The Sawmills of South Dade – Chapter 3

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

This chapter will not cover much geographical territory – only the swath of South Dade from the Deering Estate west to where MetroZoo is now, but it will provide the reader with information not easily found anywhere else.

The first known settler in Cutler, which was named for Dr. William C. Cutler, was John A. Addison, who came in 1864. Charles Seibold came in the early 1870s. By the time James H. Young brought his sawmill to Cutler, the controversy over the ownership of the Perrine Grant had been resolved and the Grant was the home of numerous settlers. The sawmills of James H. Young and the Easterling Brothers on the Perrine Grant are covered here but Charles T. McCrimmon and his brother D. Frank, also cut trees on the Grant. Those men will be covered in Chapter 4.

James H. Young

James Henry Young, born in Ohio near Cleveland in 1852,1 started his career in the sawmill business by 1880 in Au Gres, Michigan, where he was enumerated in the census that year as an engineer. In 1885, he may have worked for the Wright & Ketcham Co., a large lumber company in Averill, which is about 60 miles southwest of Au Gres. A J. H. Young suffered a broken leg in an accident at one of Wright & Ketcham’s roll aways near Averill.2 A roll away was where locomotives stopped to unload logs from the flat cars they were pulling. The logs were rolled down an embankment into the Tittabawasee River. By 1888, he and his family lived in Bunnell, Florida.3

In 1895, Young was a foreman at one of the mills owned by Fairhead & Strawn, a very big lumber company headquartered in Jacksonville. While working there, he accidentally fell against a running saw blade, severely cutting his leg.4 It is not known, but that accident may have been what motivated him to go into business for himself. At that time, Young and his family lived in Bayard, which is about halfway between Palatka and Bunnell.5 By 1897, the Youngs had moved down to Bunnell, from where they sent their twin daughters, Maggie and Aggie, to school in Jacksonville.6 James apparently did not spend much time in Bunnell, for in January of 1898, the Florida Times-Union reported that he had stayed at a hotel in Miami.7 He was apparently scouting out a location to move his sawmill to, because on July 7, 1899, the Miami Weekly Metropolis reported that a man named Young had taken two carloads of machinery down to a location “back of Cutler … [to] start a mill.”8 The Florida Times-Union printed an article about all of the activity taking place on the Perrine Grant. In that article, it was stated that “Mr. J. H. Young of Bonnell (sic) has moved his sawmill there and will be ready to supply lumber to the settlers in about two months.”9 Jean Taylor, in her 1976 article published in Update, wrote that Young’s sawmill was brought from Jacksonville to Lemon City and transferred to a boat to take it to Cutler because Miami was under quarantine for yellow fever. As is so often the case with Taylor, she was incorrect. Yellow fever was brought to Miami by Samuel R. Anderson, who arrived in Miami on board the S. S. Key West on August 31, 1899. A quarantine was put into place by Dr. Jackson for all arrivals from Key West on September 1.10 A look at the survey of the Perrine Grant, done in 1906 by Samuel H. Richmond, shows a considerable amount of pineland in the immediate vicinity of the settlement of Cutler. Before Young’s arrival, lumber for the buildings at Cutler had been shipped by boat from points north. At least some of the lumber came from the Gardner Sons & Pickford mill near Cocoanut Grove.11 With the arrival of Young, it became easier to obtain lumber.

The Cutler Dock as seen from the Richmond Cottage

Young’s sawmill was in operation by the first part of March of 1900, when it was reported that the “piles for the wharf extension are now cut and the new saw mill is making the lumber as fast as the saw can run.”12 This was the second wharf built at Cutler. The first one, between the Fuzzard and Addison homesteads, had been built in 1897.13 The record about Young’s activities in the Perrine Grant were not documented after the note about the lumber for the wharf being cut. It is a safe bet, though, that he stayed busy cutting lumber for all of the settlers who were pouring into the Perrine Grant and building houses. Once Young had cut all of the marketable timber near Cutler and after Richmond Dr. had been extended west to Perrine, he moved his mill closer to the F.E.C. railroad tracks to continue sawing lumber.14 In 1907, after supplying lumber for the booming settlement of Perrine, Young moved south to Princeton.15 There is no record of what Young did in Princeton but given his long experience with sawmills, it is very likely he worked for the Drake Lumber Co., which cut its first log on November 15, 1907.16 He didn’t stay long in Perrine, though, as the 1910 census of King County, Washington showed him working there as a millwright for a lumber company.17 By 1912, Young, recently widowed, was back in Princeton, where his daughter Margaret lived with her husband John L. Murray. Murray’s homestead, which he claimed in July of 1906, became the residential section of Princeton – the area south and east of the intersection of U. S. 1 and Coconut Palm Dr.

The Easterling Brothers

The Easterling Bros. grew canteloupes and other melons on thousands of acres in five different locations: Martin, FL;18 Albany, GA; Parkton, SC; Barnwell, NC and Salisbury, MD. Their headquarters were in Barnwell, NC and they were said to be the “largest cantaloupe and melon growers in the world” in a piece originally published in the Fruit and Produce News and reprinted in the Miami Metropolis in 1904.19 In July of 1902, J. E. Ingraham, third vice-president of the Florida East Coast Railway, in the company of Ethan V. Blackman, editor of the Florida East Coast Homeseeker20 and Samuel H. Richmond, took some of the principals of the Easterling Bros. on a two-day tour of the Perrine Grant.21 The result of that tour was that the company bought 650 acres of land.22 By 1904, according to the Miami city directory of that year,23 the Easterlings owned three entire sections.24 The sections listed were 13, 18, 19 and 26. 13, 18, and 19 were on the west edge of the Perrine Grant and about 50% finger glade and 50% pineland. The boundaries of those sections were SW 104th St. on the north, SW 107th Avenue on the east, SW 136th St. on the south and SW 127th Ave. on the west. The inclusion of section 26 in the directory notice was likely an error, as that was a heavily populated area that included the settlement of Cutler.

The Florida East Coast Homeseeker claimed that the Easterlings had purchased more than 650 acres: 2,200 to be exact. It also said that “[l]ater in the season they will bring a sawmill and locate it on their own lands for the purpose of furnishing their own lumber for the construction of the necessary buildings, and at the same time clearing their land.”25 Whether that sawmill was built is not known but it likely was, because the Ocala Evening Star reported on September 20 that the Easterling Bros. had moved all of their livestock from their farm in Martin to their farm in Miami.26

The company planted tomatoes, beans, lettuce and cabbage on its land in the fall of 1902.27 Everything went well until a torrential rainstorm flooded the Cutler prairies on March 16, 1903 with the result that half of the tomato crop was drowned out.28 As a result of that disaster, Ingraham visted the future site of the town of Perrine, inspected the lands of T. J. Peters and the Easterling and noted that, for the protection of the growers, “the main drain ditch [would] have to be widened and extended and the ditch made more secure.”29 The Easterlings, accustomed to the setbacks involved in agriculture, stated that they would be back to plant again in the fall.30 However, they moved all of their stock, workers and vehicles back to Martin.31

The crop planted in Miami in the fall of 1903 “was not of a character to encourage” the Easterlings, so they made the decision in the summer of 1904 not to continue in Miami.32 The crop in Martin was only marginally profitable in the 1904-1905 season so the Easterlings pulled out of Florida entirely.33 What happened to their holdings in Miami? That might be able to be determined from studying property deeds. The sawmill was likely sold to a local person who put it to good use.

The Tropico Lumber & Mercantile Company

The Tropico Lumber & Mercantile Co. was owned by the Lindsay Lumber Company. Its story starts with a trip to Miami by John M. Schilling and Edward T. Harwood in late August of 1910. The were shown property all around the county by a representative of the Richardson-Kellett Co., a prominent real estate dealer in Miami, but left without making a purchase.34 In December of that year, Mervin M. Chesrown, who was a well-known Chicago real estate dealer, came to Miami and bought the 2,600 acre Cedars property.35 He quickly flipped that property to the Tatum Bros. Real Estate & Investment Co., which included it as part their ambitious development project they named Detroit. In March of 1911, Schilling and his associates, which likely included Chesrown, returned to Miami and purchased 5,000 acres of land twenty-two miles south of Miami in the “fertile red soil district” from the Model Land Company.36 Schilling, who was a salesman in Chicago for the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co. of Pittsburgh, set up an office in the lobby of the Seminole Hotel in Miami to sell land in their newly created Tropico Plantation and hired the firm of Frederick & Brown to survey the property. They completed the job the next month, in April.37 38

Plat of Tropico

The plat shown here only shows the portion of the purchase that was subdivided into lots. The boundaries of this plat are SW 127th Avenue on the east, SW 208th Street on the south, SW 147th Avenue on the west and SW 152nd Street on the north. The unplatted portions of this survey were all claimed as homesteads with the exception of the SW 1/4 of the NW 1/4 and the NE 1/4 of the SW 1/4 of 2-56-39. That was mostly swamp land and not of any use to anyone at that time.

The Little Wolf River Lumber Company was established in Manawa, WI in 1892. At that time, James W. Meiklejohn was the president, W. H. Hatten the vice-president, Arthur Lindsay the treasurer/manager and George R. Lindsay the secretary.39 In 1894, Arthur Lindsay was charged with dumping sawdust and other waste material from the sawmill into the Little Wolf River.40

In January of 1913, George R. Lindsay, on his first visit to Miami, learned of the Tropical Plantation project that the Chicago men had started in 1911. In March, the Miami Metropolis reported that Arthur Lindsay, the vice-president of the Little Wolf River Lumber Co. and father of George, had purchased a timber lease on 2,000 acres south of Perrine.41 In short order, a new corporation, the Tropico Lumber & Mercantile Company was established. In early May, it was reported that the officers of the new company were to be George R. Lindsay, president; L. Walker, vice-president and manager; W. C. Thomas, secretary and J. E. Thomas, treasurer.42 Later that month, the same newspaper reported that George had filed for Letters Patent for the company, which was to cut and mill lumber on 5,000 acres of land near Perrine. The sawmill that was to be built would have a capacity of 25,000 feet per day and the lumber would be transported to the F.E.C. Railway in Perrine via a nearly 4-mile-long branch railroad.43

The company wasted no time in starting work: the first lumber, cut on July 18, was likely from trees cut to clear a route for the rail spur they were building between the mill site and Perrine. That project had started in early May and was labor intensive.44 They had hoped to have the spur built by the end of July but it wasn’t until early September that the “golden spike” was driven.The mill was far from finished, though, as the company, which had put Mr. Thomas and his brother-in-law, Mr. Walker, in charge of building it, were still awaiting the arrival of the planing machine. They had employed 60 men and paid out $90/day in labor over a period of six weeks. The construction of the sawmill had started in early July and was completed in early September.45

Like the Drake Lumber Co., the Tropico Lumber & Mercantile Co. had its own locomotive. The spur was likely a logging railroad, not intended to be permanent, as these kinds of railroads were commonly built by lumber companies. The route of the line has not been determined but it probably ran parallel to Richmond Dr., which is SW 168th St. Richmond had been extended from about SW 94th Avenue west to what was, in 1949, Tropico Rd. (now SW 137th Ave.) before 1914. That was when a group of Perrine residents petitioned the County to make it a County road.46 The petition demonstrated that the road already existed – it is likely that it and the tram line were built at the same time.

A portion of the 1949 U. S. Geological Survey map of the Goulds Quadrangle

The medium-duty road shown as running below the Richmond Blimp base (U S Naval Station) is Richmond Dr. The settlement of Tropico, later called Aventina, where the sawmill, a commissary, school, post office and several packing houses were located, was at the intersection of Richmond Dr. and Tropico Road.

A school was opened November of 1915 for the children in Aventina.47 but closed in June of 1916. The students were then transported to the school in Perrine.48 A Miss Adams, from Miami, was the only teacher hired by Dade County for the Aventina school.49 Mann G. Davis was appointed postmaster for Aventina in 1918 but it closed in 1924. He was also a principal in the firm Ford, Rembert & Davis, which operated the cars on the tramline to Perrine.50 51 There were several packing houses in Tropico, which packed tomatoes for Will I. Peters (brother of Tom J., the Tomato King) and other large growers.52 The availability of packing houses closer to their fields than Perrine was a welcome development for the growers, as it saved them a five-mile wagon trip. During the harvesting season, they hauled from 20 to 30 carloads of tomatoes per week to Perrine over the tram line.53

The Lindsay Lumber Company54

The first documented shipment of lumber from the sawmill was “about twenty-five cars of ties” sent to New York on board the schooner Victor C. Records in August of 1914. The ties were not regular ties; they were switch ties, which are longer and are used where trains can be switched to another track.55 In 1916, the Lindsay Lumber Co. was pushing for the deepening of the harbor in Miami because most of the five lumber schooners they owned drew too much water to dock there. Instead, the company shipped its lumber by rail to Key West to be shipped to the West Indies from there. But they encountered a problem there, too, because the FEC had declared an embargo on lumber shipments by ferry to Cuba because there wasn’t enough profit in it for them. The article, which was not written by a Miami Herald reporter, claimed that Dade County benefited by “having its land cleared of timber.”56 In 1918, H. P. Cone, the office manager, stated that “[e]very bit of the output from our sawmills has always gone to these islands, save that since the war the government has called upon us for part of our product and we have been furnishing it to them.”57

In September of 1919, the company shipped between 8 and 10 cars of lumber a week.58 In 1921, George R. Lindsay was quoted as saying that the company shipped 150 cars of lumber a month via the FEC Key West Extension and the ferry to Havana. Of the cargo in those cars, one-third of it was of pine cut in Dade County and the remaining two-thirds was of pine from “northern Florida and Georgia.”59

By 1924, however, the supply of pine in Dade County had been exhausted and the company was exclusively exporting lumber shipped to Miami from Georgia.60 Like the Drake Lumber Co. in Princeton, which operated from 1907 until 1919, the Lindsay Lumber Company’s exploitation of the timber resources of Dade County lasted just 11 years – from 1913 to 1924. On May 30, 1924, the company, which had confined itself “to the strictly wholesale and export trade and [had] shipped enormous amounts of their product to Cuba, Porto Rico and the Bahama Islands,” opened a retail outlet in a two-story building at 1444 N. Miami Ave.61that had formerly been used as a fruit processing plant.62 The Lindsay Lumber Co. was located just a block south of the retail outlet of the Drake Lumber Co., which was at 1536 N. Miami Avenue.

In 1929, George and his brother Robert sold their company, it being one of the many business failures during the Great Depression.63 Robert returned home to Manawa, WI, where he died on July 13, 1937. George stayed in Miami until he and his wife moved to Hendersonville, NC in about 1936. His wife died in Manawa in 1937 and George died in Asheville, NC in 1947.

Today, there is no trace of the tramline that once moved lumber and vegetables from Aventina to Perrine. Settlements like Aventina were common across Florida and the United States. When the timber had all been cut down, the people left for jobs in other locations. The last mention of Aventina in the Miami newspapers was in 1929, the same year the Lindsays sold their company.

It is interesting to speculate why the Drake Lumber Co. is so well-known in the existing literature and no mention is made of the Lindsay Lumber Co. Because no comprehensive history of sawmills in this area has ever been published, the many articles published in the newspapers about the Drake Lumber Co. ensured that it would take first place in the minds of readers. That abundant publicity was due, in part, to the fact that the Lindsays were Yankees in a Deep South city and that they were here for less than 20 years. In contrast, Gaston Drake was brought to Florida at a young age, came to Miami before 1900 and died here in 1955. He also had a strong connection to the power brokers in Miami, one of them being Frank Shutts, who founded the law firm of Shutts & Bowen.64

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The Sawmills of South Dade – Chapter 2

Historic South Dade Posted on by

Bt Jeff Blakley

In Chapter 1, an introduction to logging in South Dade County was provided. In Chapter 2, the sawmills from Flagler Street south to just north of South Miami will be covered. Left out of this chapter are the McCrimmon brothers, Charles T. and D. Frank. These two men, responsible for cutting thousands of acres of forests, moved around a lot in the entire area covered by this chapter. D. Frank set up his mill in Perrine, cut all the trees he could get a timber lease for there and then moved to Larkins, where he did the same thing. Charles T. had the contract to clear the right-of-way for the Florida East Coast Railway and cut trees in Benson, Larkins and any other place where he could obtain timber leases. The McCrimmons and their brother-in-law, Parker A. Henderson, were active from 1903 until 1925 and sawed more lumber than the Drake Lumber Company, which dominates the narrative of logging in Dade County. The story of the McCrimmons and Parker Henderson will be told in Chapter 4.

Johnson’s Sawmill

The first documented sawmill in South Dade was owned by a Mr. Johnson on the south side of the Miami River near a “little ‘shack'” rented by Sam Singer, who sold clothing and shoes in the first months of 1896.27 The reporter for the Miami Metropolis got the name of the merchant wrong – it was Isidor Cohen, not Sam Singer.65 Cohen wrote that the sawmill was run by a Mr. Cobb, from Key West.66 “Mr. Johnson” was likely John W. Johnson, a prominent merchant from Key West67 who was among the pioneer residents of the City of Miami. His first house, according to his obituary in 1918, was at the corner of Avenue B and 13th St.,68 a short distance away from the north bank of the river. That is incorrect, though, as Isidor Cohen, in his book, Historical Sketches and Sidelights of Miami, Florida states that Mrs. J. W. Johnson, one of his “good neighbors on the south side,” visited his store in February of 1896 to inspect his merchandise.69 On August 6, 1897, the Miami Weekly Metropolis reported that a little girl, Miss Lillian Graham, fell out of the second story window of the J. W. Johnson residence on the south side of the river…”70 Lillian’s parents may have been John M. and Gertrude L. Graham, who were probably renting Johnson’s house. John M. Graham was a “schooner captain” in 1900,71 so living on the south side of the river was conveniently close to where he tied up his boat. 

What kind of lumber did Johnson’s sawmill produce? Not pine, or not much of it, as the area south of the Miami River was known as the Brickell Hammock, an ecosystem that was markedly different from the surrounding pine rocklands. Hardwood trees such as live oak, gumbo limbo, false mastic, paradise tree, willow bustic, different species of stoppers and inkwood are among the many species which are part of that ecosystem. Today, the only remnants of the Brickell hammock, which once ran three-quarters of the way to Coconut Grove, are Simpson Park, named for the noted botanist Charles Torrey Simpson, and Alice Wainwright Park, named for Alice Wainwright, a civic activist and environmentalist who was elected to the Miami City Commission and served one term, from 1961-1965. 

Orange Glade Sawmills

The Orange Glade area of Miami was several miles west of downtown Miami and ran from about Flagler down to Coral Way and from 12th Ave. out to perhaps Douglas Road. Orange Glade Road was the first name for what is now S.W. 8th St. – the Tamiami Trail. Wellington Blood Hainlin arrived in Miami from Melbourne in July of 190272 and set up his sawmill at Avenue G, south of the Miami River.73 That was near what is now the intersection of SW 2nd Ave. and SW 6th Street. After cutting all the marketable timber in that area, he moved out on the Orange Glade Road in 1907 to a 10-acre parcel that Robert Mills had sold him shortly after Hainlin’s arrival in Miami.74 Hainlin’s mill was just west of SW 17th Avenue on SW 9th St. and was “located in the midst of a vast growth of timber.”75 The photograph of the King-Wilson houses below shows what that “vast growth of timber” looked like in 1897. It didn’t take Hainlin long to cut the timber on the parcel, for in October of 1908, he moved down to his location in the Redlands.76  

The Edwin N. King and Anthony Wilson houses on Orange Glade Rd. at about SW 18th Ave. in 1897

Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Bryan

The Charles E. Davis sawmill, which had been erected in 1903, was in an area that had “a good deal of timber…”77 but it was further west, located between what is now SW 27th and 32nd Avenues and SW 8th and 16th Streets, about a mile from where Hainlin had set up. Davis was murdered on June 24, 1905 and the administrator of his estate sold his sawmill to Mullikin & DeBerry, who took it down to Naranja to start cutting lumber there.78 This sawmill was particularly difficult to learn anything about as the Miami Evening Record and the Miami Metropolis accounts, published on the same day, tell very different stories. I sided with the Miami Metropolis account because after studying the two accounts and using what knowledge I already had about sawmills in that area, I decided that the account in the Miami Evening Record did not make sense. The deciding factor was that the Telephone Exchange published a notice in the Miami Metropolis on September 1, 1905 asking its subscribers to add telephone number 106, which belonged to the “McCrimmon Mill,” to their list. If another scholar unearths some additional information, perhaps the matter can be further clarified.

Even farther west, Joseph W. Glass managed the Orange Glade Lumber Co., located on the south side of SW 16th St. between Red Road and SW 62nd Ave. It was [j]ust across the road from … the farm of W. M. Bush, who claimed the 160 acres bounded by the Tamiami Trail, Red Road, Ludlam Road and Coral Way in 1906, patenting it in 1912.79 The mill was not very big, turning out only 5,000 feet of lumber per day, but it served to clear the land for new developments.80 Joseph was an uncle of Earl T. Glass, who was active in Modello some years later. 

Cocoanut Grove Sawmills

Miami gets the majority of coverage in the history of this area but Cocoanut Grove was the first settlement, starting in the early 1880s. There were two sawmills in the area,81 only one of which is mentioned in the newspaper. The story of the Pickford mill started in Ocala in the early 1890s, when Walter W. Pickford, from England,82 arrived and started to conduct business. He was employed by Pickford & Winkfield, phosphate brokers in London, England.83 He, like many others, made a lot of money from the phosphate mining boom that was then developing in Central Florida. While in Ocala, he may have become a friend of Abraham L. Gardner, about whom very little is known. Gardner had at least 4 children, Abraham L., Jr., Eugenia84, A. E.85 and F. L.86 In early July of 1896, Abraham sold his 30-acre farm 3 miles north of town for $1,200 cash and moved to the Miami area, where he set up a sawmill.87 

In 1891, Henry A. Hodges and B. Godfrey had started a small “sawmill on the line of the Jacksonville, Tampa & Key West Railway at Satsuma Heights.”88 Satsuma Heights is an unincorporated settlement about 6 miles south of Palatka in Putnam County, FL. In 1892, they moved to Buffalo Bluff, six miles south of Satsuma and erected a much larger mill to cut cypress and pine.89 By 1896, the firm had grown large enough that it could afford to establish a lumberyard in Cocoanut Grove.

Hodges & Godfrey Lumber Yard in Cocoanut Grove90

Hodges & Godfrey bought wood from the Gardner & Sons sawmill and milled it into baseboards, stair rails, spindles, trim for doorways and bead board for walls and ceilings. These types of wood products were produced by companies that were often referred to as “novelty works.”

The location of the Gardner & Sons sawmill is unknown, but it may have been on land claimed by Abraham L. Gardner in 1892 at the southwest corner of the Tamiami Trail and Douglas Rd. There was a passably good road “from the Glade to Cocoanut Grove” in 1900.91 It was possible to travel by land from Miami to Cocoanut Grove in 1900 by using the new road built west from Brickell to Douglas’ Corner, which is what the reference to “the Glade” is – Orange Glade – and then south on what became Douglas Rd. (SW 37th Ave.) Abraham apparently died before January 18, 1896, when the patent on his land, No. 22227, was assigned to Charles H. Perry. Listed on that document are his two minor children, Abraham L. and Eugenia D.92

In early 1897, Walter Pickford, having moved down to Miami from Ocala, established a partnership with what had been Gardner & Sons and changed the firm’s name to Gardner Sons & Pickford93 In July, Pickford bought 10 acres of land for $200 from Charles J. Peacock.94 This was the SE 1/4 of the NE 1/4 of the NE 1/4 of 20-54-41, about where the Douglas Rd. Metrorail station is now located. He dissolved his partnership with the Gardners95 and at about the same time, bought the Hodges & Godfrey lumberyard. He then had a monopoly on the lumber business in the Cocoanut Grove area.96 He may have moved the Gardner sawmill to his property to be closer to his lumberyard and potential customers. In December of 1897, the Miami Weekly Metropolis noted that “Mr. Crofts, sawyer at Mr. Pickford’s mill, has given up his position and Mr. DeBogory of Miami has taken his place. The mill is being rushed with orders lately and all hands are kept busy.”97 

On April 13, 1898, Walter W. Pickford unexpectedly died of typhoid fever “contracted in a recent cruise on the keys.”98 His obituary,published in the Miami Metropolis, The Ocala Evening Star and The Florida Times Union, indicated how widely he was known. It may be that the ownership of the sawmill then passed to a member of the DeBogory family. 

The location of the second sawmill referred to in the 1901 Miami Metropolis article99 has not been identified. However, in early 1903, Charles T. McCrimmon, who had the contract with the F.E.C. to clear the right-of-way for what was called the Cutler Extension at that time, set up his mill not far from the Punch Bowl100 in what was then called Cocoanut Grove. Today, the location is in Miami.

The Punch Bowl was located on the property now designated as 3007 Brickell Avenue. On the shoreline just south of Alice Wainwright park, it is where early settlers and mariners went to fill their water casks. After the Everglades were drained, the water stopped bubbling up from the aquafer. McCrimmon’s mill wasn’t there long, though, as he moved it farther south after his men had cut down the pine trees in that location.

The DeBogory Sawmill

It is unclear from the available documentation if the DeBogory mill had formerly been owned by Walter W. Pickford so it is being treated as a separate entry in this series.

Progore “Peter” DeBogory-Mockrievitch, born in Chernigov, Ukraine in 1846,101 claimed a homestead in Seminole County, Florida and received his patent on March 10, 1883. In his obituary, published in The Miami Herald on December 22, 1922, it was stated that he came to Miami 27 years ago from Delray (formerly known as Linton) “and brought here the first saw-mill with the opening up of the Florida East Coast railway into Miami. The first building material in Miami was cut by Mr. DeBogory, who dropped part of his name because of its length.”102 Before DeBogory brought his sawmill down from Delray, lumber was shipped to Miami by schooner. The Miami Weekly Metropolis noted on May 15, 1896 on page 2 that the schooner Rollin Sanford, a three-masted ship, was anchored with 100,000 feet of lumber on board. In 1896, the Miami Weekly Metropolis reported, in the Linton column, that Mrs. Debogory had “arrived with her household goods to join her family. It was not noted where she had come from.[/note]The Miami Weekly Metropolis, September 25, 1896, p. 1.[/note] In March of 1897, he moved his sawmill from Linton to Miami.103 In April, the Miami Weekly Metropolis noted that he had moved his mill to North Miami after purchasing a 3-month supply of lumber from E. A. Waddell.104 As noted in the entry about the sawmills in Cocoanut Grove, Mr. Debogory accepted a position with the Pickford sawmill in December of 1897 so the Pickford mill did not belong to the Debogorys. The formal change of ownership happened after Walter Pickford died the following year.

The mill was run by Peter and his son, Eugene. In 1899, there was a rumor that the mill would be moved to Miami105 but that didn’t happen, as there was a fire at the mill sometime in May that threw a number of men out of work.106 The damage was repaired (sawmill fires were not uncommon) and by late June, it was back in operation. The mill was apparently a mobile one, as its location then was given as being “on the south side of the river near the bridge.” It was sawing lumber from trees cut down to build the plant introduction center being built at 15th Road and Brickell.107 In July of 1901, the newspaper reported that Peter DeBogory was “reaping some of the benefits of the good crop season as his orders for lumber for improvements have considerably increased of late.”108 In 1902, DeBogory ran an advertisement in the newspaper offering to deliver “prime pitch pine” to Miami for $15 per thousand feet.109

Potter Bros. Sawmill

The Potter Bros. sawmill was the second of the two sawmills mentioned briefly in the Miami Weekly Metropolis in 1901.110

Stephen S. Potter, with his wife and 5 sons, left Bowling Green, Kentucky sometime in 1888 and settled in Silver Lake, 5 miles west of Tavares, the county seat of Lake County, FL.111 They planted a citrus grove there and after it was established, Stephen and two of his sons, Irving and Edward, journeyed to Miami in early 1891, where they each claimed homesteads of 160 acres.112 These claims were south and east of Blue Rd. (SW 48th St.) and Red Rd. (SW 57th Ave.) After spending an unknown amount of time in Dade County, they returned to Lake County to tend to their citrus grove there. The back-to-back freezes of December 1894 and February, 1895113 wiped them out and the family joined the exodus of farmers to the warmer climate of Miami. 

The accounts published years later of the Potter family’s journey from Central Florida to Miami are fascinating. Henry S. Potter was the subject of two articles published in the Miami Daily News in 1937 and 1939.114 He was quoted as saying that the party consisted of 14 people who embarked on a journey to Miami that took 23 days “on that apology for a road.” The group came a covered wagon, [with] six ordinary draft horses, some saddle horses, [and] five well-trained bird dogs.” They subsisted on quail and game killed during the trip. Once they reached Miami, Henry’s account does not mention the fact that family members had previously filed homestead claims. He stated that his “brother homesteaded while [he] carried on for both of us in other directions. On the homestead, we planted an orange grove. The location is two miles west of Coconut Grove, near the junction of present Red and Blue roads.” While it is not clear to whom he referred to as his brother, it was probably Bernice S. Potter, whose homestead claim was on the east side of Red Road at Blue Road. The name of the grove was the Devil’s Den.115

In mid-1901, Bernice Potter went “north to purchase a sawmill…”116 This is the first mention of the Potter Bros. sawmill in the newspaper. In early August, the sawmill had been transported to their property and it was “set up at once on their timber tract of land near the Devil’s Den grove.”117 In September of 1901, it was noted that the Potter Bros. had “a planing mill and all kinds of novelty machinery … to supply almost anything needed in the way of building material.”118 By July of 1902, the firm had “put on a large force of men and [was] doing an immense business.”119

The first mention of the name Potter’s Mill appeared in 1902, when a surveying party for the F.E.C., under the supervision of Aaron L. Hunt, assistant civil engineer, left with his men for Potter’s Mill.120 By the end of May, 1903, right-of-way clearing crews under the supervision of Charles T. McCrimmon had cut down the pine trees in advance of the construction of the F.E.C. road bed down to DeBogory’s Mill. They likely reached the area just east of the Potter Bros. mill by mid-July. The railroad workers wasted no time in laying the rails, for by November of 1903, the track-laying machine was idled on the north side of the prairie that is now the location of the Dadeland North Metrorail station.121 It is likely that the rails had been laid to the area of Potter’s Mill by late October 1903. At that time, the F.E.C. also built a siding there so that rail cars could be loaded with lumber cut by the Potter Bros. and fruits and vegetables grown by area farmers. The F.E.C. did not build sidings unless the economics justified it so there must have been a great deal of potential freight to be transported in this area at that time to justify the expense.122 

By mid-1904, however, all of the marketable pine trees had been cut down and the Florida Extract Company “purchased the Potter Bros.’ saw mill and have moved all of the machinery from Cocoanut Grove to their site west of the waterworks.”123 The Florida Extract Company produced tannic acid for use in tanning leather from the roots of palmettos and the bark of mangrove trees. The Miami waterworks plant was just downstream from the Miami River rapids, at about NW 27th Avenue. 

The Potter Bros. then built a coontie mill and, according to Henry S. Potter in an article that appeared in the newspaper in 1937, shipped “their product to Key West by sloop or schooner and averaged from five to 10 cents a pound for it.” The coontie roots “were gathered by negro labor in the neighboring jungle fields and ground them with gasoline engine power.”124 After the supply of coontie root had been exhausted, the Potter Bros. likely sold their property to real estate developers.

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The Sawmills of South Dade – Chapter 1

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

Introduction

The Redland District, which once stretched from Biscayne Bay to the Everglades and from SW 184th St. to what is now Long Pine Key in Everglades National Park, was justly famous for its agricultural production. At one time, the fruit and vegetables grown there were an important source of winter food for the entire eastern seaboard of the United States. Its agricultural history, which could not begin until the forests had been destroyed, has barely been touched upon. That history began with, first, the destruction of the forests and second, the drainage of the Everglades. Both of these activities have a long history in this country, dating back to the arrival of the first Europeans on the east coast.

A brief overview of logging in Florida is A History of Florida’s Forests, by Baynard Kendrick and Barry Walsh. It provides numerous examples of what Barry terms the “cut out and get out” mindset of lumbermen who cut their way through Florida’s forests to generate immense wealth for what were known as the “lumber barons.” That way of looking at natural resources of any kind in South Florida applied then and still exists to this day. A good introduction to water management in Florida (not just in South Florida) is Land Into Water, Water Into Land, by Nelson M. Blake.89

This history is narrowly focused on the sawmills of South Dade, which greatly increased with the extension of Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railroad into the area starting in early 1903.99

To the uninformed reader, the only sawyers cutting trees in South Dade were those employed by the Drake Lumber Co., which was a very large industrial operation. That perception came about because the men who cut down the vast majority of the forests in this area have only rarely been mentioned in the few histories published about South Dade. These working-class sawyers moved from location to location, set up their steam tractor powered sawmills, cut the marketable trees down and moved on to the next profitable location. A few of these men, notably the members of the Hainlin family, have been documented but most have not because the only place they might be mentioned are in the pages of family histories and historic newspapers, most of which are inaccessible to researchers. The missing story of these men’s working lives has led to a distorted view of the lumber industry in early Dade County in which the Drake Lumber Co. became the bogeyman.

These men, for the most part, owned Case steam tractors which, like all tractors made in that era, had flywheels on their sides that were the equivalent to what is now known as a power takeoff. The flywheel on the tractor, which was parked about 100′ away from the sawmill, was connected to the shaft on which the saw blade was mounted with a long belt. This article, courtesy of Reed Brothers Dodge of Rockville, MD, includes photographs of steam tractors and a short video, courtesy of Popular Woodworking, showing a sawmill in operation.

In South Dade, before the F.E.C. extended its railroad to Homestead in 1904, newspaper reporters did not travel much further south than Cocoanut Grove. There were occasional accounts of news from Cutler, but the owner of the sawmill there was only identified in the newspaper as “a man by the name of Young.”100

News from the untamed wild country south of the Miami River rarely made the pages of the Miami newspapers. Even after the Cutler Extension was completed, sawmills only merited a one- or two-sentence mention. Many of these men, struggling to make ends meet, cut trees and hauled them to the nearest sawmill with mule- or ox-drawn wagons where they sold them for whatever the sawmill operator would give them. Thus, a reasonably balanced account of sawmills in the area from Miami to Perrine has never been written. The accounts that have been written center on the Drake Lumber Co. in Princeton and ignore, for the most part, any other operator. The Tropico mill, a large company west of Perrine, is only mentioned in the newspapers and not, to the best of my knowledge, anywhere else. The same is true for Charles T. McCrimmon, who was responsible for cutting millions of feet of lumber during the period from 1903 to 1912. Parker A. Henderson, a two-time mayor of Miami and McCrimmon’s brother-in-law, took control of the McCrimmon Company in 1911.110 In 1920, Henderson moved a sawmill that had been used in Kendal and Homestead to the location where the Naranja Rock & Sand Co. was located. In 1925, he sold it to Clinton B. Patterson, a long-time sawmill operator. Under Henderson’s management, about 3,ooo,ooo feet of lumber were cut each year.117

With the founding of the South Florida Banner in Homestead in 1912, a few mentions of sawmills began to appear in its pages. That was only because, unlike in Miami, the sawmills in the South Dade area were run by men the newspaper subscribers knew from their church, had a business relationship with or lived in the same general area as they did. The sawyers were members of their social networks and thus their activities had an impact on their mostly tight-knit communities. However, the men who cleared 5, 10 and 20 acre-tracts were very rarely named. The only way to know they existed at all is to read the numerous mentions in the South Florida Banner that state that the land-owner was having his land cleared so he could plant vegetables or start an orchard.

Those people who are interested in the history of South Dade usually find Jean Taylor’s The Villages of South Dade and do not realize what it is: a collection of stories very loosely based on facts. Lacking other easily available sources of information, they accept what Ms. Taylor wrote as truth. Therein lies the problem: Jean very rarely documented her sources. Most of her information came from interviews with the descendants of pioneer families. For many reasons, oral history must be be used with a great deal of care. It is apparent to a knowledgeable reader that Taylor obtained much of her information by reading the Homestead and Miami newspapers. Her book is filled with passages lifted word for word from those newspapers. Another problem with her book is that many members of the families featured in the book complained that they didn’t say what Taylor wrote about them. In addition, the book is full of misspelled surnames and incorrect dates. The Villages of South Dade is a good starting point but it should not be cited as a source by authors without including an acknowledgement about the book’s weaknesses.

In April of 1976, Update, the magazine of the Historical Association of South Florida (now HistoryMiami), published a short article by Jean Taylor entitled Sawmills in South Dade. In it, she wrote that one of the locomotives owned by the Drake Lumber Co., allegedly named the Gaston Drake, was used after the company closed down to “pull the tourist train at Key West.”125

Ms. Taylor was not a historian; she was a story-teller. Story-tellers do not need to cite their sources; historians do. She told many tall tales in her book, The Villages of South Dade, and the one about the tourist train, which appears on page 126, was one of her finest. As is so often the case, Taylor was wrong – in this case, twice: first, the locomotive had no name – it was just #94.126 Second, if Key West had a “tourist train” in 1922, that would be news to any Key West historian.

Drake Lumber Locomotive #94 - Florida Memory.

Drake Lumber Co. Locomotive #94 -Florida Memory127

Florida Memory’s image is a cropped and digitally altered version of the original photograph which shows the locomotive likely being loaded onto a railroad flat car in Atlanta, Georgia, where Southern Iron & Equipment (SI & E) was based, for shipment to Princeton in April of 1907. Note the missing leafless trees, the removal of the structure on the right and the unsuccessful attempt to remove the smokestack in the original photo, shown below:

Drake Lumber Locomotive #94 - Hoffman.

SI&E Photo Gil Hoffman Collection128

A Note About Sources

My intention in researching and writing this series of articles about the sawmills of South Dade is to write as comprehensive an account of them, from 1896 up to the mid-1920s, as is possible with the information I have been able to locate. The pioneers have passed and so have all of their children, leaving the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who have scattered all over the United States, as potential sources of information. Despite reaching out to those few I was able to locate, many refused to respond and others responded with inaccurate information. Most of the information in this article is the result of diligent research based on a “fact” that was included in a newspaper article. That research included census records (which are often inaccurate) and other resources available from Family Search and Ancestry.

Newspaper articles, just like oral history, must be used with caution. It became apparent to me in my research that the reason I was unable to document the existence of the dozens of sawmills operated by individuals using steam tractor driven portable mills is because the newspapers were only interested in what they believed their readers wanted. Readers were not interested in the “little guys” – they were interested in the “big boys,” which included, in South Dade, the Drake Lumber Co. The “big boys” got all the coverage, thus skewing the picture badly in their favor. Jean Taylor and others have written, often inaccurately, about the Drake Lumber Co., which will be covered in Part V of this series. By focusing on the “big boys,” historians have perpetuated an inaccurate portrayal of the reason for the destruction of the pine forests of South Dade. The emphasis has been on a simple story of how evil the Drake Lumber Co. was and how they exploited African-American labor. Only the latter is true; the former could describe thousands of other businesses. Gaston Drake was born into a wealthy family and used his connections to become even wealthier. He was, by far, not the only man who did so. Telling a simple story with an evil protagonist is much easier than spending the time to discover the truth.

That truth is a lot more complicated. What happened in South Dade occurred all across the United States. Why? Because the United States has the most capitalistic economy in the world. It has always been about how to profit from the exploitation of human and natural resources for the benefit of the business owners. In the published histories and accounts of life in early South Dade, there are numerous stories that reflect the attitudes of the pioneers towards the environment. The wildlife was plentiful and hunted to near extinction, the seasonable flooding by water coming from the Everglades was a barrier to the cultivation of the “rich” soil and the forests were Public Enemy No. 1. That was because they harbored bears, panthers, bobcats, rattlesnakes and, to make matters even worse, burned on a regular basis, destroying the orchards and homes of the settlers.

The prevailing attitude of the early inhabitants was to eliminate the trees because they were worthless and a menace to their survival.In this country every entity, be it a person, animal (wild or domesticated), mineral, water or tree, is a commodity to be used by humans to sell for a profit. The early views of Dr. John C. Gifford provide an example of this mindset.

Dr. John C. Gifford

Dr. John C. Gifford, born in 1869 in New Jersey, was granted a PhD in forestry from the University of Munich in 1899. He taught at Cornell University in New York until the College of Forestry was disbanded in 1903. For those interested, a good starting point to learn more about Gifford is his book On Preserving Tropical Florida, edited and with a biography by Elizabeth Ogren Rothra.129

As early as December of 1901, he and a colleague, Professor Willard W. Rowlee, were delayed for a day in Miami while on their way to Cuba “where they had been “going for some years doing special work for the government and their college as expert horticulturalists.” Dr. Gifford made a decison then to buy some land in the area to build a winter home.130 In February of 1903, he bought 10 acres of land from Walter S. Graham, the owner of the Miami Metropolis, for $1,750.131 Then, in the summer of 1903, he returned with his colleague Dr. Charles DeGarmo and between the two of them, they bought 20 acres of land in Cocoanut Grove from Mrs. Florence P. Haden.132 133 Gifford also bought 77 acres on Elliott’s Key from Franklin Thompson later in 1904.134 As was true of so many other men and more than a few women at that time, Gifford got into the real estate speculation game.

In September of 1904, he wrote an article for Forestry and Irrigation, the official magazine of the American Forestry Association, entitled Southern Florida. In it, he had this to say about what is inaccurately called Dade County pine (pinus elliottii):

“The pine is Cuban pine (Pinus heterophylla), peculiar to that region. It does not yield resin satisfactorily, and is therefore not tapped. It is so heavy that it sinks in water, and on the whole is one of the meanest woods on earth to work with. The heart or light wood is durable, but it warps too such extent and is so hard when dry that it is cut, hauled to the mill, sawn into boards, and used for constructive purposes just as soon as possible.

“It is almost impossible to drive a nail into the dry wood without splitting it, and in order to saw it one must flood the tools with kerosene to prevent gumming. Lumber merchants shun it, although many people use it because of its cheapness. The sapwood soon rots and leaves a heavy, durable heart, which would be in great demand for posts, ties, poles, &c., were it not so plentiful. Much of it is used in burning the coral rock into lime, and much of it is burnt up in the clearing simply to get rid of it. The ‘log rolling’ stage is still on in this district. In many cases it is blasted down with dyanamite and then burnt; in others it is ‘deadened’ and then burnt standing. It would probably pay to distill this wood, since it could be secured cheaply and would yield large quantities of tar. The palmettos are being used for the manufacture of tanning extract in Miami. If a factory is established which will convert this wood, including stumps, into tar, there would be little left on this rocky ridge in the way of a cover.”135

In later life, Gifford moderated his ideas about the environment in South Florida after he witnessed, first-hand, the environmental devastation unleashed by rampant real estate speculation, of which he was a not insignificant player.

Have I told the “truth” in this history? No. I put the information I found on the scale, weighed it, and used that which I believed to be reasonably accurate. Writing history often involves speculation and the use of circumstantial evidence. There is no truth in history, only different perceptions of events influenced by personal biases.

Table of Contents

This history covers the sawmills that I’ve been able to discover in documentary sources from Flagler St. south to SW 392nd St. and from Biscayne Bay to SW 237th Ave.:

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: From Flagler Street to South Miami

Chapter 3: The Perrine Grant and Perrine

Chapter 4: Charles T. and D. Frank McCrimmon

Chapter 5: Goulds, Silver Palm and the Redlands

Chapter 7: Homestead and Florida City

Chapter 7: Long Pine Key and the Manetto Co. on the Shark River

Chapter 8: The Drake Lumber Co. in Princeton

The name “South Dade” and the appellation “the homestead country” were what this part of Dade County was called in the early 20th century. It is interesting that Miamians who used “the homestead country” to describe South Dade were seemingly ignorant of the fact that they were living on someone’s former homestead, for all of the State of Florida was once “the homestead country.” Also interesting is that probably only about 50% of the area known as South Dade then was eligible for homesteading. The rest was low-lying land subject to periodic flooding by water draining from the Everglades into Biscayne Bay through the so-called finger glades. Most of the land easily cultivated for agriculture was owned by the Model Land Co. and the Perrine Grant Land Co., the real estate holding companies of the Florida East Coast Railway. Another large portion was owned by the Internal Improvement Fund of the State of Florida. What was left, the pine rocklands, was considered worthless and the ecosystem was subsequently destroyed by lumber companies, fires, individuals who owned portable sawmills and property owners who cleared the land themselves.

F E C Railway Map

The 1903 F.E.C. Railway Land Holdings Map

Download this map by clicking on the bolded title. Then, note the symbols in the upper center that show the land holdings of each of the subsidiaries of the Florida East Coast Railway Co. in December of 1903: the Model Land Co., the Perrine Grant Land Co. and the Florida East Coast Railway.

The Perrine Grant, shown in the upper right, covers 36 square miles and is bounded by SW 67th Avenue on the east, SW 127th Avenue on the west, SW 104th St. on the north and SW 200th St. on the south. It was sold off in small parcels, none larger than 40 acres, because doing so generated more profit for the Perrine Grant Land Co., a subsidiary of the F.E.C. Railway Co. The Drake Lumber Co. established their mill in Princeton for a reason: they did not want to go to the trouble of obtaining permission from 16 owners of 10-acre parcels when they could obtain a timber lease on a single 160-acre parcel farther south and west.

Perrine Land Grant
Perrine Land Grant Survey

Note the percentage of pineland vs. marl prairie in the Perrine Grant: it is about 75% pineland and only 25% marl prairie. That pineland was all cut down by the owners of portable sawmills.
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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, 1876136 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 34137

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.138

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 Rutland139 in about 1890 and started a family.140 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.141 She developed tuberculosis and died at the former home of Dr. Cowart, which was north of Tampa, on March 20, 1904.142 143

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 1898.144 On February 4, 1900, he married Bertha Fox, the daughter of Charles J. Fox, at the home of Caleb L. Trapp in Cocoanut Grove.145 Charles’ brother, Samuel J., was a member of the Canadian Parliament and visited his sister in 1911, shortly before he died.146 Wilbur opened one of the first bicycle shops in Miami, the Miami Cycle Shop, before 1901.147 In June of 1902, his wife visited with Mrs. Joseph A. McDonald,148 whose husband was the head of the construction division of the Florida East Coast Railway.149 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.150 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.”151 Continuing to prosper, he was able to send his wife and children on a two-month vacation to Georgia in 1903.152 Then, in January of 1904, he and his family moved into their new home at the corner of Avenue D and 20th St.,153 near the two-story home of one of the Brickell men.154 In August of 1905, Lofton purchased the large launch Ellowaha from Edward C. Romfh155 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.”156 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.”157

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 cashier158 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,159 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 1896.160 McDonald had arrived in Miami on February 15, 1896161 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 1894,162 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.163 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.164 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.165 She apparently liked Miami, because in 1901, she taught at the Cocoanut Grove school, where she worked with William A. H. Hobbs.166 Hobbs was a graduate of the Edinburg Teachers College in Edinburg, Pennsylvania167 and from 1913 to 1915 operated a sawmill in the Silver Palm area.168 At the end of the school year, she went back to Macon.169

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 1901.170 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.171 172 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 Beach173 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 1905.174 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 1906.175 In November, she left Key West to visit her brother in Miami and then finally resigned her position in February of 1907.176

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”177 there. This is corroborated by mentions of Joe Frankie being in Homestead in the Miami newspapers from February of 1907 to December of 1908.178 She advertised for proof of her homestead in August of 1908179 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 Beach180 and then, in 1910, visited her brother in Miami.181 In April of 1910, she went down to Homestead, where she was the guest of Joe Paul King,182 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.183 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,184 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 1911.185 That only lasted a few months before she went back to her old job with W. Emley Walton.186

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,187 attended dances at the Dade County Fair building,188 went on a sailing trip out to Cape Florida,189 and met with friends who had money to spend. In early September, 1912, she resigned her position with the W. Emley Walton Insurance Co.190 so that she could spend a couple of months on vacation “on her farm west of town”191 with her friend, Mrs. Florence Smith.192 Frankie had sold 40 acres of her homestead to John B. Kassebaum in 1912.193 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.194 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 1904.195 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.196

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.197 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 6.198 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.199 Frankie had time for a trip to Detroit (now Florida City) in November of 1914, when she registered at the Hotel Detroit.200 In 1915, she started working for the Realty Securities Company, a big real estate firm in Miami201 and by 1916, she was a member of the Business Woman’s League of Miami.202

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.203 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.204 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 Grove205

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.206 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,207 acted as the attorney for the Charter of the Homestead Women’s Club 208 and was among the charter members of the Homestead Chamber of Commerce.209 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.210 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.”211 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 1.212

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.213 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.214 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 21.215 On her return, she stayed at the Commodore Hotel in New York City until the end of September.216

In the summer of 1923, she spent two months in Colorado Springs, returning on October 9.217 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.218

By 1925, Lofton was on easy street, having sold two lots at the northwest corner of S.W. 8th St. and Brickell for $22,000.219 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 10.220 The Miami Tribune, in its announcement that Joe Frances Lofton, along with Mr. and Mrs. Frank Smathers221 and Mrs. J. M. Bercegeay,222 would attend the Grand Opera Week, erred in stating that the location was in Waynesville, North Carolina.223 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.224 Benjamin was a first cousin of Robert Seymour, a well-known Miami attorney. Ethel and her daughter Louise lived at 1013 Brickell Avenue.225 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,226 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 1929.227 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 1925.228

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”229 and died, at the age of 57, in the Porter Sanitarium on September 14, 1934.230 The funeral was held at her nephew’s house in Homestead and she was buried in Miami Memorial Park.231 The obituary published in the Miami Daily News, which claimed that she had lived alone on her homestead for many years232 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.233 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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