by Jeff Blakley

Andrew Jackson Poplin (A. J.) is a name unknown to anyone except his descendants – no one currently living in South Dade knows who he was. He shared a trait with many other people in South Dade, then and now: a propensity to move often. He came here in late 1911 and stayed not even 9 years before moving back to where he had come from. While here, he was in Homestead and Goulds and made trips to Cuba, too. Other than his violent end, his story is not dramatic. He was just a working man, doing the best he could, in his eyes, anyway. It is often said that history is told by the victors. That is true. Andrew was not a victor – he was a victim and the stories of victims are rarely told. This is the story of one of those victims.

Andrew was born on March 9, 1865, in Tyson, Stanly County, North Carolina, the son of Jeremiah and Nancy Hinson Poplin.¹ In the 1870 census, Jeremiah, born in about 1807, was not enumerated, so he may have died. A. J. first appears, age 6, in the 1880 census, but his mother was not listed. She may have died before 1880, as that census only shows Caroline, 32; A. J., 14; and Mary, 12.² The three of them were living in the household of Charles W. West. By 1887, A. J. had moved to Bell County, Texas, where Andrew married Josephine Cox on November 1, 1887.³ They had three children: a daughter, Willie, born in 1889 in McClellan County, Texas, and two sons, George and Arthur, born in Bell County, Texas, in 1893 and 1895, respectively.⁴

Josephine died in 1898, possibly as the result of complications from childbirth. She was 35. In 1903, A. J. suffered a concussion when he stepped off the Interurban in Dallas and fell from the platform.⁵ By 1910, he and his children had moved to Martha, Oklahoma, where he worked as a carpenter.⁶

In January of 1912, Andrew was mentioned in the Miami Metropolis as one of the signers of a letter to the editor protesting the treatment of the firemen (the men who tended the boilers on the steam locomotives owned by the Florida East Coast Railroad) who had gone on strike on December 27, 1911.⁷ “Thugs” hired by the F.E.C. were harassing the strikers in Homestead. The letter was signed by Andrew J. Poplin, David W. Sullivan, Benjamin F. King, George J. Sullivan, Fred S. Loomis and S. J. Connolly.⁸ Another letter, sent on January 15, was signed by an additional 40 men, mostly prominent businessmen in Homestead.^{9 10}

In May of 1913, Poplin and his daughter rented the house formerly occupied by Frank J. Springer,¹¹ one of the signers of the charter that had established the Town of Homestead a few months earlier. A. J.’s daughter Willie gave birth to her son, Harold Jackson McDuffie, on September 16, 1913 in Homestead.¹²

A. J. may have gotten into the tomato business in 1912 because in late 1913, he became a charter member of the Florida Growers’ Company, a farmer’s cooperative. Cooperatives tried to improve the profit margin of its members by cutting out the middle men, called commission men, by selling directly to wholesalers.¹³

In 1915, Poplin was paid $16.50 by the Town of Homestead to build a shed for the town’s new fire engine¹⁴ and then, he and Ralph Moon, another local carpenter, worked on the renovation of Sistrunk Hall, a large wooden building in what is now downtown Homestead, which rented space to a movie theater, civic groups and churches.¹⁵

In 1916, Floridians went to the polls to elect a new governor. The incumbent, Park Trammell, was term-limited and could not run for re-election. Four men ran for the office: Sidney J. Catts, William V. Knott, George W. Allen and C. C. Allen. Catts initially sought the nomination of the Democratic Party, running against Knott but after multiple recounts, his opponent was declared the winner. Catts used his loss to push his claim that the Democrats had stolen the nomination from him and ran on the Prohibition Party ticket instead. He attacked the Democratic Party “machine” and its supporters in what he said were the partisan courts to further his candidacy. George W. Allen ran as a Republican and C. C. Allen as a Socialist.

The Redlands Catts Club, a group of people who supported Sidney J. Catts, was established in August of 1916. An avowedly racist¹⁶ and anti-Catholic¹⁷politician, Catts tapped into the deep fears about immigration that existed in Florida and across the nation during that period. The first meeting of the Redlands Catts Club was held in the Woodmen’s Hall at Silver Palm.¹⁸ Twenty-two men, including A. J., signed up as members at the first meeting, held on August 5, and 25 more signed up the next Saturday, August 12. The Miami Metropolis published two short articles¹⁹ about the events, describing the second gathering as an “enthusiastic meeting.” A careful study of the names on those lists revealed that most of the members were small farmers or businessmen. One of them, Preston H. Lee, was elected as Dade County Commissioner in that fall’s election. Lee represented District 4, which covered Silver Palm, Goulds, Princeton, Naranja and Modello from January of 1917 until January of 1923. There were two medical doctors on the membership list and also Cassius C. Thomas, a dentist and a brother of Edwin W. Thomas, the wealthy owner of the E. R. Thomas Motor Co. Edwin had a country estate on the north side of Silver Palm Drive, not far east of William Anderson’s general merchandise store. He was the inventor of the Thomas Flyer, which won the 1908 New York to Paris race.²⁰ Others on the list of members were Charles and Henry Gossman, George Moody and Judge Redmond B. Gautier. The Gossmans were among the earliest homesteaders in Silver Palm, Moody owned the general merchandise store in Cutler where homesteaders purchased their supplies and Gautier was the Mayor of Miami from 1931-1933. Gautier was sitting beside President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Bayfront Park when Guiseppe Zangara attempted to assassinate the president in 1933.

Catts’ campaign promises, as befitted a candidate running on the Prohibition Party²¹ ticket, struck a chord in the minds of many Florida voters, because they elected him in a landslide: out of 53 counties, he won in 38.²² In Homestead, Catts defeated Knott with 61% of the vote. In Florida City and Redland, he did even better, garnering 74% of the votes. Princeton and Silver Palm were Catts country: Knott was defeated in both precincts with Catts receiving 80% and 88%, respectively, of the votes.²³ Those election results give an insight into understanding the popularity of the Ku Klux Klan in South Dade in the mid-1920s.

Andrew J. Poplin wasn’t famous – he was just a working man. In February of 1917, he went to Cuba to pack fruit and vegetables with Edward F. Brooker, Thomas J. Harris (a future mayor of Homestead) and Clovis D. Walker,²⁴ who later became the director of the Cotton Branch of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Ed Brooker was a brother of Henry Brooker, Sr., who was the father of Henry Brooker, Jr. Henry, Jr. owned Brooker Lumber in Homestead for many years.

In August of 1917, Poplin was struck from the voter registration rolls of Homestead because he had moved to Goulds.²⁵ In Goulds, he farmed and also filled in for the vacationing superintendent of the F. E. C. pumping station there.²⁶ The pumping station supplied water to the steam locomotives of the Florida East Coast Railway. While in Goulds, Poplin worked as a foreman for a truck farm.²⁷ Shortly after the census was taken, he, his daughter and his grandson left Goulds and returned to Texas, where they settled in Birdville, in Tarrant County. By 1922, he had married the former Etta Abbott, as he and his wife attended a party celebrating the 74th birthday of Etta’s mother, Ruth M. Williford, on Dec. 10, 1922.²⁸

He and Etta apparently divorced sometime before 1930, as that census shows them living in households not far apart. Etta was enumerated as living with her daughter by her first marriage, Hesta B. Dickey and her son-in-law, Walter L. Dickey. She told the enumerator that she was divorced. A. J., who lived 9 households away, lived with his daughter Willie and her son, Harold J. McDuffie. He told the enumerator that he was widowed.

On Sunday afternoon, October 12, 1930, Poplin, who was 65, got into an altercation with Charlie Waggoner in front of a house at 309 N. Burnet St. Charlie stabbed Andrew with a knife, breaking the blade in the process. A. J. died in the ambulance taking him to the hospital in Ft. Worth.²⁹ He is buried in the Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Fort Worth, Texas.³⁰ A.J.’s assailant was charged with murder and on March 17, 1931, was sentenced to six years in jail.³¹ Charlie had already been convicted of burglary but his sentence of five years had been suspended. With his new conviction, he was to serve eleven years in the penitentiary.³²

It is rare to be able to follow the life, however imperfectly, of one of the thousands of people who moved through South Dade in the early years of the 20th century. History (and very rarely Herstory) is told by the winners. A. J. was not a “winner” – he left no photographs or documents to tell us his story. However, what little can be discovered about his life will hopefully act as a counter to the romantic tales of what life was like in South Dade in that era.

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1. 1850, 1860 and 1870 U. S. censuses of Stanly County, North Carolina.
2. U. S. census, 1880, of Stanly County, North Carolina.
3. Texas county marriage records, via Ancestry.
4. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/41546868/ann_josephine_poplin
5. Austin-American Statesman, April 27, 1903, p. 1
6. 1910 census of Martha, Jackson, OK.
7. The Roanoke Times, Dec. 27, 1911, p. 16
8. Miami Metropolis, January 8, 1912, p. 1
9. Miami Metropolis, January 15, 1912, p. 1
10. The complete list, with spelling corrections: R. E. Caves, J. E. Cochran, A. C. Horne, W. D. Horne, D. W. Sullivan, D. R. Sullivan, Jr., B. J. Best, Geo. J. Sullivan, C. H. Sullivan, J. M. Scarborough, S. J. Connolly, F. J. Springer, Carl Deden, S. T. Griffin, Oscar Thomas, L. S. Mowry, W. H. Hogard, S. E. Livingston, C. R. Williams, F. A. Thomas, E. H. Walbridge, L. W. Watkins, R. McClurg, E. L. Brooks, A. T. Duval, C. A. Duval, W. J. Tweedell, A. R. Caves, F. S. Loomis, J. M. Bauer, W. B. Caves, A. G. Raab, A. J. Miller, Elbert Wright, T. A. Campbell, Wm. H. Sykes, Thomas Brewer, N. W. Campbell, D. MacFarlane, J. M. Brooks, A. W. Chapman, W. A Frazeur, C. H. Hammond, J. D. Redd, E. C. Cape and Oscar H. Wickham.
11. South Florida Banner, May 30, 1913, p. 5
12. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/193991885/harold-jackson-mcduffie
13. Miami Metropolis, Nov. 29, 1913, p. 13
14. Minutes of the Town of Homestead, March 1, 1915.
15. Homestead Enterprise, March 11, 1915, p. 5
    
16. The Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Florida, by Michael Newton, University Press of Florida, 2001, p. 39
17. Anti-Catholicism and the Florida Legislature, 1911-1919, Robert B. Rackleff, Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 4, 1971, pp. 352-365
18. The location of the Woodmen’s Hall is not known, but an educated guess would be that it was in the Silver Palm school house building, on the second floor.
19. Miami Metropolis, August 8, 1916, p. 1 and August 15, 1916, p. 2
20. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/paris-or-bust-the-great-new-york-to-paris-auto-race-of-1908-116784616/
21. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/united-states-and-canada/us-history/prohibition-party
22. Florida Governor Sidney J. Catts: The Polarizing Populist>, by Sarah “Moxy” Moczygemba, via: https://ufndnp.domains.uflib.ufl.edu/florida-governor-sidney-j-catts-the-polarizing-populist-ufndnp/
23. Homestead Enterprise, Nov. 8, 1916, p. 2
24. Homestead Enterprise, Feb. 8, 1917, p. 1
25. Town of Homestead Council meeting minutes, August 23, 1917.
26. Miami Metropolis, June 19, 1919, p. 5
27. 1920 U. S. Census of Goulds, taken on January 23-26, 1920. A “truck farm” was one on which vegetables were raised for the market.
28. Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Forth Worth, TX, Dec. 10, 1922, p. 17
29. Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Fort Worth, TX, Oct. 13, 1930, p. 13
30. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/73629212/andrew-jackson-poplin
31. Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 17, 1931, p. 11.
32. Fort Worth Star-Telegram, April 28, 1931, p. 1