.

        The federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 required the return of slaves to their southern owners, even in free states. The Act of Congress also made the federal government responsble for finding, returning, and the punishment in court of escaped slaves.

        Abolitionist Jonathan Walker learned the hard way that U.S. Navy warships, based in Key West, actively patroled the southeast coast of Florida for vessels carrying fugitive slaves along the Saltwater Railroad.

'The Man with a Branded Hand'

        Captain Jonathan Walker (1799 - 1878) of Harwich, MA, was the best known of the abolitionists operating the Southern Underground Railroad. He moved to Pensacola to continue his career and observed first-hand the injustice of slavery in Florida.

        In his "Memoir," Walker wrote that he "came to the conclusion that slavery was evil and only evil." He believed he had a divine obligation to help free men from the "national poison" of slavery.

        Captain Walker hid seven fugitive slaves in his small trading vessel and sailed from Pensacola in 1844, bound for a safe harbor in the Bahamas.

        While in the Florida Straits, he became ill and incapacitated. His vessel was discovered after 14 days at sea by a passing U.S. sloop searching for shipwrecks along the southeast coast of Florida.

        Walker and his passengers were taken to Key West. Local authorities determined he would be returned to Pensacola to face charges. He was chained to the hull of the "U.S.S General Taylor" and transported back to his home port.

        Once in Pensacola, he was arrested, charged and convicted by a Florida jury of "aiding and inducing two slaves to run away, and stealing two others." As part of Walker's punishment, U.S. Marshal Eben Dorr ordered him tied to a pillory in Pensacola and branded with a hot iron on his hand with the letters "S.S." - an acronym for "slave stealer".

        Walker was imprisoned in Florida for 11 months in solitary confinement until abolitionists from across the country were able to gather funds to pay his $600 fine. After his release, he moved to Michigan, where he continued his work as an abolitionist and guest lecturer.

        Walker's plight gained national fame when poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem about his ordeal in Florida titled "The Man with a Branded Hand" in 1846.

         On May 9, 1862, Union Major Gen. David D. Hunter, an abolitionist officer, issued "General Order No. 11" freeing 900,000 African-American slaves within the jurisdiction of his Department of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. His order was rescinded and superseded by President Lincoln's "Emancipation Proclamation" on Sept. 22, 1862.

        The Civil War marked the end of the 40-year Saltwater Railroad. General Hunter also began enlisting black volunteers in the Union Army. Slavery's days were numbered in Florida.     

(c.) Davidsson. 2021.   

*NOTE: See also "The Palm Beaches During Reconstruction: 1865-76" below. Additional articles are archived in Older Posts.

The Palm Beaches During 'Reconstruction': 1865-76

 By Bob Davidsson

        During Florida's "Reconstruction" period (1865-76), the area later known as the Palm Beaches was in the geographic center of a proposed terrritorial homeland for former African slaves called "New Liberia," and a failed transporation network extending from the Georgia border to South America.

        Colonel Thomas W. Osborn was the commanding officer of Battery D, First Regiment, New York Light Artillery, during the Civil War. As fate would have it, he served as the chief artillery officer under Gen. Oliver Otis Howard at the Battle of Gettysburg.

       General Howard, known as the "Praying General," appraised his artillery commander as "a quiet unobstrusive officer of quick decison and pure life."

       Howard remembered Osborn's qualities when he became commissioner of the U.S. Freedmen's Bureau from 1865 until it was disbanded in 1872. He selected Osborn as his assistant commissioner of "Freedmen, Refugees and Abandoned Lands in Florida" in September 1865.

        Osborn devised an ambitious plan for the resettlement of Freedmen (emancipated black slaves) in South Florida. It was nothing less than the establishment of a "New Liberia" based on the model of the former U.S. colony created for African-Americans by President James Monroe in 1820.

        Osborn presented his proposal to General Howard in January 1866. He recommended the U.S. buy the entire Florida peninsula below the 28th parallel and organize a new territory to be homesteaded by former slaves.

       "We shall give (the land) a territorial organization of government," he advocated. "The lands shall be held exclusively as homesteads for freedpeople."

        In his written proposal, Osborn estimated there were 14,400 square miles of arable land that could sustain 115,200 farm families if each homestead was limted to 80 acres. He predicted 400 new townships could be created, which would be self-supporting through the production of tropical agricultural crops.

        Osborn reported "a home of 80 acres" for each family would allow the resettlement of a total population of 595,000 "freedpeople" on new homesteads in South Florida.

        The land south of the 28th parallel included the boundaries for Dade County, redrawn after the Civil War. The thinly settled county, including the Palm Beaches, had a total population of just 85 settlers by 1870.

        Osborn organized an expedition, led by Lt. Col George Thompson and Freedmen's Bureau special agent William Gleason, to explore and report on the economic potential of Dade County for his model settlement. Both men were impressed with South Florida.

        After a two-month stay in Dade County, Lt. Col. Thompson wrote, "The most promising agricultural lands lay along the Everglades... If the government conducted drainage it would develope into the garden spot of the United States."

        In the end it was the high cost of drainage and climate concerns that doomed the project. Freedmen's Bureau resettlement efforts would focus on northern Florida instead.

        In place of a territorial homeland south of the 28th parallel, General Howard and Congress supported the "Southern Homestead Act of 1866," opening 19 million acres of federal lands in Florida for use by Freedmen and other Civil War refugees. The Freedmen's Bureau opened land offices to assist the new homesteaders.

        Freedmen acquired deeds for 32,000 acres of land  by October 1866. One year later, they secured 2,000 homesteads totaling 160,960 acres, and by the year 1870 there were 9,000 African-American landowners in Florida, more than any other public-lands state during Reconstruction.

        Palm Beach County pioneers Samuel and Fannie A. James were among the former slaves that became homesteaders in Dade County. They secured a 186-acre section of land in what would later include downtown Lake Worth Beach.

        On Nov. 15, 1865, Osborn also issued a written circular ordering that Freedmen were allowed to testify in Florida courts, and restricting the use of corporal punishment - including scourging with a whip. Bureau officials supervised state courts until a new civilian government was estabished in Florida in 1868.

        In a May 1866 tribute to Osborn's service with the Freedmen's Bureau, the editor of the "Tallahassee Floridian" wrote, "We doubt whether the duties of the Bureau could have been administered by anyone more acceptably, alike to the blacks and the whites, than they have been by Colonel Osborn."

        As for special agent Gleason, the Wisconsin native remained in Dade County, where he established a Republican Party power base from 1866-76 during Florida's Reconstruction. He was elected lieutenant governor of Florida in 1868 and supported Osborn's future political and business ambitions.

        Osborn was elected as a delegate in 1868 to the Florida State Constitutional Convention held in Tallahassee. The convention's goal was to reestablish civilian rule in Florida in compliance with federal requirements for readmittance to the Union.

        Between May 1865 and 1868, Florida was under military control as a defeated supporter of the Confederacy. The "Reconstruction Act of 1866" established military rule over southern states until new civilian governments could be formed to ratify the 14th Amendment (African-American citizenship) and 15th Amendment (voting rights).

        After Florida was readmitted to the Union on July 4, 1868, Osborn obtained the support of  Republicans, Union Democrats and newly enfranchised Freedmen voters to win election to the U.S. Senate.

        However, once elected, Senator Osborn's commitment to public service became secondary to the twin ambitions of political power and economic gain.

        He became head of the infamous "Osborn Ring" of northern investors and carpetbaggers seeking quick profits in Florida during the federally mandated Reconstruction period.  His pet project was the building of a "Great Southern Railway" from the Georgia border south to Cape Sable with a shipping network to South America.

The 'Great Southern Railway': A Rail to Nowhere

        Senator Osborn lobbied Congress for land grants and federal subsidies to finance the project while at the same time purchasing stock in the company. The Great Southern Railway was incorporated by a special act of the Florida Legislature  on Feb. 19, 1870.

        The Legislature granted the corporation "special powers to construct and operate a railroad from the St. Mary's River, on the northern border of Florida, to the most southerly available harbor of the state, and to own and operate in connection with the rail, and as an integral part of the company's Line, steamships and other sea-going vessels to Cuba and the West Indies Islands and South America."

        The company stockholders, including Senator Osborn and political ally Lt. Gov. Gleason, selected the senator's older brother, the Rev. Abraham Coles Osborn, as president of the Great Southern Railway.

        This act of political and corporate family incest inspired an editorial writer for the  "Brooklyn Eagle"  to write, "It seems (Rev. Osborn) spent more time in the secular world than the religious. He was the chaplain to the wealthy, and was married twice, both women of wealthy families."

        The State of Florida granted the railroad a right-of-way of 200 feet of land from the rail line, and the "same number of lands known as swamp and overflow" when the railway passed through the Palm Beaches and Dade County.

        The Great Southern Railway was authorized to raise $10 million in stock sales. To attract investors, the new railroad company promised "in 10 years each investor would earn $1 million."

        His lobbying efforts and political arm-twisting in Congress on the behalf of the Great Southern Railway earned Senator Osborn the nickname of "Railroad Tommy". In April 1871, one Washington, D.C. newspaper recorded his unethical congressional activities as "an extraordinary development of fraud."

        The 1874 "Maps of Florida," published by Columbus Drew of Jacksonville, traced the projected route of the unbuilt Great Southern Railway from the Georgia border, passing south through central Florida, then turning southeast from Lake Okeechobee to a destination near Turkey Point in southern Dade County.

        Its path through the future Palm Beach County would have placed the proposed rail along the Beeline Highway (S.R. 710), then turning south and following the secondary ridge line used by the U.S. Army to clear the "Military Trail" in 1838. It would have passed a short distance west of Lake Osborne and the county's chain of lakes.

       Only 84 miles of new rail tracks were laid during the entire 10-year period of the state's Reconstruction. The Great Southern Railway became a failed business venture due to a lack of investors.

        The Great Southern Railway Company remained inactive for 100 years until it was "dissolved by proclamation" by the Florida Division of Corporations on Oct. 21, 1974.

        In a rare example of political contriteness, Senator Osborn made the following confession in a May 25, 1871 letter to correspondent Enfant Perdue: "As for myself, I am truly sorry I had anything to do with it (the railroad), for even the boot-blacks at the Capitol, with an indifference to senatorial dignity approaching nearly to the sublime, have dubbed me Railroad Tommy."

       Senator Osborn was not nominated by his party to run for a second term in the U.S. Senate. He returned to New York City where he continued his career in government service. The Rev. Abraham Osborn also left Florida and became a noted theologian in New Jersey.

        When his bachelor brother died in 1898, the Rev. Osborn made arrangements for his burial in the family plot at the Hillside Cemetery in North Adams, N.J.                          

(c.) Davidsson. 2021.   

*NOTE: Article also was reprinted in the Feb. 9, 2021 editions of the Belle Glade & Pahokee Sun. Additional articles below and archived in Older Posts.

Coconut Plantation Was Once Planted on Our Coast

 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. 

Lake Worth: The Seminole's 'Breadbasket' in 1841

 By Bob Davidsson

        When the first pioneers settled along the shores of Lake Worth in the late 1870s, they found a pristine wilderness and assumed it had always been uncultivated marshes and pine barrens. They were wrong.

        Forty years prior to their arrival, Lake Worth was a center of agricultural production and the breadbasket of the Seminole tribe. In fact, their fields and gardens were so vast along the freshwater lake that it took four U.S. Army expeditions to destroy and thus deny this valuable resource to local native Americans.

        Brevet Major Thomas Childs (1796 - 1853), the new commander assigned to Fort Lauderdale, was the first Army officer to observe the "luxuriant fields" of native Seminole crops during his expedition from Fort Pierce to his new base in September 1841.

        Major Childs was one of the few Army officers to serve the entire seven-year duration of the Second Seminole War (1835-42). His mission was to reactivate Fort Lauderdale as a base of operations against hostile Seminoles south of the Jupiter Inlet.

        Major Childs, with five officers and 85 soldiers of the U.S. Third Artillery, rowed 13 boats down the Indian and St. Lucie rivers to the Jupiter Inlet on Sept. 6. He then divided his command with half sailing south along the barrier island, while a second force marched in unison along the shore.

        To his surprise, Major Childs discovered a coastal freshwater lake (Lake Worth) described as "13 miles long and one to one and one-half miles wide." Inexplicably, the garrison at Fort Jupiter failed to explore and chart the lake in 1838.

        A few historians have credited Major Childs with the naming of the waterway as "Lake Worth" in honor of his commanding officer, Colonel William Jenkins Worth, though the origin of the place name is still a topic of debate.  The Seminoles called the lake "Hypoluxo". It was known as "Rio Jeaga" - river of the Jeaga Indians - during the Spanish colonial period. 

        The original Jeaga inhabitants of Lake Worth (3,000 B.C. to 1715 A.D.) were a hunter-gatherer tribe relying on the region's natural resources. By contrast, the Seminoles, like their parent Creek nation, were an agricultural society supplementing their diet by hunting and gathering.

        Along the eastern shore of the lake, Major Childs noted "extensive fields of corn, pumpkins, potatoes, Indian peas, melons, tobacco, rice and sugar cane in a high state of cultivation." The cultivated fields were interconnected by a trail used by the Seminoles between the stands of sawgrass and mangroves.

        The major ordered the fields destroyed so the harvest could not be used by "hostile" Indians. It was not an easy task. The expediton camped along the shore of Lake Worth for five days. It required two days for the 85 soldiers to uproot and destroy the fields they discovered.

        Major Childs estimated the fields contained 2,000 bushels of potatoes and several hundred bushels of corn. He failed to capture any Indians, but reported his command delivered a heavy blow to the Seminole's source of food.

        In a letter written on Sept. 18, 1841, Major Childs reported, "My opinon is these fields belonged to Sam Jones (Miccosukee medicine chief Abiaka) and his party, and that Indians were sent from Okeechobee to tend these."

Search and Destroy Missions Along Lake Worth

        The elusive medicine chief Sam Jones became the nemesis of the U.S. Third Artillery, based  at Fort Lauderdale, from September 1841 until Colonel Worth brought the war to a close in August 1842. Search and destroy expeditions were dispatched by Major Childs to Lake Worth, Lake Okeechobee, the Loxahatchee River and as far south as the Shark River valley in the Everglades.

        Sam Jones and his followers eluded all of these Army and Naval expeditions, but his village sites and agricultural food sources did not. It became a war of attrition and slow starvation within the Everglades and coastal waterways in South Florida.

        In the Everglades, the Seminoles made flour from "coontie" (Florida arrowroot), and ate "taal-holelke" by boiling the hearts of native swamp cabbage palms. In fertile hammocks and coastal areas of southeast Florida, women cultivated corn, beans, squash, potatoes, pumpkins, rice, sugar cane and melons.

        The Seminoles practiced "intercropping" - harvesting several types of plants in the same field - to maintain soil fertility. They either planted or left untouched trees that produced fruits or other edible food sources.   

        Captain Martin J. Burke of Company I of the Third Artillery left Fort Lauderdale Sept. 3, 1841 with 119 enlisted men and five officers. They rowed up the New River and dragged their boats across the Everglades with the goal of surprising Seminole camps on the south shore of Lake Okeechobee.

        Rowing past the future sites of Belle Glade and Canal Point, the Burke expedition reached the deserted outpost of Fort McRae, described by the officer as an "old palmetto fortification". (Fort McRae was built by Colonel Zachary Taylor following the Battle of Okeechobee in 1837.) They used the old supply depot as their base of operations for three days while searching for Seminole villages.

        Only two Indians were spotted along the shore of Lake Okeechobee and none were captured. The net result of the expedition was the destruction of one small Seminole camp site, hidden within an Everglades hammock east of the big lake, and destroying their supply of "coontie".

        While the Burke mission failed to locate hostile Indians, his expedition gave notice to Seminole leaders that the shores of Lake Okeechobee and the hammocks of the east Everglades were no longer safe places of refuge.

        On Nov. 8, 1841, Captain Richard Wade with 80 soldiers of the Third Artillery raided Cha-Chi's Village, located within the freshwater chain of lakes 1.5 miles west of Lake Worth in the future city of West Palm Beach. Cha-chi's hunting camp on the Hillsboro River was attacked the previous day and the village chief was captured. *

        Wade reported, "Here we were conducted to another village which we surrounded and surprised and captured 27 Indians, took six rifles and one shotgun, and destroyed a large quantity of provisions and four canoes. The next morning we set out on our return to the boats."

        In early December 1841, Major Childs ordered Lt. Francis Wyse to return to Lake Worth and destroy any remaining agricultural fields on the western shore that his earlier expedition in September missed. The Wyse "scout mission" produced "no prisoners nor enemy casualties," only the destruction of crops.

        Two more expeditions were sent to Lake Worth in mid-December. Captain John Rogers Vinton left Fort Lauderdale on Dec.15 with 120 soldiers in 19 boats. They paddled north along the entire length of Lake Worth, then portaged their boats and entered the Loxahatchee River.

        Captain Vinton was responding to reports that Sam Jones was camped along the Loxahatchee. They failed to locate him. Only one Indian, named Kata Micco, was captured, whom Vinton described as "a wild and eccentric character associated with no party - though an actual relative of Sam Jones himself."

        Captain Vinton was ordered to wait for the arrival of a second expedition led Captain Wade at the site of Fort Jupiter. When Wade failed to arrive, Vinton's force rowed north to the St. Lucie River and the Army base at Fort Pierce.

        Captain Wade's second expedition to Lake Worth, following the destruction of Cha-chi's Village in November, set off from Fort Lauderdale on Dec. 19 with 17 canoes and 80 soldiers. He followed Vinton's route to the south end of Lake Worth.

        Assigned to the expedition was Lt. Andrew A. Humphreys, a topographical engineer sent to chart the waterway. His 1841 journal was edited and reprinted as an official U.S. Department of War "Memoir" with maps in April 1856 for use in the Third Seminole War (1855-58).

        The 1856 "Memoir" was one of first military documents to use the place name "Lake Worth" and was subtitled "Inland Routes from Fort Jupiter to Fort Lauderdale."

        Lt. Humphreys reported, "Lake Worth is a pretty sheet of water, about 20 miles long and three-quarter of a mile in width; bounded on the west by pine barrens, and on the east by sand hills of the beach, which are sometimes 12 to 15 feet in height and covered with cabbage trees, wild figs, mangroves, saw palmettos, with here and there a variety of cactus."

        Most of the cultivated fields along the shores of Lake Worth were already destroyed by earlier expeditions by Childs, Wyse and Vinton when the second Wade expedition reached the waterway.  

        Lt. Humphreys observed "Along the eastern shore of the lake are long strips of cultivable ground about 200 yards wide, separated from the beach by ponds and wet prairies. These were formerly tilled by the Indians, who had large villages in the neighborhood. The soil is light but very rich, being almost entirely vegetable mould."

        By the time Captain Wade reached the rendezvous site of Fort Jupiter, the Vinton expedition had already departed for Fort Pierce. Wade returned to Fort Lauderdale by way of the Atlantic coastal ridge which extended north to south, passing near the ruins of Cha-Chi's Village and through the freshwater chain of lakes in central Palm Beach County.

       The search and destroy missions by Childs, Wyse, Wade and Vinton effectively eliminated Lake Worth as a supply base for the Seminoles of southeast Florida by the end of 1841.

        Before he was deported to Oklahoma in 1842, one Seminole chieftain named Nethlock-a-mathlar told his captors: "Our crops last summer were entirely destroyed, which never occurred before, and the approach of troops from all quarters scattered our people, separating husbands and wives, parents and children for safety."

        "From moon to moon" he said, "we thought the soldiers would retire, but they continued their destruction as fast as we could plant. There was no alternative but to improve the first opportunity to surrender."

        In a letter sent to General Winfield Scott in February 1842, Colonel Worth estimated the strength of the remaining Seminoles as 300 persons, of which 112 were warriors. He recommended an end to the war.

        Sam Jones, Billy Bowlegs, Chipco and their followers remained undefeated and hidden in the "Locha Hatchee" (Loxahatchee River basin), the Everglades and swamps north of Lake Okeechobee until the stalemated war ended on Aug. 14, 1842 by a unilateral decree of the U.S. War Department.  

(c.) Davidsson. 2021.

*NOTE: The article was reprinted in the Jan. 17 digital editions of "News Break" and "South Central Florida Life." It is the second in a two-part series. See also "The Seminole Tribe's Legacy in Palm Beach County" below, and other narratives in Older Posts.   

The Seminole Tribe's Legacy in Palm Beach County

 By Bob Davidsson

        The Seminole village chieftain Cha-Chi faced a fateful decision on Nov. 7, 1841, one which would dictate and haunt the remainder of his life.

        Two days earlier Captain Richard Wade of the U.S. Third Artillery with a picked force of 60 solders in 12 dugout canoes embarked from Fort Lauderdale in response to reports of a Seminole hunting camp on the Hillsboro River. Wade surrounded and raided the camp, capturing 20 Indians and killing eight, shot while trying to escape.

        Cha-Chi was questioned by Captain Wade about the location of his main village. As he viewed the bodies of his eight dead villagers, the chieftain made the decision to guide the soldiers to his town with the promise that his mixed-race Spanish wife, Polly, and remaining villagers would be spared and protected.

        Cha-Chi knew he had little choice but to negotiate terms with the Army captain. The soldiers were everywhere, and his village was the last in the region that would later be called Palm Beach County.

        The Seminole tribe fought two battles along the Loxahatchee River in January 1838, then retreated into the Loxahatchee Slough. Trapped between two armies to the north and west, 527 Seminoles, mainly women and children, surrendered at the newly built stockade named Fort Jupiter.

        Lt. W.G. Freeman was the officer in charge of the captive Seminoles. Concerned by overcrowded conditions at Fort Jupiter, he escorted 100 detainees to Fort McRae on Lake Okeechobee until transports arrived to ship the Indians to St. Augustine.

        The great medicine chief and war leader Sam Jones (Abiaka) was forced to flee south into the Everglades to escape imprisonment at Fort Jupiter and deportation to Oklahoma by the U.S. Army.

        A few days after the Loxahatchee battles, Major William Lauderdale and his Tennessee Mounted Volunteers cleared a "Military Trail" from Fort Jupiter to Fort Dallas (Miami). Major Lauderdale failed to locate Cha-Chi's village, located just four miles to the east of his new road, but the chieftain knew his good fortune would not last.

        In his 1841 official report, Captain Wade wrote, "Under the guidance of an old Indian, found among our prisoners, who was called Chia-chee (Cha-Chi), I took up a line of march through nearly a mile of deep bog and saw grass, then through a pine barren and some hammock, to a cypress swamp, a distance of some 30 miles northward."

        "Here (on November 8) we were conducted to another village," Captain Wade reported, "which we surrounded and surprised, and captured 27 Indians, took six rifles and one shotgun, and destroyed a large quantity of provisions and four canoes. The next morning we set out on our return to the boats."

        Cha-Chi's village was located within the future city of West Palm Beach. Lt. Andrew A. Humphreys, Wade's topographical engineer, noted the Seminole settlement was located 12.5 miles south of Lake Worth Creek and 1.5 miles west of Lake Worth. The site was probably adjacent to the freshwater chain-of-lakes which today is just east of highway I-95.

        He wrote, "The site of this (town) is on a pretty island, bounded on the northward-east by a deep clear pond half a mile wide, and between a mile and a half and two miles long. On the west and south it is surounded by a grassy lake."

        "Six miles from the last haulover, on the west side of the lake (Lake Worth)," the topographer wrote, "is Cha-chi's Landing, a broad trail half a mile in length, formerly led from this place over a spruce scrub toward the villages of the Indians whose gardens were on the opposite shore of the lake, which they reached by hauling their canoes over the trail. "

        Reporting on the progress of his expedition, Captain Wade wrote, "Having seen much in the old man, Chia-chee, to inspire my confidence, I permitted him to go from our camp (on the Hillsboro River) to bring in other Indians, which he promised to do in three or four days. This promise was redeemed, having brought in six at Fort Lauderdale."

        By compiling the total number of Indians captured, killed or surrendering before and after Wade's raid, Cha-chi's town had a population of at least 61 Seminoles at the time of its capture in November 1841.

        Wade was rewarded for the raid on Cha-chi's village, and the capture of 53 Seminoles during his campaign, with a promotion to the rank of major. Lt. George H. Thomas, Wade's second in command and a future Civil War general, was promoted to a brevet first lieutenant. 

        Lt. William Tecumseh Sherman, who also was stationed at Fort Lauderdale at the time of Wade's raid, boasted to his family in a letter written in November 1841 that their regiment (the U.S. Third Artillery) "caught more Indians and destroyed more property in a fair method than the rest of the army."

        As a result of Wade's two expeditions along Lake Worth (called "Hypoluxo" in the Muscogee dialect) there were few if any Indians remaining in eastern Palm Beach County by the war's end in 1842. As for Cha-Chi, also known as "George or Old Georgy," he continued to serve as a guide for the military.

        He guided Navy Capt. John T McLaughlin's "Mosquito Fleet" along the coastal waters of South Florida. Cha-Chi also led Capt. John Rogers Vinton of the U.S. Third Artillery from Fort Lauderdale back to the western shore of Lake Worth in 1842 during a futile search for medicine chief Sam Jones.

        After the war, the Army kept its word and allowed Cha-Chi and his family to remain in Florida. He moved to the Manatee community in Hillsborough County. He even received an executive order from Florida Gov. Thomas Brown (1848 - 1853) on Oct. 12, 1852, protecting the former chieftain from his enemies both white and native American.

      The order stated, "Whereas it has been presented to me by a petition of a number of citizens of the County of Hillsborough that a certain Indian of the tribe of Seminoles now in Florida by the name of 'Chi' and his wife have been outlawed by their tribe for the offense of acting as a guide to the United States troops during the period of Indian hostilities in Florida, and that the faith of the general government has been pledged for the protection of the said Chi and his wife. Now know Ye that the faith of the state of Florida is hereby extended for the protection of Chi and his wife..."

        Cha-chi was awarded a bag containing $100 in coins for his service to the military. Despite the protection of a state proclamation, Cha-Chi continued to live in fear of reprisals by members of his own tribe. After the outbreak of the Third Seminole War, he took his own life.

        On June 6, 1856, Lt. Alex S. Webb wrote in his journal: "I forgot to mention the death of Corporal Manning of my company, (and) of Chi the Indian. Chi committed suicide. He evidently felt that he was neither Indian nor white, and he got himself out of this world to avoid meeting parties of Indian scouts."

The Cow Creek Band of Seminoles: 1835 - 1930

        By the end of the Second Seminole War in August 1842, the geographical area that became Palm Beach County was nearly devoid of permanent native American villages and camp sites until the arrival of a second wave of Seminole migration.

        What became a branch of the Cow Creek Band of the Seminole nation traces its origins to the Florida-Georgia border, northeast of Tallahassee, in the late 18th century. During the First Seminole War (1817-18), this Muscogee-speaking band of Seminoles were forced south of the Suwannee River by General Andrew Jackson's invasion of Spanish Florida.

        The band of Seminoles, under the leadership of Chipco (Echo Emathla Chopco), settled northeast of Tampa Bay in Pasco County. To their misfortune, the village was near the line of march of Major Francis Dade and his U.S. Army command in 1835.

        Chipco joined other Seminole leaders in ambushing the two U.S. Army companies. Major Dade and 100 soldiers under his command were killed in the so-called "Dade Massacre," an event that marked the beginning of the Second Seminole War (1835 - 1842).

        During and after the Seminole wars, Chipco and his followers lived a nomadic existence, frequently moving their camps in Central and South Florida to avoid capture and deportation to Oklahoma. These wanderings were traced by Prof. James Covington in a report titled "Federal and State Relations with the Florida Seminoles: 1875 -1901."

        "The band led by Chipco did a considerable amount of moving about in the Florida wilderness during this period," he reported. "Chipco's band lived in the cypress swamps north of Lake Okeechobee until 1866, when it moved to the Kissimmee River Valley. The band moved again in 1872-73 to Lake Pierce located northeast of Lake Wales in Polk County, but migrated from there in 1885 to Lake Rosalie."  

        Chief Tallahassee succeeded Chipco as leader of his band of Cow Creek Seminoles after the death of his uncle in 1881. Under his leadership, the tribal band increased to 30 "clans" or extended families. Each clan encampment was led by its senior matriarch and had its own totem or natural symbol - such as panther, wind or snake.

       A male warrior married into the clan of his wife. For example, when Chief Tallahassee married Martha Tiger he became part of her Tiger (i.e. Wildcat) Clan or extended family. Martha Tiger's brother, Tom Tiger (Tustenuggee), would later leave her clan when he married into the Snake Clan.

        Under pressure from new settlers and ranchers in Central Florida during the late 1880s, the Cow Creek Band of Seminoles, led by Chief Tallahassee, moved east of Lake Okeechobee into the Bluefield and Hungryland region of Palm Beach County. They also settled near a popular trading site on high ground that became known as "Indiantown".

        Beginning in the 1890s, the U.S. government began acquiring parcels that became the nucleus of federal trust lands held for the Seminoles until the reservations were established. The so-called "Indiantown Reservation" of the early 20th century was on public land. It was actually 2,000 acres of land held in trust for use by the Seminoles.

        Upon the death of Chief Tallahassee, his brother-in-law, Tom Tiger, assumed a leadership role in the Cow Creek Band. He married Mary Tiger (i.e. Mary Tustenuggee), matriarch of the Snake Clan, which settled about four miles from Indiantown in the 1890s, and thus he also became part of her extended family.

        As a young man, Tom Tiger fought in the Third Seminole War (1855-58). However, after the war he became a valued friend to American settlers in southeast Florida. Tom Tiger had an endless curiosity about his new neighbors and their many strange inventions. He would often make unexpected visits to West Palm Beach, Stuart and Fort Pierce to trade or just observe what was happening in the growing communities.

        When a farmer stole one of his horses, advocates for Tom Tiger went to court for justice. It became the first case of a member of Seminole tribe seeking redress in a Florida court of law.

        Tom Tiger was struck by lightning and died while carving a dugout canoe near Big Mound City in Palm Beach County. Members of his clan buried him under the canoe. In 1907 an amateur archaeologist from Pennsylvania convinced a guide to take him to the grave site. He stole Tom Tiger's bones and tried to sell them to the Smithsonian Institute. When that failed, he placed them on public display in his home state.

        The Cow Creek Band was outraged by the theft with a few warriors threatening to start a "Fourth Seminole War" unless the remains were returned to Florida. In what became one of first federal acts of repatriation of native American remains, Tom Tiger's bones were soon returned. His clan buried his remains in an undisclosed site.

        In another notable legal case involving members of the Cow Creek Band, DeSoto Tiger of the Snake Clan was killed in December 1911 by John Ashley, leader of the notorious Ashley Gang. Ashley robbed him of his otter pelts valued at $1,200. He was brought to trial four years later in March 1915.

        Two members of the Seminole tribe, Wilson Cypress and Henry Clay, attended the court hearing in West Palm Beach to witness if justice was served. Ironically, they were arrested and charged with illegal possession of protected Everglades bird plumes.

        Ashley cut a deal with the State of Florida to plead guilty to a lesser charge of  robbery instead of murder. He soon escaped from jail and continued his crime spree for another nine years.

        DeSoto Tiger was the brother of Ada Tiger, who became the matriarch of the Snake Clan after the death of her mother, Mary Tiger Tustenuggee. Their brother, Jimmy Gopher, was the medicine chief of the Snake Clan. 

        Ada Tiger's daughter, Betty Mae Tiger Jumper (Potackee), was born in April 1923 in Indiantown. Later in her life she was elected as the first chairwoman of the "Seminole Tribe of Florida" from 1967-71. She died in 2011. Betty Mae's brother, Howard Tiger (born in 1925), became the first member of the Seminole nation to enlist for service in World War II. 

        The Snake Clan prospered during the first quarter of 20th century on land set aside for the tribe near Indiantown. By the year 1926, Ada Tiger was raising a herd of 100 cattle on the open range.

        Another important member of the Seminole tribe, who lived part of his childhood in a temporary camp near Indiantown, was Billy Osceola (1920-74). He became the first elected chief of the Seminole Tribe of Florida after its reorganization in 1957. He died Aug. 1, 1974 in Boynton Beach.

        When Palm Beach County was established in 1909, it included what later became Martin County and the southern third of Okeechobee County. Several Seminole camps were located in Palm Beach County, including the Indiantown "reservation," according to a report published by the U.S. Department of the Interior in 1932 titled as a "Survey of the Seminole Indians of Florida".

        The detailed 90-page document provided a final social, demographic and economic profile of the Seminole tribe in the 1920s, before the reservation system was established in Florida. The author was Roy Nash, the U.S. government's "Special Commissioner to Negotiate with the Indians," who spent several years compiling information about the tribe.

        The document was first presented to Congress in 1930 as a "Report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs Concerning Conditions Among the Seminole Indians of Florida." Among the findings, Nash and other Indian agents reported a total population of 578 Seminoles living in Florida, of which 125 lived in 12 camps located east of Lake Okeechobee from St. Lucie County south to Loxahatchee Farms in Palm Beach County.

        The main threat to the health of the Seminole nation in the 1920s was malaria. The survey reported there were 279 cases in the 10-year period between 1921-30, impacting nearly 50 percent of the tribe.

        Most Seminole villages in the 1920s still consisted of the traditional open-air, palm-thatched "chickees" (a Muscogee word for home). Fertile Everglades hammocks were used as agricultural sites each spring to plant corn, pumpkins and potatoes. The tribe's main source of outside income in the 1920s was the fur trade.

        The 1930 survey estimated the Seminole tribe's annual income as $38,145. The fur trade accounted for $25,000, with native arts and crafts earning $8,945. The Cow Creek Band sold its raccoon furs, otter pelts, deer buckskin and alligator hides to agents in Canal Point, Okeechobee City, and occasionally along the coastal cities. Canal Point agent J.E. Carter, for example, earned an average of $6,000 to $7,000 annually from the Seminole fur trade with his associate in Arcadia, FL.

        The Seminole village sites in the 1920s were mainly located on public land, but a few such as the Loxahatchee Farms camp, were allowed on private property with the consent of the landowners. According to the survey, Ella Montgomery enticed Charlie Cypress and his family to abandoned their home in the Big Cypress Swamp and move to Loxahatchee Farms with a gift of a Ford automobile.

        Ms. Montgomery, related by marriage to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Edward Douglass White (1910-21), was one of many well-meaning citizens and organizations in Florida that sought to help the Seminole tribe.  Charlie Cypress, age 55, was born in 1875 and head of the household that built their camp adjoining the Montgomery home just 10 miles west of West Palm Beach, according to the 1930 Census.

        The draining of the Everglades for agricultural use in the early 20th century damaged the natural habitat traditionally used by the Seminole tribe for hunting and as a food harvesting resource.

       The Florida "Land Boom" of the 1920s, together with the opening of first official Seminole Reservation in Dania, FL, placed additional pressure on the tribe to abandon their traditional way of life. Such was the sad case of the Snake Clan of Indiantown.

The Forced Removal of the 'Snake Clan': 1926.

        Captain Lucien A. Spencer, special commissioner and Indian agent for the Seminole tribe in southeast Florida from 1913-27, was determined to relocate members of Cow Creek Band from their remote camps in Palm Beach and Martin counties to the new Dania Seminole Reservation, the first of its kind to open in 1926.

        He arrived in Florida as a Baptist missionary with the title of "The Rev. Lucien Spencer". As the new special commissioner, he viewed his mission as one to enlighten the Seminoles with the twin virtues of the American education system and the Christian faith.

        The Rev. Spencer joined a Florida National Guard regiment sent to the Texas border in 1916 to protect U.S. settlements from raids by Pancho Villa and other Mexican revolutionaries. When he returned to Florida, the Indian agent no longer used the title of "Reverend". He became "Captain Spencer" to both friend and foe.

        The main target of his reservation relocation plan was the Snake Clan, the wealthiest and most influential extended family unit in the Cow Creek Band. Snake Clan matriarch Ada Tiger and medicine chief Jimmy Gopher converted to Christianity in 1920 when a native American team of Oklahoma Creek Southern Baptist missionaries visited their camp.

        Captain Spencer assumed the Snake Clan leaders would willingly move to the Dania Reservation since it offered both an Indian school and church. He was wrong. Both the Snake Clan and its larger Cow Creek Band of Seminoles opposed the removal of tribal members to Broward County.

        In response, Captain Spencer later wrote, "The Indian camp I was preparing to move here (to Dania) refused to come on the account of the above (Cow Creek Band) interference, and I properly cut off their ration supply."

        "At the end of three weeks of starvation, they moved here and placed their children in school," the Indian agent reported. The Snake Clan's Indiantown camp was closed.

        Captain Spencer's inhumane action against the Snake Clan was noted by Roy Nash in his survey, and is reported in the Congressional Record, U.S. Senate Document 314, 71st Congress, 3rd Session.

        Most of the Cow Creek Seminoles living east of Lake Okeechobee relocated to the 36,600-acre Brighton Reservation after it opened in 1938 in Glades County. Others moved to the new Fort Pierce Reservation. The 2010 Census recorded 694 Seminoles living in Brighton.

        In the well-meaning but inaccurate conclusion to his 1930 survey, Special Commissioner Roy Nash wrote, "Fifty years hence no one will question that Seminole Indians are full-fledged citizens of Florida. Seminoles each standing tall on his own feet will have become Floridians. The original American, now a social outcast, will again be an American."

        In historical hindsight, the conclusion should have said despite three wars, forced deportations and decades of government mismanagement, today the Seminole nation continues to survive and thrive in Florida.  

(c.) Davidsson. 2020.  

*NOTE: A copy of this article was published in the Dec. 20 South Central Florida Life section of the Okeechobee News.  Additional articles are indexed and archived below and in Older Posts.