Dr. Henry E. Perrine – Part I

Historic South Dade Posted on by

By Jeff Blakley

Much has been written about the death of Dr. Henry E. Perrine on Indian Key on August 7, 1840. Those stories repeat the very little information about his death that is in the book his son, Henry Jr., wrote in 1885. Almost all of that 303-page tome, A True Story of Some Eventful Years in Grandpa’s Life1, is devoted to the author’s life, not that of his father. This is understandable, as he was only thirteen when his father was killed. He did have access to family letters, but there apparently wasn’t much in them of interest to Henry. The only other readily available source of information about the Perrine family is the book Daniel Perrin “The Huguenot”, written in 1910 by Howland Delano Perrine.2 Howland’s book is a traditional genealogical history of the Perrine family but it has very little information on Dr. Perrine and his family. It only states that Dr. Perrine died on Indian Key on August 7, 1840. The only other account of the incident at Indian Key is that written by his daughter, Hester, which, interestingly enough, was also written in 1885.3 Historians interested in Perrine’s life before he arrived in Indian Key on Christmas Day, 1838, have to find other ways to tell that story.

Henry was born on April 5, 1797 in New Brunswick, Cranbury Township, Middlesex County, NJ, the son of Peter Perrine (1771-1813) and Sally Rosengrant (1775-1832).4 Peter and Sally had six children: three sons and three daughters. Henry’s brother, John Allen Perrine, was born in 1801 and died in 1865.5 He was the postmaster of Princeton, NJ and also commanded the Jersey Blues regiment at the end of the Civil War.6 Henry’s other brother, Edward M., was born in 1807 and died in 1828. One of his sisters, Mary Ann, was born in 1804 and died in 1805.7 Another sister, Sarah Ann, born in 1809, married William Ardis in 1837 and died before 1848.8 They lived in Philadelphia but had no children. His youngest sister, Henrietta Elizabeth, born in 1813, never married and died in Philadelphia.9
In his book, his son wrote that his father had taught school in 1814 in Rocky Hill, NJ.10 While he was only seventeen at the time, this was not uncommon in that era. Teachers then, unlike now, did not have to have teaching certificates or degrees. For his era, Dr. Henry E. Perrine was very well-educated. As evidence of this, on December 17, 1831, he sent a hand-written letter to Florida Governor William P. Duval and the Florida Legislative Council. His handwriting in that letter is meticulous and his spelling and grammar are impeccable.11 As early as December of 1818, Henry Perrine and Dr. Jacob B. Drake were speculating in land in Bond Co., IL, when he and Dr. Drake first arrived in Greenville.12 There, they stayed in a boarding house owned by Richard White, located13 two and a half miles west of Greenville.14 Henry, as assignee for John Houston and John Lindley, acquired two 80-acre parcels of land: the east half of the northwest quarter of section 8 in township 5 north, range 3 west and the east half of the southeast quarter of section 30 in township 5 north, range 3 west. Both parcels were patented on June 7, 1825. He, along with John Lindley, also claimed the west half of the northwest quarter of section 19 in township 5 north, range 3 west. However, Perrine did not complete that deal – William Nelson did.15

Perrine only taught school for a couple of years before deciding to become a doctor. In that era, medical training, such as it was, took either of two forms: an apprenticeship with a doctor or a two-semester course at a school. Perrine elected to go to school but he may also have apprenticed with Dr. Jacob B. Drake, who accompanied him to Bond County, Illinois in 1819. Henry graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the City of New York in 1819.16 We know this because he published his medical credentials in the Edwardsville Spectator on August 7, 1821 in an advertisement for his practice in Illinois. He had “[d]iplomas of the Medico-chiurgical Society,17 and of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the University of the State of New York; certificates of his attendance on various Lectures in the City of New York, Certificates of his attendance in the City Hospital…” and letters of reference from Dr. Todd in Edwardsville, Dr. Heath in Belleville, Dr. Wheeler in St. Charles and Dr. DeCamp in St. Louis.18 Dr. Todd was John Todd (1787-1865), brother of Robert Smith Todd (1791-1849) and uncle of Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham Lincoln. Dr. Todd and Dr. DeCamp dissolved their partnership before late 1820,19 when Dr. DeCamp moved to St. Louis. No information could be found about the other doctors.

In one of the family letters used by Henry, Jr. in his book, Dr. Perrine wrote to his Uncle Henry (1785-1846), giving him an account of his trip from New Jersey to Illinois. Writing from near Ripley in Bond County, IL, on November 15, 1819, he stated that he and Dr. Drake had set out for the frontier from New Jersey on July 21.20 Dr. Drake was Dr. Jacob B. Drake (1788-1858),21 who later moved to Greenville, where he engaged “in the practice of medicine for many years.”22 Dr. Perrine wrote that he had set up his practice on September 30 in his boarding house, named Jersey Grove,23
located between Ripley (now Old Ripley) and Greenville in Bond County, IL. Jersey Grove was likely located on Perrine’s homestead claim in section 30 of township 5 north, range 3 west.

Henry’s future wife’s parents, Rev. Jesse (1766-1838),24 and Ann May Townsend (1762-1846),25 were early residents of Palmyra, NY, living there before 1812, when Rev. Townsend was mentioned in W. H. McIntosh’s History of Wayne County, New York.26 Jesse Townsend was a graduate of Yale and a church historian who assumed the pastorate of the Western Presbyterian Church of Palmyra on August 29, 1817.27 On August 12, 1819, Townsend claimed the east half of the northeast quarter of section 6 in township 7 north, range 4 west and the east half of the southeast quarter of section 31 in township 8 north, range 4 west, which is about 12 miles southwest of Hillsboro, in what is now Montgomery County, IL.28 Their new home, which they named Townsend’s Prairie,29 was about 20 miles northwest of Jersey Grove.30 Their son, Eleazer May (1793-1850),31 was one of two acting County Commissioners in Bond County in 1820.32 Their daughter Ann33 was, Henry wrote, an attractive young lady courted by many young men. But his father won her heart and they became engaged in the summer of 1821.34

In the afternoon of September 19, 1821, one of Dr. Perrine’s students, Mr. Pickett,35 weighed out “a quantity of white arsenic (ratsbane), which he placed in a measure glass, with the intention of speedily removing it.” He didn’t remove it, though. Perrine, in a hurry to leave to attend to his patients, did not pay any attention to what his student was doing. Having completed his patient visits, Perrine stopped for the night at the house of Richard White, a neighbor who didn’t live far away. The next morning, he was roused by a Mr. Hunt to attend to his daughter, who lived on “Beaver Creek, six or seven miles distant.” Having only recently recovered from a severe attack of dysentery, for which he took quinine in the form of Peruvian bark powder every morning, he stopped at his shop “to procure some necessary articles,” placed some Peruvian bark36 powder in the measuring glass that Mr. Pickett had left the arsenic in, “stirred it up with some whiskey to wet it and swallowed nearly the whole.”37 He almost died as a result.

Ann Townsend nursed her future husband back to health and after he had recovered, she and Henry were married at Ann’s parents’ house on January 8, 1822.38 Their first daughter, Sarah Ann, was born on March 24, 1823.

In that era, doctors very commonly recommended that their patients move to warmer climates to recover their health. A little over two and a half years after his bout with arsenic poisoning, The Edwardsville Spectator, in Edwardsville, IL, published Perrine’s announcement that he would be leaving the state on about April 25th, 1824.39 He travelled down the Mississippi to Natchez, where he established a successful practice. We do not know if he traveled back to Illinois to be with his wife when their second daughter, Hester Marie Smith, was born on July 11, 1824.40 According to Henry, Jr., Hester was named after a maiden lady who took care of his father during a serious illness he suffered, apparently shortly after he arrived in Natchez, although Henry’s account is vague.41 In an article published in The Philadelphia Journal of Medical and Physical Sciences in 1826, Dr. Perrine wrote, in some detail, how he treated some of his patients for fever. He bled them and administered calomel, castor oil, sulphate of quinine and purgative pills. Two of his patients were Black women, which points to his practice catering to the wealthy because the Black women were likely servants in upper-class homes. He noted that some of his patients exhibited no signs of illness in January of 1826 after being treated by him.42

For his time, Perrine received a very good education. Not many men had the wherewithal to become doctors in 1819 and it is likely that his father was a well-to-do businessman in Cranbury. As a result, Perrine came to be on good terms with many powerful men. Only a few of those men’s names are known. How he came to know them and what the nature of his relationship to them was is unfortunately unknown. However, it is pretty clear that he had money and contacts that enabled him to freely move in the social circles that made the society pages in the newspapers of the day. His patients in Natchez were members of the upper-class and his trips to, from and between Campeche, Yucatán; Havana, Cuba; Ripley, Illinois; New Orleans, Louisiana; Charleston, South Carolina; Palmyra, New York, Key West, Florida and other locations were not free.

Perrine’s father could trace his ancestry back to the arrival of Daniel Perrin in Elizabethtown, NJ in 1665. There is little doubt that the Perrine family, which included a number of merchants, ministers and politicians, employed slave labor to be able to advance to the upper class. What becomes clear, in reading the available sources, is that Dr. Perrine saw himself as better than most other people. He had an assessment of himself as a member of the elite who deserved special treatment. This becomes obvious at several points in his life and was a contributing factor to his untimely death at the age of 43 on Indian Key. The details are beyond the scope of this article, though. It is sufficient to note that Perrine’s racism had deep roots.

The following statements are from Perrine’s letter to the Secretary of the Treasury, dated February 1, 1834 and written from the Consulate at Campeche:43

“The necessity of cultivating tropical productions for home consumption, is shown by the facts, that the voluntary labor of the many millions of the colored races spread over the extremely great surface of the whole torrid zone, does not create scarcely any cultivated tropical productions for extra-tropical consumption; that the forced labor of a few millions of the black race, on an extremely small surface of the West India islands, does create nearly all the cultivated staples for exportation; and that the forced labor of this black race, with its essential auxiliaries, the skill and capital of the white race, is becoming greatly reduced by the recent emancipation act of the British Parliament.”44
…

“Indeed, the greatly superior productiveness of the forced labor of the colored natives in hot climates, over the voluntary labor of those races in those climates, is doubted only by the distant theorists, on the false data obtained from the voluntary labor of the white natives of cold climates, and from the unphilosophical supposition of the equality or sameness of the different species of mankind. Yet, while this undeniable fact unequivocally shows the relative advantage of employing our existing slaves in the cultivation of tropical staples, it is not cited to prove either the positive propriety or the political expediency of the perpetual continuance of our negro slavery. On the contrary, it is expressly admitted that the free labor of the white race is so much more productive than either the forced or free labor of the black race, that on this account alone it will in time become desirable to transfer all the colored species to their original Africa, and to avail ourselves, even in tropical agriculture, of the voluntary labor of our white citizens alone.
…

“Our Government is the best in the world, because it is the Government of a most moral, industrious, enlightened, and enterprising people. On the contrary, the best colored species of the torrid zone are inferior to the worst varieties of the white species of the temperate zone, in the capacities as well as in the desires, of improving their individual and social condition. Their varied mis-governments are the natural result of an indolent, ignorant, immoral, imbecile, and, consequently, poor population. Possessing very few personal desires and very little political protection, scarcely any skill and rarely any capital, however abundant may be the free laborers, and however cheap the free labor, their agricultural products must continue to be scanty and dear. Even in the nominal republics of tropical America, the agriculture of their Indian citizens very rarely affords an adequate supply for their limited domestic market, or even for their scanty personal consumption alone…
…

“The Spanish variety of the white species of mankind is notorious for the numerous defects of the national character, institutions, and even religion of the individuals who compose it, on both sides of the Atlantic ocean. The disadvantages for profitable production common to all colonial establishments hence increase, both in number and weight, in a Spanish colony. The innumerable taxations of most Catholic despotism, on the time and money of its subjects, rival, in abusive oppression, the numerous exactions of most Catholic superstition on the purse and pursuits of its professors.
…

“The neighboring miscalled republics contain four times as many Indian as white citizens. The latter are the least productive variety of the white race; and their Governments are mere military anarchies. The neighboring distracted colonies contain a majority of negroes, who, when freed, will expel the whites; and thenceforward, like their Haytian predecessors, they will be productive alone in the propagation of their species.
…

“With the most favorable form of government, and the most productive varieties of the best species of the human race, we have all the soils and climates of the earth, and the consequent ability to cultivate most profitably all the most valuable varieties of the best species of the vegetable race. It hence becomes our duty to combine within our territory the creation of the greatest possible amount and variety of cultivated vegetable products for the physical enjoyment, not merely of our own citizens, but also of the inhabitants of all extra-tropical countries, and probably even of the natives of the torrid zone itself.”

When Dr. Perrine moved to Natchez in 1824, he did not bring his family along with him. As a physician, he was well-aware of the prevalence of disease in Natchez and fell ill himself shortly before his daughter was born. In 1820, there were 21,620 Whites and 26,326 Blacks living in Natchez.45 Given Perrine’s racism, it is entirely possible that he felt that he might be endangering the life of his wife if he brought her with him.

In 1825, Ann’s father, Rev. Jesse Townsend, secured a preaching position in Sodus,46 a small town about 20 miles north of Palmyra near the shore of Lake Erie. Ann Perrine and her daughters accompanied her father to Sodus, as Henry wrote that “it was not deemed advisable to expose them to the dangers incident to a residence on the lower Mississippi and later to that in Yucatan.”47 Since Dr. Perrine had received the patents on his two 80-acre homestead claims on June 7, his wife and children may have left soon after, flush with money from selling their properties. Henry, his wife and their children were in Bond County for not quite six years.

Driven by sickness,48 in the spring of 1826 Henry travelled to Cuba, where he may have met with Don Ramon de la Sagra, a noted botanist and writer, who was with the Royal Botanical Garden in Havana. de la Sagra was the author of many books, among them Anales de Ciencias, Agricultura, Comercia y Artes, written from 1827 to 1830. In his petition to Congress for a township of land in 1838, Perrine took agricultural data from the Statistical History of Cuba, which may be the same book, to support his request.49

Later in 1826, Perrine applied for the position as U. S. Consul in Campeche, Yucatan, the capital city of the Mexican state of Campeche. Consuls were not paid by the U.S. government and one result of this was that there was no training or experience required for the position. Then and now, diplomatic positions were political appointments and those selected to fill those positions often had other sources of income. Perrine’s application was approved in January of 1827, during the administration of John Quincy Adams.50 and he arrived in Campeche in June of 1827.51

In Part II of this article, I will cover Dr. Perrine’s life from the time he was appointed Consul in Campeche until his death on Indian Key in 1840.
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Joe Frank Lofton

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

The reader is excused for thinking that this article is about a man. Almost always referred to as “Miss Frankie Lofton” or “Joe Frankie,” Joe Frank Lofton was a woman, not a man. Then and now, parents, for some reason, occasionally choose to give their children names usually associated with the opposite gender of the child being named. It is very unlikely that we will ever know why Joe Frankie Lofton’s parents chose to give her names usually associated with boys.

The reader might also rightfully ask why this article was researched, written and published. There are two reasons: First, the stories of women in the history of this area are woefully few and second, there is a myth that South Dade was founded and developed by the men in the families featured prominently in Jean Taylor’s book, The Villages of South Dade. People from all over the country and the world helped develop this area. Their stories have largely been ignored. It is my hope that this article, along with my previous articles on Ethel C. Booe, A. J. Poplin, Willie King, Benjamin F. Pherigo and William Wirt Culbertson, will represent the beginning of a more balanced picture of how South Dade developed.

This article is about one of the many unrecognized female pioneers in South Dade. Out of over 700 homestead claims filed in South Dade, a total of 50 were filed by women: 22 patents, 7 cash purchases, 9 relinquishments and 12 cancellations. When Joe Frankie filed her claim in section 13, township 57S, range 38E, where Homestead is located, on February 15, 1904 she was the first woman to do so. Roan L. Hall, who filed in section 2, township 57S, range 38E on June 4, 1903, was the first man to do so. Out of eighteeen women who filed claims in the 36 sections of that township, only nine received patents. She was one of those nine. Nothing of substance has been published about the homestead claims of men whose surnames were not Caves, Sullivan, Brooker or Horne and the same applies to women whose names were not Francis Lewis, Anna B. Longaker, Bodil Kosel, Ulrica Martin, Maria Gazzam, or Lily Lawrence Bow. I have published articles on the four men and one woman previously noted but many more need to be written to present a clearer picture of how South Dade developed over time.

Joe Frankie was born on February 12, 18766 in Hogansville, which is in Troup County, Georgia, half-way between Atlanta and Columbus. She was the daughter of Joel Jack Lofton and Leah Jane Cannon and she had three siblings: Beatrice V., born October 8, 1862; Wakie Rose, born April 30, 1864; and Wilbur Allen, born November 12, 1872.

J. Frankie Lofton 1922.

Joe Frankie Lofton at 3423

Joe Frankie’s father, Joel Jack, was a farmer, like virtually everyone in the South during that era. He was also a small-time slave-owner. The 1860 census reported that he had real estate worth $3,000 and a personal estate valued at $6,300. The 1870 census reported that his real estate was still worth $3,000 but that his personal estate had declined to just $800. That decline of $5,500 in the value of his personal estate was likely the result of the freeing of the slaves in the South after the Civil War. By 1880, Joel and his family had moved to Harrisonville, a larger community about 5 miles east of Hogansville.41

At some point after 1880, Joel, Leah and their children moved to the Ocala, Florida area where the children attended the Ocala public schoolsl. Joe’s sister Beatrice married John James Rutland, a substantial farmer and cattleman from Rutland52 in about 1890 and started a family.53 By 1900, they had two sons, Joel Robert and Macon, and two daughters, Mabel and Rowena. Joel “Joe” Robert moved to Homestead in about 1918. Wakie Rose married John Manson Giles on December 28, 1897 at the home of her parents, which was four miles south of Ocala.54 She developed tuberculosis and died at the former home of Dr. Cowart, which was north of Tampa, on March 20, 1904.55 56

At the age of about 26, Wilbur Allen moved to Miami and opened an “all-around repair shop” on 12th St. east of Avenue C in 1898.57 On February 4, 1900, he married Bertha Fox, the daughter of Charles J. Fox, at the home of Caleb L. Trapp in Cocoanut Grove.58 Charles’ brother, Samuel J., was a member of the Canadian Parliament and visited his sister in 1911, shortly before he died.59 Wilbur opened one of the first bicycle shops in Miami, the Miami Cycle Shop, before 1901.60 In June of 1902, his wife visited with Mrs. Joseph A. McDonald,61 whose husband was the head of the construction division of the Florida East Coast Railway.62 Wilbur was an energetic businessman and by 1902, he was quite prosperous, as evidenced by the fact that he was robbed of $175, his receipts for the day, while he slept in his bedroom.63 In late 1902, L. S. Johnson, from Tampa, purchased a 1/2 interest in Wilbur’s business and it was renamed Johnson & Lofton. The two men then purchased a motorcycle which attracted “much attention, being the first one in use in the city.”64 Continuing to prosper, he was able to send his wife and children on a two-month vacation to Georgia in 1903.65 Then, in January of 1904, he and his family moved into their new home at the corner of Avenue D and 20th St.,66 near the two-story home of one of the Brickell men.67 In August of 1905, Lofton purchased the large launch Ellowaha from Edward C. Romfh68 and in November, Lofton, with his partners Robert B. Einig and M. K. Whitten, launched a jitney service between Miami and West Palm Beach using “large Reo touring cars.”69 In December, it was noted that Mrs. Lofton had enrolled her young son in the Miami Conservatory to “attend the musical kindergarten and violin classes.”70

Wilbur Loftin and his wife were part of the same social circle that the Brickells, MacDonalds and Romfhs moved in. The Brickells need no introduction but the reader is probably not familiar with names Joseph A. MacDonald and Edward C. Romfh. Romfh was the cashier71 and later president of the First National Bank of Miami, established on June 10, 1892. The bank building was at the corner of 12th St. and Avenue C,72 a short distance away from Lofton’s bicycle shop. Frankie’s homestead claim in Homestead bordered, south of Mowry, that of George B. Romfh, a brother of Edward Coleman Romfh. Joseph A. McDonald, the son-in-law of John B. Reilly, the first Mayor of Miami, was elected to the first board of Councilmen of the City of Miami in 1896.73 McDonald had arrived in Miami on February 15, 189674 to supervise the work involved in bringing the F.E.C. Railway into Miami. It is likely that McDonald Street in Coconut Grove is named for Joseph A. McDonald.

After graduating from high school in Ocala in about 1894,75 Joe Frankie became a school teacher, which often happened in that era. She taught in the Greenwood Normal School in Ocala until 1898, when she resigned.76 In June of 1900, she was enumerated in her hometown of Hogansville, Georgia, working as a school teacher and living in the household of Richard and Julia Netting.77 By December of that year, she was visiting her brother Wilbur in Miami. The newspaper said she was from Macon, where she had moved after leaving Hogansville.78 She apparently liked Miami, because in 1901, she taught at the Cocoanut Grove school, where she worked with William A. H. Hobbs.79 Hobbs was a graduate of the Edinburg Teachers College in Edinburg, Pennsylvania80 and from 1913 to 1915 operated a sawmill in the Silver Palm area.81 At the end of the school year, she went back to Macon.82

Nothing more is known about her whereabouts until she paid $10 to file a claim for a homestead in what is now the City of Homestead on February 15, 1904. Her claim was for 120 acres bounded by Mowry on the north, 6th Avenue on the east, Lucy St. on the south and Redland Rd. and 10th Ave. on the west. It is not known if Joe Frankie actually came to Homestead to look over the land prior to filing her claim. She may not have, for George B. Romfh, the brother of Edward C. Romfh, filed a claim on February 10, 1904 which was partially adjacent to Frankie’s claim. George’s claim was for 120 acres, bounded by 6th Ave. on the west, Campbell Dr. on the north, 2nd Ave. on the east and 4th St. on the south.

Lofton Homestead.

The friendly relationship between Wilbur A. Lofton and the Romfhs very likely motivated Joe Frankie to file her own claim. That may also have led her to decide to get into the real estate game at the young age of 28. George Romfh did not put a lot of effort into establishing his claim to his land, preferring instead to court Lucia H. Culbertson, the daughter of William Wirt Culbertson. They were married in Frankfort, Kentucky on August 3, 1904. Two months later, on October 13, 1904, the Receiver and Recorder of the Land Office cancelled George’s claim. That probably came about because James B. Clopton, prospecting for a claim, discovered that George had done nothing to improve his claim and asked the Land Office to cancel it. They did and James filed for it on the same day. Clopton’s claim was cancelled in 1906, picked up by two other men who sequentially relinquished their claims and finally patented by Leonard S. Mowry in 1911.

The next mention of Joe Frankie appeared in July of 1904, when she was among the celebrants at a 4th of July party thrown by Colonel O. Boaz and his wife Nidia. Boaz, who was the steward for William J. Krome’s Cape Sable Exploration Survey from October of 1902 to June of 1903, had filed his claim in June of 1900 and started building a a 5-room house on it in 1901.83 Boaz’ claim ran for a mile along the north side of Silver Palm Dr., from Krome Avenue on the east to Redland Rd. on the west. Parts of it extended for 1/2 mile north, to SW 208th St. Those attending the party were Harry LeForest Hill and his wife, Alice Frederick, the sister of John S. Frederick, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Gossman, Mr. and Mrs. Charles R. Ross, for whom the Ross Hammock, part of Castellow Hammock Park, is named; Miss Maria Gazzam, George W. Kosel, Mr. and Mrs. John S. Frederick and children, Samuel H. Richmond, James Castellow, Joseph H. Bond, Mr. and Mrs. Frank H. Kanen, Mr. Moerson and Mr. Bergden. In September of that year, Joe Frankie was in Miami, where she won a prize for having “the most original old-fashioned costume” at a “most successful and pleasant meeting” of the Literary Improvement Society, held at the home of Mr. and Mrs. R. H. Whitnall on 5th St.84 85 In early 1905, Miss Lofton accepted a position as a stenographer in the office of Charles C. Chllingworth, the first attorney for the new town of West Palm Beach86 but didn’t stay in that job for long as she accepted a job as a stenographer for the Island City Bank in Key West in November of 1905.87 Her supervisor there gave her a lot of freedom, as she traveled back and forth between Miami and Key West for the better part of 1906.88 In November, she left Key West to visit her brother in Miami and then finally resigned her position in February of 1907.89

In her book The Villages of South Dade, Jean Taylor wrote, without citing a source, that Joe Robert Rutland, one of Joe Frankie’s nephews (the son of John James Rutland and Beatrice V. Lofton, Joe Frankie’s sister), had come to Homestead in 1907 “to visit his aunt and spent the winter”90 there. This is corroborated by mentions of Joe Frankie being in Homestead in the Miami newspapers from February of 1907 to December of 1908.91 She advertised for proof of her homestead in August of 190892 but apparently because she was busy, had money and little patience for complying with the requirements for a homestead claim, paid cash for it on December 18, 1908. She was issued a patent for her property on July 6, 1909. Between August and December of 1908, she worked for W. Emley Walton, who owned an insurance company in Miami. In January of 1909, she left Miami for a job with the Dade County State Bank in West Palm Beach93 and then, in 1910, visited her brother in Miami.94 In April of 1910, she went down to Homestead, where she was the guest of Joe Paul King,95 a daughter of William A. King, for whom King’s Highway in Homestead is named.

Later in the year, Miss Lofton traveled to Ocala to visit her neice, May Belle Rutland McAteer and her sister, Beatrice V. Rutland.96 Lofton’s first documented sale of property was 5 acres in 13-57-38 and 20 acres in 18-57-39 in October of 1910 to Reno McClung,97 who was one of the protesters objecting to the F.E.C.’s treatment of striking firemen in Homestead in January of 1912. At some point, Frankie quit her job with the Dade County State Bank and hired on as a bookkeeper with the Biscayne Laundry in Miami in 1911.98 That only lasted a few months before she went back to her old job with W. Emley Walton.99

After securing title to her homestead claim in 1909, Frankie, now with a good amount of business experience, seems to have gone out on her own, buying and selling real estate. She also made the society pages a number of times,100 attended dances at the Dade County Fair building,101 went on a sailing trip out to Cape Florida,102 and met with friends who had money to spend. In early September, 1912, she resigned her position with the W. Emley Walton Insurance Co.103 so that she could spend a couple of months on vacation “on her farm west of town”104 with her friend, Mrs. Florence Smith.105 Frankie had sold 40 acres of her homestead to John B. Kassebaum in 1912.106 This sale was for the 40 acres bounded by SW 4th St. on the north, SW 6th Ave. on the east, Lucy St. on the south, and SW 10th Avenue on the west, leaving her with 80 acres fronting on Mowry.107 Kassebaum was associated with the Waskey-Kassebaum Wholesale Produce Company in Pittsburg, Kansas and he and his family spent a couple of weeks at the Worlds’ Fair in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1904.108 He came to South Dade and purchased hundreds of acres of land, starting in 1912, but then disappeared from the Redland area by 1916. In 1918, Lofton owed $104 in property taxes to the Town of Homestead for the 40 acres bounded by SW 4th St. on the south, 6th Avenue on the east, Mowry on the north and 10th Ave. on the west. The assessed value of the property was $8,000, indicating that it was developed – it wasn’t pine rockland.109

Joe Frankie was doing very well in the real estate business as she was able to afford a long vacation, beginning on July 10, 1913 with a visit to Hot Springs, Arkansas.110 Hot Springs was a popular destination for those seeking to improve their health by bathing in the waters there. She then toured “Texas, Kansas, Tennessee and other points in the west and north,” returning on October 6.111 Later, in November, Lofton sold a small parcel of land, 50′ x 85′, to the City of Miami for over $16,000 in 2025 dollars. The parcel was needed for the extension of Avenue B, which is now Biscayne Blvd.112 Frankie had time for a trip to Detroit (now Florida City) in November of 1914, when she registered at the Hotel Detroit.113 In 1915, she started working for the Realty Securities Company, a big real estate firm in Miami114 and by 1916, she was a member of the Business Woman’s League of Miami.115

In November of that year, she was one of a party of 9 women and 7 men who sailed to Cape Florida for a picnic.116 One of the women was Mrs. Brondgeest, whose maiden name was Lida Eliza Trapp, the daughter of Caleb L. Trapp and Henrietta Rhodes. Henrietta was a sister of Samuel, who platted New Biscayne along the shores of Biscayne Bay, starting at 27th Ave. and running north to Kirk St.117 That area was the home of a number of wealthy and influential figures in early Cocoanut Grove, including W. W. Culbertson and Kirk Monroe, whose property was one hundred feet south of Kirk St.

New Biscayne.

Plat of New Biscayne in Cocoanut Grove118

Another woman in the party was Edith Hand Branning, the wife of Judge H. Pierre Branning. who was the first attorney for the criminal court of record of Dade County and was appointed to the 11th Circuit Court of Florida in 1914 by Gov. Park Trammell.119 Yet another woman was Frankie’s friend Florence Smith. One of the men present was Reiner B. Schallern, an attorney who first came to Miami in 1911 but moved to Homestead by 1914. In Homestead, he was a charter member of the Rotary Club organized there,120 acted as the attorney for the Charter of the Homestead Women’s Club 121 and was among the charter members of the Homestead Chamber of Commerce.122 Two other men, Joseph V. Dillon and his brother Raymond, were also on the trip. Joseph was an attorney who served in the Florida House of Representatives. It is apparent that Frankie Lofton counted among her friends a number of influential men and women who, no doubt, assisted her in her real estate dealings.

Lofton’s successful real estate dealings allowed her to take an extended vacation, starting in late June of 1917, when she left to visit her niece, Maybelle Rutland McAteer, in Ocala. From there, she travelled on to Asheville, where she spent the rest of the summer.123 After her return in early September, she attended a wedding party for her friend Emilie Kemmer, who was to be married to John J. Mauser of Sanford. The party featured a blackface performance by Harry Steele and Mark Yeadaker, who, “transformed with a little burnt cork and woman’s (sic) apparel” appeared as “two realistic ‘nigger washwomen’ bearing between them a basket of Miss Emilie’s washin’.” Frankie “carried off the honors, a small ‘nigger’ doll.”124 In early 1918, Frankie set off on another vacation, again visiting her niece in Ocala. She spent six weeks in Ocala, returning to Miami on April 1.125

In early 1920, Lofton entered into a partnership with Benjamin Cowl, of New York City, establishing the firm of Lofton & Cowl, Inc. They occupied an office in the Halcyon Hotel on Avenue B and sold real estate and insurance.126 On July 1, 1921, she left Miami on board the Clyde Line steamship Mohawk for New York to embark on a tour of Europe. While en route, she organized a party to celebrate the 4th of July.127 On July 17, she left New York City, joining Mrs. John Bridges Phelps, Mrs. J. E. Lummus, Mrs. Mitchell Price and other notable socialites to go on the European tour popular at that time. She visited all the principal cities, attended the famous Passion Day play in Oberammergau, Germany and returned to Miami on September 21.128 On her return, she stayed at the Commodore Hotel in New York City until the end of September.129

In the summer of 1923, she spent two months in Colorado Springs, returning on October 9.130 This may have been Frances’ first attempt to recover from what was likely latent tuberculosis. Colorado Springs and, to a lesser extent, Denver, were well-known treatment centers for tubercular patients in that era.131

By 1925, Lofton was on easy street, having sold two lots at the northwest corner of S.W. 8th St. and Brickell for $22,000.132 She likely celebrated by going to Asheville, North Carolina to attend the Grand Opera Week, where the San Carol Grand Opera Company began a week’s engagement under the auspices of the Asheville Music Festival Association on August 10.133 The Miami Tribune, in its announcement that Joe Frances Lofton, along with Mr. and Mrs. Frank Smathers134 and Mrs. J. M. Bercegeay,135 would attend the Grand Opera Week, erred in stating that the location was in Waynesville, North Carolina.136 The Smathers house was in Waynesville; the opera was in Asheville.

In early 1926, Frances Lofton and Ethel Seymour, the ex-wife of Benjamin Seymour, who was a wealthy Ocala businessman and real estate speculator, attended a dinner/dance held at the Tea Deck Garden of the Hollywood Hotel. Over four hundred guests were in attendance.137 Benjamin was a first cousin of Robert Seymour, a well-known Miami attorney. Ethel and her daughter Louise lived at 1013 Brickell Avenue.138 The real estate speculation bubble was beginning to lose air, though, and after Miami was struck by a Category 4 hurricane on September 18 of that year,139 the market crashed. Frankie, who lived at 1036 W. Flagler in 1928, visited with her nephew, Joel “Joe” Robert Rutland and his wife in Homestead in January of 1929.140 In 1930, she filed for personal bankruptcy, listing assets of $2,000 in real estate and two past-due notes for $3,000 each. She stated that her liabilities were $24,339.61 plus $453.61 in disputed Federal income tax for 1925.141

Times were very difficult for everyone – this was in the depths of the Great Depression. On May 21, 1929, she married John Jacob Wood, a retired building contractor from Lawrence, Long Island, New York, in Everglades City. He may have owned the house at 796 NE 85th St. in Miami, the address Frankie gave on her bankruptcy petition. He was 20 years older than she was and died just 21 months later, on February 27, 1931. Joe Frankie, whose latent tuberculosis may have become more serious, moved in with her nephew and his wife in Homestead sometime after her husband died. In July of 1934, she went to Denver, Colorado to seek relief from “a long illness”142 and died, at the age of 57, in the Porter Sanitarium on September 14, 1934.143 The funeral was held at her nephew’s house in Homestead and she was buried in Miami Memorial Park.144 The obituary published in the Miami Daily News, which claimed that she had lived alone on her homestead for many years145 was very wrong, as proven by this article.

Her will, entered into probate on October 12, 1934, told a very different story from what she stated in her bankruptcy petition in 1930. She left her brother Wilbur, who died in 1952, a trust fund that was to pay him $100/month for the rest of his life, her jewelry went to her grand-niece Frances Rutland of Homestead and her personal effects to her niece May Belle McAteer of Ocala.146 The attorney who filed the case, Stanley Milledge, born in 1896, grew up in the Redlands on Coconut Palm Drive west of Redland Rd.

Joe Frank Lofton was a fiercely independent woman who lived her life according to her own rules. She was on the move for most of her life, living in hotels and boarding houses and not living in a house until late in her life. She achieved great wealth, descended into near-poverty, and died of tuberculosis at an early age in a sanitarium thousands of miles away from Florida. She was a remarkable woman who deserves at least as much credit as the high-society men and women she associated herself with. Hopefully, this article will help educate those interested in the history of women in South Florida. There were women whose stories deserve respect other than those so often mentioned in the few papers and books written on the subject.
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Andrew J. Poplin

Historic South Dade Posted on by

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.96 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 1870 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, 12.147 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, 1887.148 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.149

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.150 By 1910, he and his children had moved to Martha, Oklahoma, where he worked as a carpenter.151

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, 1911.152 “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.153 Another letter, sent on January 15, was signed by an additional 40 men, mostly prominent businessmen in Homestead.154 155

In May of 1913, Poplin and his daughter rented the house formerly occupied by Frank J. Springer,156 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.157

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.158

In 1915, Poplin was paid $16.50 by the Town of Homestead to build a shed for the town’s new fire engine159 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.160

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 racist161 and anti-Catholic162politician, 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.163 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 articles164 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.165 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 Party166 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 38.167 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.168 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,169 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.170 In Goulds, he farmed and also filled in for the vacationing superintendent of the F. E. C. pumping station there.171 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.172 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, 1922.173

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.174 He is buried in the Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Fort Worth, Texas.175 A.J.’s assailant was charged with murder and on March 17, 1931, was sentenced to six years in jail.176 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.177

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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John S. Frederick

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

The Town of Homestead, which was surveyed and platted by J. S. Frederick, C. E.,178 in June, 1904, was the next to the last community created by the arrival of the Florida East Coast Railway on mainland Florida. Incorporated in 1913, it is the second-oldest municipality in what is now Miami-Dade County. The last community, originally known as Detroit, incorporated in 1914, is the third-oldest municipality in the county. When Frederick platted the Town of Homestead, Miami-Dade County (known as Dade County until November 13, 1997) covered the area from Stuart south to just below Lake Surprise.

Town of Homestead

Plat of the Town of Homestead

Title Block.

John Stanley Frederick was born on June 24, 1853 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,179 the son of Thomas E. and Martha June Gilbert Frederick. John’s father was a merchant of quite modest means. In 1860, he had a real and personal estate of $2,000 which by 1870 had decreased to just $1,800. One of four children, John had a sister, Alice M. and a brother, William C. Another sister, Susan, born in 1851, apparently died between 1860 and 1870. The family moved around quite a bit: in October of 1850, shortly after his marriage to Martha on June 20 in Cuyahoga County, OH, Thomas, a merchant, was about 70 miles away, staying in a hotel in Centre Township, Columbiana County, OH. In 1860, he was in Champaign County, IL and in 1870, he was in Cumberland County, NJ. By 1880, he had moved to Baltimore, an independent city in Baltimore County, MD.180

Nothing is known about John’s education but in May of 1876, at the young age of 23, he was admitted to the bar in Baltimore, Maryland. From then until 1889, he practiced law, was active in civic affairs and sold real estate there.181

On September 6, 1883, he married Antoinette Elizabeth Gazzam in Utica, NY.182 The Gazzam family was very prominent in Pittsburg, PA and in Utica, NY. Antoinette’s father, Audley William, was a lawyer who specialized in bankruptcy. Antoinette had 3 sisters and one brother: Mary Van Deusen, Edwin Van Deusen, Irene Gilbert and Maria Florence. In late 1889, John and his wife, their two children, Edwin Stanley and Florence Antoinette, and his sister-in-law, Maria Florence, moved to Cartersville, Georgia.183 He may have continued practicing law there. Two more children were born to John and Antoinette in Cartersville: Thomas Emanuel on December 17, 1890 and Audley William, on March 16, 1894.184

As the construction of the F.E.C. Railway made its way down the coast, thousands of merchants, laborers and professionals of all kinds, including engineers, moved to Florida to improve their families’ prospects. John Frederick may have been one of them. It is unknown when he and his family left Cartersville to journey to Dade County, but it probably wasn’t before the spring of 1895, as Audley William was just an infant then.

Eugene Dearborn may have been another. He was born on June 5, 1859 in Mason County, IL.185 In the mid-1880s, the Dearborns lived in Wayne, NE, where Eugene taught school and worked for a railroad company.186 The F.E.C. Railway reached Titusville in February, 1893187 and on August 14, 1893, the Dearborns’ daughter, Dora, was born there.188 It is possible that Dearborn worked for the F.E.C. Railway. By early 1894, the family had moved to Cocoanut Grove, where Eugene Dearborn’s father, Marcellus, purchased the SE 1/4 of 10-54-41 on July 24, 1894.189

Frederick’s first residence was in Cocoanut Grove,190 where he and Eugene C. Dearborn entered into a partnership, Frederick & Dearborn, selling real estate. They placed their first advertisement, stating that they were the “authorized agent for the sale of the Brickell (South Side) lots, the most desirable residence portion of Miami,” on June 5, 1896.191 Their “well-equipped office” was on 18th St., south of the Miami River, east of Avenue D.192

MM, May 14, 1897, p. 3.

Advertisement for Frederick & Dearborn193

By early 1897, John had moved his family to 20th St. and Avenue D, then known as Southside.194 His house, “The Wayside Cottage,” was located 2 blocks south of the Miami River.195

In May of 1897, the Dearborns moved into their new 11-room stone home in Cocoanut Grove, erected on 3 acres near the residences of the Trapps and W. W. Culbertson.196 In July of that year, he offered it for sale or exchange, along with the 160 acre homestead purchased by his father, Marcellus, one mile north of his house.197 In 1900, he had it subdivided into 16 ten-acre lots.198 Shenandoah Middle School is located on a portion of that property.

By July of 1897, Frederick and Dearborn had parted.199 That was likely because Frederick was very busy with surveying jobs. How John Frederick made the transition from being a lawyer to a civil engineer is unknown but he may have learned the fundamentals from Abner L. Knowlton, who surveyed the town of West Palm Beach in 1893,200 the Town of Ft. Lauderdale in 1895,201 and the City of Miami in 1896.202 John S. Frederick and Lewis R. Ord assisted Knowlton on the latter survey.

Plat of Miami.

Plat of the City of Miami

Knowlton was an experienced civil engineer who was born in New Hampshire in 1818, served the North in the Civil War and did surveying work for the Northern Pacific Railroad in Washington state before coming to Jacksonville after 1891.203 The plat of the town of Fort Lauderdale was ordered by William and Mary Brickell while the plat of the City of Miami was ordered by William and Mary Brickell, Julia D. Tuttle, Henry M. Flagler and the Ft. Dallas Land Co. in cooperation with the State of Florida.204 205 Both of these projects covered a lot of area and Knowlton had his two assistants to help him. No doubt, there were many more rodmen, chainmen and transitmen working on these jobs but their names have been lost to history.

After Frederick completed his work with Knowlton in early 1896, he embarked on his new career as a civil engineer. In June of 1897, he had “a large contract for surveying certain land owned by Julia D. Tuttle at New River, at which place he has a camp and a force of men and a large houseboat.”206 By the end of 1897, Frederick had completed four large jobs and had also completed the work necessary to move the route of the road from Miami to Coconut Grove some distance west to get it off the property of William Fuzzard. Fuzzard had posted notice in July that effective Sept. 1, the road, which ran through his property, would be closed to public travel.207 Frederick’s surveying work was in lieu of a monetary donation to the cost of building the road, to which fifty-six individuals and companies, along with the Dade County Commission, had contributed.208

In 1898, he was elected as alderman for the City of Miami209 and was also appointed Deputy U. S. Engineer and tasked with surveying the Ragged Keys, which are a few miles north of the northern tip of Key Largo.210 Starting in June of 1899, he subdivided about 1,000 acres of land northwest of the Little River area into 10-acre tracts for the Land Department of F.E.C. Railroad.211 In August, he went to Cutler “to finish sub-dividing into 10-acre tracts certain lands of the Perrine Grant, which work was commenced some 30 days since.”212

John Frederick filed a claim for the SW corner of Bauer Dr. and Richard Rd. on August 5, 1902 and relinquished it on April 5, 1904. His sister-in-law, Maria Florence Gazzam, claimed her homestead at the NW corner of Waldin Dr. and Richard Rd., adjacent to John’s claim, on the same day as her brother-in-law. She patented her claim on December 3, 1905, shortly after marrying George W. Kosel in August of that year. George had claimed the NW corner of Redland Rd. and Plummer Dr. in July of 1902.

Junius T. Wigginton claimed a homestead at the southeast corner of Bauer and Redland on July 17, 1904. He married Frederick’s daughter, Florence, in Lexington, KY on November 30, 1905.213 His claim was one mile east of the claim of his wife’s aunt, Alice Frederick, who had married Harry LeForest Hill.214 Alice and John’s mother, Martha G. Frederick, died at Alice’s home on December 31, 1910.215 Alice went on to marry Erich B. Grutzbach, another pioneer in the Redlands, who claimed a homestead in 1908 at the NW corner of Bauer and SW 207th Ave, one mile west of Alice’s claim. They were married in 1911 in Buena Vista.216

In late June of 1902, John Frederick was hired by the F.E.C. to do a survey of the lands south of the Miami River and supervised a large crew of men which worked until early September.217 Frederick then went to St. Augustine to discuss his work with Joseph R. Parrott, who was the vice-president and general counsel of the railroad. After their meeting, Frederick, who was “very glad the first work through the Everglades [was] finished,” returned to Miami and began working on the “surveying work which had piled up enormously during his absence.”218

That the F.E.C. had planned to continue past Miami is evident by studying the plat of the City of Miami, started by Knowlton with the assistance of John S. Frederick and Lewis R. Ord in late 1895. The survey, which reserved land for the continuation of the railway south of the Miami River between Avenues E and F, is evidence of those plans.219 Frederick’s report was discussed at the next meeting of the Board of Directors220 and the decision was made to advertise for someone to continue the survey that Frederick had started. William J. Krome was hired and he began his Cape Sable Exploration Survey on October 5, 1902.221 and completed it on May 31, 1903.222 Krome submitted his survey to the Clerk of Courts of Dade County in June of 1903 and it was filed for record on July 8, 1903.

Cape Sable Exploration Survey.

William J. Krome’s 1903 Cape Sable Exploration Survey

In November, James E. Ingraham, the 3rd vice-president of the F.E.C., made a trip to South Dade to look over the country and make further plans after Krome’s report had been reviewed. He was accompanied on his tour by William J. Krome, John S. Frederick, Fred S. Morse, who was the land agent for the Model Land Co., and Edward A. Graham,223 who was the captain of Ingraham’s yacht, the Enterprise,224 and a photographer. This is a photograph, taken by Graham, of the party on their way to Paradise Key, which would become Royal Palm State Park in 1916:

Camping Trip to Long Key.

Courtesy of the Florida Pioneer Museum

Ingraham selected 600 acres of land in section 13, township 56 (sic – 57), range 38 to be used by the F.E.C. for buildings, yards and other terminal purposes.225

“Other terminal purposes” included a town, which came to be named Homestead and which was surveyed and platted by John S. Frederick. After completing that work, Frederick returned to Miami to work on the many surveying jobs he was being asked to do. By 1904, he had so much work that he hired his son, Edwin Stanley “Ted” Frederick, to help him.226 By 1906, with his business continuing to grow, John entered into a partnership with Clarence L. Barclay, who came down from Johnstown, PA in November. Frederick renamed his business Frederick & Barclay227 but unfortunately, that partnership did not last long, for Barclay left and went back to Johnstown the following March.228

John S., E. S., or both created 43 out of the 166 plats in Book B, which is just over 25% of the total. In 1909, E. S. Frederick formed a partnership with George O. Butler and the firm, Butler & Frederick,229 became “one of the most active engineering firms on the east coast,” according to John’s obituary.230 Butler was a surveyor and politician who is known as the father of Palm Beach County.231

John S. Frederick died on February 26, 1910 at the age of 53. He came down with a bad cold as a result of wading in waist-deep water while on a job near Ft. Pierce. That developed into pleurisy which resulted in his death. His widow, who had moved to Moore Haven to be near her sons Ted and Audley, died in 1922 in Daytona. Both are buried in the Miami City Cemetery.
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