The Beginnings of Goulds

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

Jean Taylor, in her book Villages of South Dade, gives only the sketchiest of information about the community of Goulds, writing only that it was named for a “Mr. Gould”, who was from Indiana and was the foreman of a tie-cutting crew for the Florida East Coast Railway. I’m posting this essay to expand on her account a little bit.

Lyman B. Gould was born in July, 1857 in Brown Township, Washington County, Indiana. His parents were Riley and Sarah Gould, born ca. 1823 and 1827, respectively. In 1880, Lyman was a brakeman on a railroad in Washington County, Nebraska. By 1900, he was living in Cocoanut Grove with his wife, S. Catherine. Among his neighbors were John and Antoinette Frederick. John S. Frederick was a prominent civil engineer who was employed by the Florida East Coast Railway. His name appears on many legal documents in early Dade County history.

Lyman didn’t stay that long in Dade County – on April 22, 1909, he registered to vote in Maricopa County, Arizona and later got into real estate there. Russell F. Tatum, Homestead’s first mayor, also moved to Phoenix and continued his real estate career there. Tatum Boulevard in that city is named after him. Lyman returned to Dade County some time before 1928 and died here that year.

After Lyman left what later became known as the community of Goulds, development proceeded apace. I found the following article in the September 27, 1912 issue of the The Miami Weekly Metropolis and thought it would be of interest to those of you interested in the history of the area.

MARVELOUS DEVELOPMENT OF THE GOULDS TOMATO DISTRICT

Town Achieves Reputation of Being Largest Shipper of Tomatoes South of Miami

TOMATO CATSUP FACTORY DOES A BIG BUSINESS

45,000 Gallons of Tomato Pulp Shipped Out First Year, Output Increased in Later Years — Large Acreages Will Be Planted to Tomatoes and Truck This Year

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(From Tuesday’s Daily)

A season of marvelous development covering the brief span of the past three years has changed the town of Goulds, which lies some 23 miles south of Miami, from a flag station where trains rarely stopped, and the only hint of human habitation was a little store operated only during the winter months to the largest tomato shipping point south of Miami, commonly referred to as the “Gate way to the Redlands,” and the center of one of the most prosperous truck and fruit growing sections in all south Florida.

The town had its inception three years ago1 from the operation of a large tract of the big thousand-acre farm of Mr. J. C. Baile, with whom Mr. G. L. Miller2 was associated in the handling of the big crop. Each year has seen a large increase in settlers and in the acreage set to fruit and truck. In response to a growing demand for lots, the Miller-Baile subdivision of fifteen acres was lately placed on the market, and a large number of lots have already been sold. The property is owned by Mr. G. L. Miller, a member of the Walter Waldin Investment company, and Mr. J. C. Baile, a prominent business man and fruit grower of this section.

The visitor to Goulds is at once impressed with the fact that it must be a great truck growing section, for four well equipped packing houses are to be seen. One of them, Mr. A. L. Hearn’s, is now busy packing this year’s grapefruit, and while the car of fruit lately put on its way by an elaborate legal process is said to be experiencing further difficulties en route, still growers with ripening fruit in that section, are asking Mr. Hearn to pack their crops as soon as possible.

Big Tomato Catsup Factory

Besides the packing industry a tomato catsup factory takes care of the “over-ripes” and culls of the big tomato crop of that section, which otherwise would be a total loss, and yearly carload after carload of the finest catsup in the world is shipped away from this plant to the markets of the north, to become the main ingredient of the famous Heinz and Armour brands of catsup.

In the early fall of 1909, Mr. G. L. Miller who was interested with Mr. J. C. Baile in the cropping of several hundred acres of tomatoes on Mr. Baile’s thousand-acre farm at that point, went to Chicago and interested the Grant-Beall company, which came and established a factory to prepare tomato pulp, and the first year 45,000 gallons of the pulp was shipped out, or more than ten carloads. In 1910 the plan of preparing pulp was changed to making catsup, and the latter industry has proven profitable during the last two seasons.3

Among the new buildings lately completed is the new hotel, a butcher shop, a school house, upon ground donated by Mr. Miller, two residences, and the announcement is made that next week several houses will start in the new Miller-Baile subdivision. Mr. B. E. Hearn plans to open soon a much-needed lumber yard and hardware store, which will facilitate the building operations there to a considerable extent.

Acreage Will Be Increased

From all indications there will be a much larger acreage of truck planted this year at Goulds than ever before. Many new truckers have come in from the north and from other sections of Florida, and will take part in this season’s operations. Mr. T. V. Moore and Mr. Tom McClane will put out 25 acres, all to tomatoes. Mr. J. H. Bush will have his usual 125 acres. Mr. Bush lives at Goulds and is obtaining a reputation as one of the successful growers of that section. The big Baile farm will have 300 or 400 acres in tomatoes. Mr. Will Peters expects to plant about 100 acres. Mr. Tom Peters, commonly known as the “tomato king,” from his remarkable success with this crop, will have about 400 acres.

Mr. Preston Lee and Mr. W. Mobley intend planting about 10 to 15 acres each, while Messrs. D. H. Lyle, [hole in paper] Clifford 4 P. C. Crockett, H. Poppell, J. Griffith, H. A. Proctor, Caldwell, R. L. Sanford, W. H. Parker and S. P. Lewis will have in their usual acreage.

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There are a number of “seeds” of future articles embedded in this essay. T. V. Moore was an early settler in Miami and was known as the Pineapple King. His wife was involved in many civic activities and she helped found Royal Palm State Park. Preston Lee was a very important early agriculturalist and Simeon P. Lewis carried the U. S. Mail between Cutler and Black Point, before the Florida East Coast Railway was extended to Homestead in 1904. Not mentioned in the article is William H. Cauley, for whom Cauley Square is named.

Here is the plat of the town of Goulds that was mentioned in the article. Note the existence of Baile’s Road. Click on the title under the image to download a copy of the plat that you can enlarge to study further.

Miller Baile 1912

Plat of the Town of Goulds

Forgotten Workers of Early Homestead I

Historic South Dade Posted on by

A Postcard Tells Its Story

by Jeff Blakley

Piecing together the small number of remaining fragments of early Homestead history is quite a challenge. I’m writing this post to show how, sometimes, we historians are fortunate to be able to build on the knowledge contributed by others and are thus able to advance our knowledge of the history of Homestead.

The Florida Pioneer Museum owns the postcard that is the subject of this post.

1910 Homestead Front

Front of Postcard

Presented with this image, what can we learn about Homestead from it? The buildings in the image are numbered: 1. Duval’s store & P.O., 2. Free’s, 3. Evans Hotel, 4. store, 5. F E C Depot.

“Duval’s store” refers to that of Alfred T. Duval, who was born in Mississippi in 1846. In 1900, he lived in Cutler, where his nearby neighbors included Colonel Obadiah Boaz, a member of the 1903-1904 Krome Cape Sable Expedition and William Fuzzard, a pioneer resident of Cutler. In the 1910 U. S. census, Duval was enumerated as a “general merchant” in Homestead. In September of 1911, Duval added to his store by “putting up a post office building and will put in new lock boxes and furniture.” He had been appointed Postmaster of Homestead on May 11, 1909, taking over from William D. Horne. At that time, he moved the post office from Horne’s hotel and general store to his own store on Railroad Avenue. Alfred was one of the electors who voted to incorporate the Town of Homestead in January of 1913. He died in Miami in 1936 and is buried in the Miami City Cemetery.

“Free’s” refers to the store erected by John Ulric Free, an early homesteader in the area who claimed a relinquished homestead on November 7, 1907. It had previously been claimed by two women and a man. One of the women was Nellie Budge, the sister of Harry Budge, a prominent Miami merchant.

“Evans Hotel” refers to what is now called the Hotel Redland. Tom and Floretta Evans claimed their homestead on July 22, 1909 and paid cash for it on April 18, 1910 but they were in the Redlands before March 27, 1908, when they attended a going-away reception for Colonel O. Boaz and his family at the Charles Plummer residence, along with 56 others.1 W. D. Horne purchased lot 5, block 2 of the Town of Homestead in 1904 and started building a hotel on it that October.2 It is shown in early photographs as The Homestead Inn before it burned down on November 10, 1913.3 The Ladies Guild of the Redland church held a pie social at the Evans Hotel the last week of December, 1910.4 In May of 1911, the Evans moved back to their homestead after operating the Homestead Hotel during the prior winter season.5

Homestead Inn Fire

Courtesy of the Historic Homestead Town Hall Museum

“store” is the Campbell Bros. general store, owned by Thomas A. and Neal W. Campbell,6 located adjacent to the Homestead Inn on what was then Railroad (now Flagler) Avenue. They had built their store in July of 1908.7

“F E C Depot” is the Homestead Depot, located at the intersection of Third Street and Railroad Avenue on the east side of the railroad tracks (now the busway). Fourth Street is now N. E. 2nd Road.

Town of Homestead

Location of the F.E.C. Depot in Homestead

When we turn the postcard over, we see this:

1910 Homestead Back

Back of Postcard

First, note that the postcard was postmarked on March 15, 19– in Naranja, not in Homestead. The community of Naranja was platted by George W. Moody in 1912, but he was appointed postmaster of the Naranja Post Office in January of 1906. Very little has been written about the history of Naranja, but it was a thriving community up into the early 1930s.

The next thing we see is that the addressee is Miss Bettie Pherigo, Box 684, Kissimmee, Florida. Researching the Pherigo surname in Kissimmee in 1910 yielded the information that John L. Pherigo, 52; his wife, Rebecca, also 52; and children Mary W., 23; Ezekiel, 18; Elizabeth, 14, and Porchie, 10, lived there. In 1930, Ezekiel, 38, was living with his father, John L., who was widowed, and his brother Benjamin H., 39.

If we turn the postcard back over to the front, we read this: “This only shows about one sixth of the houses that there is at Homestead. Lovingly, Ben.”

The postcard was sent by Benjamin H. Pherigo to his younger sister, Elizabeth. He asked his sister to “[t]ell mamma I will send the tomatoes tomorrow. Thanks for card.”

Ben was very likely working in one of the packing houses in Naranja and on one of his trips into Homestead on a rare day off, he purchased this postcard, which may have been created by the unknown photographer who owned the Rustic Studio, pictured in the lower right side of the postcard, next to the Campbell Bros. store.

The first issue of the South Florida Banner, dated March 15, 1912 and owned and edited by Rev. Joseph A. Kahl, tells us this about Homestead: “Fifteen months ago it had little more than the railroad station. Now it has six general stores, two hotels, one restaurant, three blacksmith shops, one bicycle repair shop, lumber yard, four packing houses and work on a new bank building has just begun.”8 “Fifteen months ago” would have been in October of 1910. Given that Reverend Kahl did not arrive in Homestead until early 1912 (he was appointed to the Methodist circuit for Detroit in January of 1912), he had no direct knowledge of the conditions in Homestead prior to his arrival then. But he did have every incentive to contrast the allegedly primitive conditions in 1910 with the bustling place that Homestead was in 1912 so that he could sell more copies of his newspaper. By counting names in the 1910 census, it is clear that Homestead was a much more populated place than what Kahl related in his article. There were 261 people living in precinct 15 (Homestead) in 1910 and no doubt over 300 by 1912. Precinct 15 did not include Silver Palm (precinct 12), Princeton (precinct 13) or Redland (precinct 14).9

John Ulric Free did not arrive here until the summer of 1907, at the earliest. Alfred T. Duval was here at least as early as November 4, 1904, when the Miami Metropolis reported that he had badly injured himself with an axe “south of Homestead” and had to be transported to Cutler and then to Miami for treatment.10

A. T. Duval was the first purchaser of a lot in the Town of Homestead – he bought Lot 1, Block 4 from the Model Land Co.11 12 However, he did not build on that lot until late in 1907.13William D. Horne purchased lots 5 and 6 of block 2 in the newly-platted Town of Homestead in 1904 from the Model Land Company.14 Horne’s lots had the advantage of having road frontage on Railroad Avenue and Second Street – see the plat above – but Duval’s lot was on Railroad Avenue right across the street from the depot. Horne finished building his store in December of 1904. He subsequently sold his business to Robert E. “Eb” Caves (Horne’s brother-in-law) and went into the real estate business. Caves then sold the business in 1907 to A. T. Duval, who moved it to his store across from the Depot.15 His building also included a meeting room, known as “Duval Hall,” where dances were held.16 Duval, who was from Cutler, sold out after January of 1913, when he was one of the residents to vote for the incorporation of Homestead, to an unknown person and moved back to Cutler, where he had property. On August 3, 1916, the Homestead Enterprise noted that “A.T. Duval, an old Homestead resident, was in town last week on a visit.” In 1920, he, his wife and his two daughters were enumerated in Miami in the census taken that year.

J. U. Free built a store on Railroad Avenue in 1908.17 Free’s first store was located on Lot 5, Block 3 of the Town of Homestead – see the plat of the Town of Homestead above. After being in business for a few years, Free sold his store in late 1911 to Walter J. Tweedell18 and erected a new two-story concrete building on lot 6 of his Free’s Addition to Homestead. This building was on the west side of Krome, south of where the Bank of Homestead was built in early 1912 on the corner of Mowry and Krome.19 Tweedell placed an advertisement in the South Florida Banner on May 17, 1912, stating that he sold Star brand shoes. After Tweedell was elected to his first term as Dade County commissioner from Homestead in November of 1912, he spent less time at his store and more time attending to political matters. In 1915, he sold the northeasterly 35 feet of Lot 4, Block 3 to Jim Tosto,20 whose business was in the Tweedell Building as early as August of 1914.21

Tosto s Store for Post

Photograph courtesy of Mike Harris

This photograph, with Jim Tosto’s store in the background, was taken after August 6, 1914, when Tosto first advertised in the Homestead Enterprise that he was a “Dealer in Groceries and Fruits, Tobaccos, Lunches and Cold Drinks” in the Tweedell Building.22 The location of this building is unknown. Standing, left to right, are James D. Redd, James R. Dorsey and Tom J. Harris.

Jim Tosto Ad

Benjamin H. Pherigo left no known mark on Homestead area history other than working in a packing house in Naranja before March 15, 1911, when he sent this postcard to his sister in Kissimmee. He was born on November 24, 1889 in Kissimmee and worked as a migratory farm worker. In 1916, he and three other Kissimmee men left for Fort Valley, Georgia, to pick peaches for the Hale Georgia Orchard Co.23 In 1918, he worked for James A. O’Berry in Rockdale, near present day Coral Reef Drive. At that time, he was married to Cora and had one child. In 1922, he and his wife called at the home of William T. Roberts, an old resident of Cutler.24 He was still living in the Perrine area in November of 1925, when The Miami Metropolis noted that “Ben Farigo” was visiting E. M. Green. In 1928, he and his wife lived in Mims, Florida.25 In 1935, he lived with his sister, Rhea, who was the postmistress of the Kissimmee post office, and was still a fruit-packer. In 1940, Ben and Cora were still living with his sister Rhea in Kissimmee. In 1960, he and his wife lived in Auburndale.26 Ben and Cora never seemed to have settled down – they moved around a lot, probably following their jobs as migratory farm workers.

Since its beginning, Homestead has been a transient community. People came here to better themselves and sometimes succeeded. Those who didn’t often left and went elsewhere. This reality has made telling the story of Homestead very difficult and biased towards those who owned the media and the businesses. But for every well-known figure in Homestead history, there are one hundred unknowns. Benjamin H. Pherigo was one of them – a hard-working man who never got into trouble, married, raised at least one child and then died in obscurity in Auburndale, Florida on November 15, 1977.

Updated July 2, 2020
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The Princeton Bottling Works

Historic South Dade Posted on by

Last December, Mike Emery, who is writing a book on the Coca-Cola Bottling Company in Florida, contacted the Town Hall Museum, asking what information we had about the Coca-Cola bottling plant here in Homestead. We have almost nothing – only the location of the plant, but Mike’s query led me to keep his request in mind. At the end of January, as I was browsing our recently digitized newspapers, I found an article that mentioned the Princeton Bottling Works, which Mike had mentioned in our initial exchange. He and I worked together, sharing information, and I uncovered a previously untold story about Homestead and Princeton, of which there are thousands more to be told.

As many know, Princeton was founded by Gaston Drake in 1907 as the site for his Drake Lumber sawmill. It was a thriving community until 1923, when Drake, having cut all of the merchantable pine trees in the area, shut down the mill and moved his business to a 100,000 acre tract north of Palm Beach to cut more trees. In an article that appeared in the September 19, 1913 issue of the South Florida Banner, it was noted that “Princeton is to have a bottling works establishment and ice house. C. M. Wade is having a building erected where he will install machinery for bottling works.” His company was known as the Waid Bottling Works.

Waid Bottling Works Bottle

Photo Courtesy of Mike Emery

The more I dug into the story, the more fascinated I got with it. Mike was very helpful and I could not have written this article without his help.

The Waid Bottling Works was established in Princeton in late 1913 by Charles M. Waid, who was born in December of 1866 in Virginia. Early in his life, his parents moved to Collin County, Texas, where the family appeared in the 1880 census. In the 1900 census, Charles and his wife, Emma, lived in Maple Township, Canadian County, Oklahoma with their daughters, Mildred Emma, born on March 20, 1893 and Beulah, born in November of 1898.

According to the obituary for Mildred E. Waid Caves, her family came to this area in 19091 when she was 16. She soon became a teacher at the Redland School, located on the grounds of what is now the Redland Fruit and Spice Park, until her marriage to William B. Caves, Sr. on August 27, 1913. The ceremony was held in the Guild Hall, located at Bauer and Redland and was presided over by Rev. Joseph A. Kahl. Rev. Kahl’s wife, Harriet, was the daughter of Charles H. Woodbury. His role in this story will be revealed later.

Due to a lack of bottles, the Waid Bottling Works did not open until February or March of 1914. In an article that appeared in the Miami Herald on April, 3, 1914, it was noted that Mrs. C. M. Waid was in charge of “pop” for the 3rd annual May Day Festival, held on May 1, 1914. The event, which was first celebrated in 1911 at the Redland School, later became a fund-raiser, held at the Guild Hall, for the South Dade Cemetery Association, which owned the Palms Cemetery, now known as Palms Memorial.

It seems that very early on, Charles Waid hired the Hair brothers, Earl Robert (born in 1884) and Zollie E. (born in 1889) to work for him. They had probably arrived in South Dade in late 1912 or early 1913. By August of that year, they were living on land bought from John Leonard northwest of the Hainlin sawmill. Leonard had homesteaded at Hainlin Mill and Tower Road (S.W. 216 St. and 192 Ave.) in 1907. The Hair brothers were hard workers, as by August 20, 1914, it was noted in the Homestead Enterprise that “T. F. Christenson makes three trips a week to Princeton delivering ice for the Hair Brothers and also delivering their sodas. These boys are doing a hustling business in the bottling works at Princeton.”

By 1915, Charles M. Waid had sold his business to the Hair brothers because an advertisement in the Homestead Enterprise gives the name of the business as the Princeton Bottling Works.

HE Jan 7 1915 Coca Cola Ad

The Princeton Bottling Works was the supplier of soft drinks to the May Day festivities in Redland on May 1, 1916 – their bill was for $14.00. That doesn’t sound like much but it is equivalent to $315 today.

In addition to his duties at the bottling works, Zollie Hair managed to find time to be the vice-president of the Princeton branch of the South Dade County Fruit Growers & Truckers Association in January of 1915. In February of 1916, he ran for sheriff of Dade County. In an advertisement for his campaign, he bragged that he had a “half interest in a growing and paying business in Princeton.”

That “growing and paying business” included a franchise from the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Before Coca-Cola granted a franchise to Homestead, the soft drink was bottled in Princeton.

Princeton Coca Cola Bottle

Photograph courtesy of Mike Emery

Zollie lost the election, but that didn’t slow him down. He was making trips to Los Angeles, California and starting to grow potatoes in Okeelanta, on the Fort Lauderdale canal near Lake Okeechobee.

In June of 1917, he and his brother sold the Princeton Bottling Works for $8,000 ($179,000 now) to J. J. Degan, “a wealthy wagon manufacturer of Ft. Madison, Iowa” who was brought to them by I. R. Matthews, a brother-in-law of Rev. J. A. Kahl. Apparently, Zollie was still involved in the bottling business in September of 1917, when he registered for the draft in Princeton. On that form, he gave his occupation as a self-employed bottler of soft drinks.

He celebrated the sale by going to Miami and buying a new Dodge car. But in January of 1918, he and his brother were sued for $7,500 by Mr. Degan and his partner, who alleged that the Hair brothers did not have a contract with the Coca-Cola Co. for syrup. Perhaps there was a contract, but it is possible that Degan did not do enough due diligence to determine the expiration date of the contract. The outcome of the suit is not known. It is likely, though, that the business shut down because without Coca-Cola syrup, they could not bottle the drink. There were other businesses that sold soft drinks, so the lack of syrup may have forced Degan to close the business.

In an article that appeared in the May 20, 1920 issue of the Homestead Enterprise, it was noted that “Wendell Woodbury bought out the Princeton Bottling Works last Monday and has taken over their business of supplying the Redland district with ice.” Wendell Woodbury, a son of Charles H. Woodbury, was another brother-in-law of Rev. J. A. Kahl.

The bottling equipment from the former Princeton Bottling Works was moved to a building on South Flagler, opposite Hector Supply, where the Homestead Ice Cream and Bottling Works opened for business in October of 1921.

HE Oct 27 1921 p 8

If anyone is inclined to look at the past through rose-colored glasses, this article should give them pause. Human nature has not changed – there were just as many wheelers and dealers then as there are now.
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Three African-American Entrepreneurs

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

The subject of African-American history in general is a difficult subject to tackle, particularly for White historians. For historians working in a Southern city, it is even more difficult. Nonetheless, in this post, I am going to outline a few details about three enterprising African-American business people in early Homestead.

In 1903, John S. Frederick, a civil engineer who worked for the Flagler interests in Miami, surveyed the route of the railroad to Homestead from Miami and platted the Town of Homestead in 1904.

Homestead 1904

Town of Homestead as platted in 1904

On the plat above, the intersection of the two diagonal lines is that of Krome and Mowry. Railroad Avenue is now Flagler.

The land reserved for the Town on the west side of Krome Avenue was in section 13 of township 57 south, range 38 east. It comprised the east half of the northeast quarter, the east half of the southeast quarter and the southwest quarter of the southeast quarter. All of the subdivisions in this essay, with the exception of the Pinehurst Addition, which was originally part of the Leonard Mowry homestead, were on land owned by the F.E.C. David Torcise’s Google Earth map of homesteads, available by clicking on the link at the lower right of this page, provides more detail.

At this distance, it is very difficult to find the original deeds between the F.E.C. and purchasers of its land but in September of 1911, Charles M. Nelson platted Nelson’s Addition to Homestead and that was followed by the Pinehurst Addition and W. D. Horne’s Addition in 1912, McClain’s and Nobles’ Additions in 1913, Ewing’s, Tatum’s Colored Town and Logan’s Additions in 1914 and finally the Fread Additions, starting in 1918.

Southwest Homestead

Map Courtesy of David Torcise

The owners of the land which was subdivided to create these subdivisions were an interesting group of men. Charles M. Nelson was a pineapple grower in Dania and a real estate speculator in Homestead. Robert W. Ralston, a prominent real estate speculator from Miami, created the Pinehurst Addition on 40 acres he purchased from Leonard Mowry. Mowry filed his claim for 120 acres on December 28, 1908 and patented it on September 21, 1911. Ralston filed his plat of Pinehurst on December 3, 1912. W. D. Horne is well-known in Homestead history but his role as a real estate salesman is not much commented on. Little is known about William Nobles, but he was here as early as 1910 and may have come from Walton County, Florida. He purchased the Homestead Grocery from Edward A. Sistrunk and subsequently sold it to Charles T. Fuchs. Hugh H. Ewing, a former insurance agent, was part of a group of men who came from Topeka, Kansas and homesteaded in the Longview area west of what was then Detroit and is now Florida City. J. H. Tatum, who platted Tatum’s Colored Town Addition, was a distant relative of Russell F. Tatum, the Town of Homestead’s first mayor. J. H. and his brothers, Smiley, J.R. and B.B., were the Tatum Brothers Real Estate & Investment Company. All of these men were in the business of making money.

Leonidas Lee Fread, the man who platted the three Fread Additions to Homestead, was an exception to the others. He came here in the fall of 1911 from Winter Haven, Florida, where he was a farmer, purchased 10 acres and set out a fruit grove. Lee was born in Franklin County, Indiana in 1851. As the African-American community grew and moved west, he subdivided his property and built houses to sell or rent to them.

Early in Homestead history, the African-American workers on the railroad lived in shacks on the east side of the railroad tracks. Soon enough, public sentiment forced the F.E.C. to move their shanties to the west side of the track and by 1911, with Nelson’s Addition, they were moved even further south and west.

There is a myth, which may have originated with Jean Taylor, that states that Mark Lawrence McClain, a Bahamian worker on the F.E.C. Railroad, homesteaded 160 acres in southwest Homestead and created McClain’s Addition in 1927. This is not true – the plat was recorded on March 3, 1913. The names given on the plat are L. McClain and Rebecca, his wife. McClain, who was born in North Carolina in either 1846 or 1831, depending on which census you view, was a mulatto whose father was from Northern Ireland and whose mother was born in North Carolina. As I stated at the beginning of this article, researching African-American history is difficult at best. Among the few records (other than the plat of McClain’s Addition) I was able to find that mention McClain are the 1920 and 1930 censuses of Homestead. In the 1920 census, Elmer McClain, 64 and his wife Rebecca may have lived in the Florida City area. In the 1930 census, however, Lawrence was shown as widowed, 99 years old and living on Eckman (now Roberts) Road north of Avocado. He also appears on the delinquent tax lists of 1917, 1918 and 1920, published in the Homestead Enterprise. Delinquent tax lists were published in the year after the tax was due, giving the owners public notice that their property would be sold at public auction to satisfy the tax due. On the 1917 list, McClain owed taxes on 33 out of the 48 lots in his subdivision. On the 1918 list, he owed taxes on 31 while on the 1920 list, he only owed taxes on 7. He clearly was doing better every year.

I’m not aware of any historian who has written anything about Roman W. Logan and his wife, Ida. Jean Taylor, in an article in the December, 1977 issue of Update, published by the Historical Association of South Florida, noted that “a colored baker named Logan was hired by Charles T. Fuchs.1 It is not known who captioned the photograph below, but Logan is pictured on the right with a pan of bread loaves in his arms. This photograph is featured on page 22 of the book, Papa Fuchs’ Family, 1881 – 1981, so it is likely that someone in the Fuchs family provided the names of the people in the photograph.

Fuchs Bakery 1913

In 1914, Roman and Ida platted Logan’s Addition to Homestead, which was a replat of lots 10 – 15 of Block 8 of the Pinehurst Addition. Logan’s Addition created 21 lots out of the 6 lots that were part of Block 8.

Roman was born on March 18, 1874 in Nassau County, Florida. His father Benjamin was born in South Carolina in 1847 and was very likely a slave. Roman first married Maggie Jones in Nassau County, Florida in 1896 and then married Ida Drayton in Miami in 1906. Ida had at least two children by her first marriage: Samuel and Alexander. On April 23, 1910, the date of the Miami census, Roman and Ida lived on 3rd St. in Miami and he was a baker. Then, on April 29, 1910, he was enumerated on Long Key, where he was a “servant” in what may have been a boarding house run by John Ulric Free. He registered for the draft in September of 1918 in Homestead and in the 1920 census, he and his wife’s occupations are given as “grocery merchants.”

On the 1917 delinquent tax list, Roman Logan is listed as owing taxes on 2 lots in the W. D. Horne Addition and 3 in the McClain Addition. His wife, Ida, is shown as owing taxes on all of the lots in Logan’s Addition. On the 1918 list, he is shown as owing taxes on four lots in W. D. Horne’s Addition and one in McClain’s Addition. No lots in Logan’s Addition appeared on the list. On the 1920 list, Roman Logan only owes taxes on one lot in McClain’s Addition. He and Ida were slowly improving their lot.

Jean Taylor, in her book The Villages of South Dade, wrote that Moses Griffin, our third African-American entrepreneur, was born in 1888 in Brooks County, Georgia, the son of a wealthy white plantation owner and an African-American mother. He came to Homestead in 1912, invested in real estate and operated a taxi service for African-Americans between Homestead and Miami. On the 1917 delinquent tax list, published in the Homestead Enterprise, he owed taxes on 4 lots in Ewing’s Addition. He does not appear on either the 1918 or 192o delinquency lists so either he paid his taxes on time or he had disposed of his holdings.

Despite the fact that Roman Logan was enumerated as a “mulatto” in the 1910 census of Long Key, he was dark-complected. However, Lawrence McClain was a mulatto because his father was from Northern Ireland and Mose Griffin was a mulatto because his father was White. It is interesting that two African-Americans of light complexion in early Homestead were also successful businessmen. Frenzied land speculation was the order of the day in early Homestead and it wasn’t only Whites who engaged in the practice. A select few African-Americans were able to play that game also.

There are a lot of stories to be told about early Homestead but land speculation has not been the subject of much, if any, research. I hope, by writing this short essay, to encourage another historian to take a more in-depth look at race in early Homestead, surely the “third rail” of history in this area.
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