The Sawmills of South Dade – Part I

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

Introduction

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.”1 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 #94.2 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 Memory3

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 Collection4

Many people who are interested in the history of South Dade 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.

A Note About Sources

My intention in researching and writing this multi-part series of articles about the sawmills of South Dade is to write as comprehensive an account of them, from 1896 up to the late 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 IV 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 how “evil” the Drake Lumber Co. was and how they exploited African-American labor to become wealthy.

The truth is much 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. 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 and/or sold for a profit. Reading A History of Florida’s Forests, by Baynard Kendrick and Barry Walsh, 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.

Have I told the “truth” in this series? 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.

Area Covered in this Series

For the purposes of this series, “South Dade” is defined as that part of Dade County from SW/SE 6th St south to SW 392nd St. and from Biscayne Bay to SW 237th Ave. Long Pine Key and the tannic acid mill on Shark River, in what is now Everglades National Park, are also included in this series. 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., the real estate holding company of the F.E.C. 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 was subsequently destroyed by lumber companies, fires and individuals who owned portable sawmills.

F E C Railway Map

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

A look at legend on the downloadable map will show the viewer what entity owned what parcels of land in December of 1903.

From the Miami River to Larkins

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 1896.5 “Mr. Johnson” was probably John W. Johnson, a prominent merchant from Key West6 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.,7 a short distance away from the north bank of the river. Obituaries are the source of a great deal of misinformation so it is entirely possible that Johnson’s “first house” was actually not at 13th St. and Avenue B. It could well have been on the south side of the river, which was where the upper class lived. 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…”8 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 1900,9 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 had arrived in Miami from Melbourne in July of 190210 and had set up his sawmill at Avenue G, south of the Miami River.11 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.12 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.”13 Hainlin didn’t stay there long, for in October of 1908, he moved down to his location in the Redlands.14 The reason for his move may have been that the Miami Evening Record erred in its statement about the amount of marketable timber available.

The Charles E. Davis sawmill, which had been erected in 1903, was in an area that had “a good deal of timber…”15 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 Mullikin & DeBerry, who took it down to Naranja to start cutting lumber there.16

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 1912.17 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.18 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,19 both of which are barely mentioned in the newspapers of that era. The story of the Pickford mill started in Ocala in the early 1890s, when Walter W. Pickford, from England,20 arrived and started to conduct business. He was a employed by Pickford & Winkfield, phosphate brokers in London, England.21 He like many others, made a lot of money from the phosphate mining boom that was 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., Eugenia22, A. E.23 and F. L.24 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.25

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.”26 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.27 By 1896, the firm had grown large enough that it could afford to establish a lumberyard in Cocoanut Grove.

MM, January 1, 1897, p. 3 - Hodges - Godfrey.

Miami Metropolis, Nov. 6, 1896, p. 8

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 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 1900.28 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.29

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 & Pickford30 In July, Pickford bought 10 acres of land for $200 from Charles J. Peacock.31 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 Gardners32 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.33 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 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.”34

On April 13, 1898, Walter W. Pickford unexpectedly died of typhoid fever “contracted in a recent cruise on the keys.”35 His obituary was published in the Miami Metropolis, The Ocala Evening Star and The Florida Times Union. It may be that the ownership of the sawmill then passed to a member of the DeBogory family.

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 1846,36 had claimed a homestead in Seminole County, Florida, receiving 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.”37 In 1896, the Miami Weekly Metropolis reported, in the Linton column, that Mrs. Debogory had “arrived with her household goods to join her family.38 In 1897, he moved his sawmill from Linton to Miami.39 Again, the location he moved his sawmill to was not noted but it was probably in what is now North Miami. 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 Miami40 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.41 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.42 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.”43 In 1902, DeBogory ran an advertisement in the newspaper offering to deliver “prime pitch pine” to Miami for $15 per thousand feet.44

Potter Bros. Sawmill

The Potter Bros. sawmill was the second of the two sawmills mentioned briefly in the Miami Weekly Metropolis in 1901.45

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.46 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.47 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, 189548 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 1939.49 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.50

In mid-1901, Bernice Potter went “north to purchase a sawmill…”51 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.”52 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.”53 By July of 1902, the firm had “put on a large force of men and [was] doing an immense business.”54

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.55 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.56 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 of a siding.57

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.”58 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.”59 After the supply of coontie root had been exhausted, the Potter Bros. likely sold their property to real estate developers.

In Part II of this series, I will continue with the history of sawmills in South Dade, starting with Charles T. McCrimmon.
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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, 187627 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 3445

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.52

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 Rutland60 in about 1890 and started a family.61 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.62 She developed tuberculosis and died at the former home of Dr. Cowart, which was north of Tampa, on March 20, 1904.63 64

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 1898.65 On February 4, 1900, he married Bertha Fox, the daughter of Charles J. Fox, at the home of Caleb L. Trapp in Cocoanut Grove.66 Charles’ brother, Samuel J., was a member of the Canadian Parliament and visited his sister in 1911, shortly before he died.67 Wilbur opened one of the first bicycle shops in Miami, the Miami Cycle Shop, before 1901.68 In June of 1902, his wife visited with Mrs. Joseph A. McDonald,69 whose husband was the head of the construction division of the Florida East Coast Railway.70 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.71 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.”72 Continuing to prosper, he was able to send his wife and children on a two-month vacation to Georgia in 1903.73 Then, in January of 1904, he and his family moved into their new home at the corner of Avenue D and 20th St.,74 near the two-story home of one of the Brickell men.75 In August of 1905, Lofton purchased the large launch Ellowaha from Edward C. Romfh76 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.”77 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.”78

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 cashier79 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,80 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 1896.81 McDonald had arrived in Miami on February 15, 189682 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 1894,83 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.84 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.85 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.86 She apparently liked Miami, because in 1901, she taught at the Cocoanut Grove school, where she worked with William A. H. Hobbs.87 Hobbs was a graduate of the Edinburg Teachers College in Edinburg, Pennsylvania88 and from 1913 to 1915 operated a sawmill in the Silver Palm area.89 At the end of the school year, she went back to Macon.90

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 1901.91 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.92 93 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 Beach94 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 1905.95 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 1906.96 In November, she left Key West to visit her brother in Miami and then finally resigned her position in February of 1907.97

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”98 there. This is corroborated by mentions of Joe Frankie being in Homestead in the Miami newspapers from February of 1907 to December of 1908.99 She advertised for proof of her homestead in August of 1908100 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 Beach101 and then, in 1910, visited her brother in Miami.102 In April of 1910, she went down to Homestead, where she was the guest of Joe Paul King,103 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.104 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,105 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 1911.106 That only lasted a few months before she went back to her old job with W. Emley Walton.107

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,108 attended dances at the Dade County Fair building,109 went on a sailing trip out to Cape Florida,110 and met with friends who had money to spend. In early September, 1912, she resigned her position with the W. Emley Walton Insurance Co.111 so that she could spend a couple of months on vacation “on her farm west of town”112 with her friend, Mrs. Florence Smith.113 Frankie had sold 40 acres of her homestead to John B. Kassebaum in 1912.114 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.115 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 1904.116 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.117

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.118 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 6.119 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.120 Frankie had time for a trip to Detroit (now Florida City) in November of 1914, when she registered at the Hotel Detroit.121 In 1915, she started working for the Realty Securities Company, a big real estate firm in Miami122 and by 1916, she was a member of the Business Woman’s League of Miami.123

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.124 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.125 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 Grove126

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.127 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,128 acted as the attorney for the Charter of the Homestead Women’s Club 129 and was among the charter members of the Homestead Chamber of Commerce.130 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.131 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.”132 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 1.133

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.134 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.135 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 21.136 On her return, she stayed at the Commodore Hotel in New York City until the end of September.137

In the summer of 1923, she spent two months in Colorado Springs, returning on October 9.138 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.139

By 1925, Lofton was on easy street, having sold two lots at the northwest corner of S.W. 8th St. and Brickell for $22,000.140 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 10.141 The Miami Tribune, in its announcement that Joe Frances Lofton, along with Mr. and Mrs. Frank Smathers142 and Mrs. J. M. Bercegeay,143 would attend the Grand Opera Week, erred in stating that the location was in Waynesville, North Carolina.144 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.145 Benjamin was a first cousin of Robert Seymour, a well-known Miami attorney. Ethel and her daughter Louise lived at 1013 Brickell Avenue.146 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,147 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 1929.148 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 1925.149

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”150 and died, at the age of 57, in the Porter Sanitarium on September 14, 1934.151 The funeral was held at her nephew’s house in Homestead and she was buried in Miami Memorial Park.152 The obituary published in the Miami Daily News, which claimed that she had lived alone on her homestead for many years153 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.154 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.104 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, 12.155 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, 1887.156 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.157

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.158 By 1910, he and his children had moved to Martha, Oklahoma, where he worked as a carpenter.159

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, 1911.160 “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.161 Another letter, sent on January 15, was signed by an additional 40 men, mostly prominent businessmen in Homestead.162 163

In May of 1913, Poplin and his daughter rented the house formerly occupied by Frank J. Springer,164 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.165

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.166

In 1915, Poplin was paid $16.50 by the Town of Homestead to build a shed for the town’s new fire engine167 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.168

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 racist169 and anti-Catholic170politician, 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.171 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 articles172 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.173 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 Party174 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 38.175 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.176 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,177 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.178 In Goulds, he farmed and in June of 1919, he filled in for the vacationing superintendent of the F. E. C. pumping station, Jesse Pratt, who had gone to Boynton to visit with “home folks.”179 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.180 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.181 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, 1922.182

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.183 He is buried in the Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Fort Worth, Texas.184 A.J.’s assailant was charged with murder and on March 17, 1931, was sentenced to six years in jail.185 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.186

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.,187 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,188 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.189

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.190

On September 6, 1883, he married Antoinette Elizabeth Gazzam in Utica, NY.191 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.192 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, 1894.193

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.194 In the mid-1880s, the Dearborns lived in Wayne, NE, where Eugene taught school and worked for a railroad company.195 The F.E.C. Railway reached Titusville in February, 1893196 and on August 14, 1893, the Dearborns’ daughter, Dora, was born there.197 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, 1894.198

Frederick’s first residence was in Cocoanut Grove,199 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, 1896.200 Their “well-equipped office” was on 18th St., south of the Miami River, east of Avenue D.201

MM, May 14, 1897, p. 3.

Advertisement for Frederick & Dearborn202

By early 1897, John had moved his family to 20th St. and Avenue D, then known as Southside.203 His house, “The Wayside Cottage,” was located 2 blocks south of the Miami River.204

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.205 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.206 In 1900, he had it subdivided into 16 ten-acre lots.207 Shenandoah Middle School is located on a portion of that property.

By July of 1897, Frederick and Dearborn had parted.208 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 1893,209 the Town of Ft. Lauderdale in 1895,210 and the City of Miami in 1896.211 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 1891.212 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.213 214 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.”215 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.216 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.217

In 1898, he was elected as alderman for the City of Miami218 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.219 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.220 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.”221

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, 1905.222 His claim was one mile east of the claim of his wife’s aunt, Alice Frederick, who had married Harry LeForest Hill.223 Alice and John’s mother, Martha G. Frederick, died at Alice’s home on December 31, 1910.224 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.225

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.226 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.”227

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.228 Frederick’s report was discussed at the next meeting of the Board of Directors229 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, 1902.230 and completed it on May 31, 1903.231 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,232 who was the captain of Ingraham’s yacht, the Enterprise,233 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.234

“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.235 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 & Barclay236 but unfortunately, that partnership did not last long, for Barclay left and went back to Johnstown the following March.237

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,238 became “one of the most active engineering firms on the east coast,” according to John’s obituary.239 Butler was a surveyor and politician who is known as the father of Palm Beach County.240

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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