Articles | Historic South Dade

Rev. Joseph A. Kahl – Part II

Posted on June 14, 2016 by JeffDecember 8, 2019

By Jeff Blakley

In part I of this series on the Reverend Joseph A. Kahl, I explored the early lives of Joseph and his future wife, Harriet Woodbury. I ended that post with their marriage, on August 20, 1908.

After their marriage, the Methodist Episcopal Church sent the Reverend Kahl and his new wife to Hunter, in Cass County, North Dakota, which is a tiny community about 70 miles northwest of Abercrombie, where the Woodburys were from. He took up the pastorate of the Methodist Episcopal Church there in April of 1909.

Reverend Kahl preached in Hunter and also in Arthur, another tiny town 5 miles south of Hunter. On May 17, 1910, Rev. Kahl and his wife welcomed the arrival of their daughter, Myoma.

Myoma Kahl at the age of about 2
– courtesy of Louise Kahl Young

As an adult, Myoma preferred to be called Irma and that is what is on her marker in Flagler Memorial Park in Miami.

While Reverend Kahl preached in Cass County, he made the acquaintance of Edward Mitchell, who was the editor and manager of the Hunter Herald. Mr. Mitchell will make another appearance later in this post. Rev. Kahl preached in Cass County until September of 1910, when the Church sent him to preach in Miami at the First Methodist Episcopal Church.¹ In early 1911, he accepted the pastorate of the Park Temple Methodist Episcopal Church in Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, Florida. Reverend Kahl was there from early 1911 until early 1912, when he was sent to Homestead, perhaps to help the Reverend Joseph M. Cormack, who was experiencing personal difficulties.

While in Fort Lauderdale, Harriet, Joseph’s wife, became active in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Her membership in the society was noted in a July 8, 1911 society column by Virginia Craig, which appeared in The Miami Herald.

Upon his arrival in Homestead, Reverend Kahl promptly got to work establishing Homestead’s first newspaper, The South Florida Banner, the first edition of which was published on March 15, 1912. A short notice in the April 26, 1912 edition notes that he was living temporarily in Hardee’s house, east of the Sullivan Hotel. That was in the original town of Homestead, on the east side of the railroad tracks. The Sullivan Hotel was located on the corner of N.E. 1st Road and N.E. 1st Drive, east of Railroad (Flagler) Avenue. The location of Mr. Hardee’s house has not been determined. Montelus Clifton Hardee (1863 – 1956) was born in Mississippi and came to South Florida at an early date. He was a prominent tomato and fruit grower and owned packing houses in Dade and Broward Counties. His packing house in Homestead sat perpendicular to the railroad tracks on the west side of the Homestead Depot. In 1924, he was the president of Hardee & Gentile, Inc. and lived at 1756 N. Bayshore Drive in Miami. In the 1930 census, that house was valued at $35,000, a substantial amount of money at that time.

On May 10, 1912, Kahl’s wife, Harriet, and their daughter Myoma came down from Fort Lauderdale to join him.

The South Florida Banner was owned and edited by Rev. Kahl, but it was printed on the presses of The Tropical Sun in West Palm Beach. The Tropical Sun was owned by Guy Metcalf and his paper was Dade County’s only newspaper until the Miami Metropolis published its first edition on May 15, 1896. Metcalf was a mayor of West Palm Beach, a prime mover in creating Broward County out of Dade County in 1909, a real estate speculator and an early school superintendent. The fact that The South Florida Banner was printed in West Palm Beach led to occasional delays in the copies being delivered to Homestead and to proofs not being delivered to the presses on time, via Flagler’s railroad, so that issues missed being printed. It also led to charges by Alexander C. Graw, the owner of The Homestead Enterprise, the successor to The South Florida Banner, that it was published in “a shack.” That was not true – the Banner was located in a small building at 17 West Mowry, just west of the Homestead Mercantile building.

Rev. Kahl Standing by his Office²

Jean Taylor wrote that Kahl’s newspaper “gave priority to church news.”³ I read all of the extant issues of The South Florida Banner on microfilm and I have to disagree. Rev. Kahl covered much more than church activities. Churches were very important social institutions in early Homestead, so Kahl did publish items of a religious nature. Rev. Kahl published the times when he preached at the churches on his circuit and he covered the construction of the First Baptist Church in Homestead on several occasions. But he published no sermons from local preachers nor did he publicize any churches other than the Methodist and Baptist denominations. While he was the editor, Kahl publicized the comings and goings of important and not-so-important people, covered business news in great detail and used his paper to push initiatives to build a new school (now Neva King Cooper, completed in January, 1914), establish a municipal light plant, pass a sanitary ordinance, publicize the accomplishments of the Homestead Circle (the predecessor of the Homestead Women’s Club – Harriet was a founding member) and covered news in Detroit, Longview, Redland, Silver Palm and Princeton. He was also responsible for the fact that Krome Avenue north of Mowry is wider than it is south of Mowry. When the owners of The Homestead Mercantile were building their new store in late 1912, Rev. Kahl persuaded them to dedicate an additional 15′ as right-of-way for Krome Avenue. When the Commerce Addition, on the east side of Krome, was platted in September of 1914, an identical right-of-way was dedicated, thus making Krome Avenue 80′ wide north of Mowry and 50′ wide south of Mowry. Kahl also used his bully pulpit to fulminate against the lack of landscaping near the Depot, which he thought, correctly, made Homestead unappealing to visitors and travelers on their way to Key West. Reverend Kahl was a fierce critic of alcohol consumption and Harriet was a founder of the local chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Those views naturally found their way into the paper. Rev. Kahl and his wife were responsible for creating the first lending library in Homestead, some years before Lily Lawrence Bow became known for her role in establishing a library in Homestead. In addition to local news, Rev. Kahl published state, national and international news. He covered much more than church news and the surviving issues of The South Florida Banner are likely one of the few sources extant for learning more about what this area was like from 1912 to 1914. Because Kahl was a preacher as well as the editor of the paper, he commanded a great deal of respect and played an important role in early Homestead, a role that was at least as important as those played by W. D. Horne, J. D. Redd, S. E. Livingston, R. F. Tatum, and Henry Brooker, other names frequently mentioned as “founders” of Homestead. Rev. Kahl presided over the meeting in which the Town of Homestead was incorporated in 1913, so the fact that not much has been published about him is regrettable.

In October of 1913, tragedy struck the Kahls when Harriet died from complications from childbirth. The circumstances of the tragedy had been guessed at by various authors over the years, but it wasn’t until Dr. Greg Bush, a professor at the University of Miami, uncovered a manuscript written in 1938 by WPA authors Mary Ferrell Dickinson and Gladys Buck at the Florida State Archives⁴ that the details emerged. Jane Tower, the wife of Dr. John Tower, recounted the tale of why Harriet died. In late September, Harriet gave birth to an infant which died upon delivery. Harriet’s situation, as was not uncommon among women experiencing complications resulting from childbirth in those days, worsened in the days that followed. Dr. Tower was the physician in charge and, when it became apparent that surgery was necessary on October 10, he called Dr. John Dennis in Modello for assistance. Another operation became necessary two days later, in which Dr. B. F. Forrest, the mayor of Detroit, assisted. But their efforts were of no avail and Harriet died early in the morning of October 13 due to complications from the childbirth. She was only 37 years old. Mrs. Tower stated that Harriet’s death was the event that motivated her husband to persuade Florence Hunt to move her hospital from Florida City to Homestead. That took six years, but in September of 1919, Florence opened her maternity hospital in Homestead.

The outpouring of grief in the community was remarkable and the complete memorial service, given by Dr. P. S. Merrill, pastor of the First Methodist Church in Miami, was published in the newspaper. The service was held at the First Baptist Church in Homestead. On January 30, 1915, more than a year after her death, she was remembered by the W.C.T.U. in a memorial service held at the Redland Methodist Episcopal Church.

The pall bearers were Sidney E. Livingston, S. T. Parker, Edward C. Loveland, C. H. Miller, Wilmer H. Cast and Earl Hair. Harriet is buried in an unmarked grave in the Woodbury plot at Naranja. The grave may have had a marker at one time, but it does not have one now.

After Harriet’s death, Rev. Kahl and his daughter, Myoma, continued to live in the house that was built for them in 1912 by carpenters from Detroit.⁵

The South Florida Banner grew substantially during its ownership by Kahl – he beat the drum ceaselessly for additional subscriptions. By late 1913, if a reader thought that the paper was going bankrupt, as other published accounts about the paper read, that reader would think it was so, for Kahl was pleading desperately for more subscriptions. But the reason he was doing so was because he had plans to expand his operations and create a job printing plant so that the paper could be printed locally and also so that other printing jobs could be undertaken. Kahl purchased two lots “just west of where the Banner office is now located” and let a contract to J. U. Free, who built a 24 x 50 foot building with a concrete floor to house the printing plant and a Cottrell printing press which was purchased from the Keystone Type Foundry in Atlanta, Georgia. In April of 1921, this building was expanded to 40 x 65 feet.⁶ The front of the building was stuccoed in January of 1925.⁷

Courtesy of the Historic Homestead Town Hall Museum

George T. Rice was hired to be the foreman. He had published a newspaper in South Carolina for a number of years.⁸ On February 13, 1914,⁹ Kahl announced the stunning news that he had sold a 50% interest in the paper to Ed Mitchell, of North Dakota. Mitchell would be the business manager of the paper while Kahl would retain the editorship of the paper. L. D. Cook, a friend of Mitchell’s from North Dakota, would be the salesman while Guy E. Mitchell, Ed’s nephew, would be the printer. The paper seemed to have a bright future and several lavish editions were published in the summer of 1914.¹⁰ Unfortunately, many issues of The Homestead Enterprise (the name of the paper changed with the issue of March 26, 1914) published in the first half of 1914 have not survived. Only two of those bonus editions are extant. The others, which were supposed to have “more than a hundred biographies of those who made the Redland district” have been lost. In the final part of this series, the complicated story of the difficult transition to new ownership of the newspaper will be told.

Rev. Joseph A. Kahl, Part I

Two Historic Houses Lost

Posted on May 27, 2016 by JeffOctober 28, 2019

by Jeff Blakley

I was saddened to learn from Karon Buckley that two of our historic houses were recently demolished: the Kosel home at the northwest corner of Redland and Plummer and the Schaff house, on Krome at 273rd St.

The Kosel house was not in very good condition due to its age but hopefully, some of the Dade County pine from it was salvaged and put to good use. The Schaff house, on the other hand, looked like it could have been renovated. However, I have no knowledge of its condition other than viewing it from the photographs taken by the Florida Department of Transportation.

I’m posting the following, kindly provided by Bob Bow, who knew Howard E. Schaff and his wife, Arrie, when he was a child at Palm Lodge. The source is the Centennial History of Missouri: One Hundred Years in the Union 1820-1921, Volume 2, St. Louis-Chicago: The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1921.

Charles E. Schaff, receiver for the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad Company, was born on a farm in Licking county, Ohio. February 4, 1856. He is a son of the late Isaac M. Schaff, who was also born in the Buckeye state and represented one of the old families there of Dutch descent. In early life the father engaged in agricultural pursuits and later turned his attention to railroading, becoming connected with the train service of various roads. He passed away in Carroll county, Missouri, in 1888, aged fifty-seven years, having become a resident of Missouri four years before. He married Angeline Cleaves, a native of Maine and a representative of one of the old New England families of English lineage. She is now living in Columbus, Ohio. By her marriage she became the mother of seven sons and six daughters, of whom eight are living.

Charles E. Schaff, the eldest of the family, was educated in private schools of Virginia and at the age of fourteen started out to provide for his own support. He was first employed as water boy on the Pennsylvania Railroad and initiated his business career with a wage of fifty cents per day. Later he took up railroading and was advanced through various parts of the train service, acting as supervisor and in various executive positions. His first official position was that of train master for the Big Four Railroad in 1889 and he acted in that capacity until the spring of 1891. He was next made general superintendent of the Peoria & Pekin Union at Peoria, Illinois, so serving until July, 1893, when he was made assistant to the president of the Big Four, occupying that position until September, 1894. Later he became assistant general manager, which position he filled until November, 1896, after which he was general manager until January, 1906, or for a period of more than a decade. His next official position was that of vice president of the New York Central Lines at Chicago from 1906 until 1912, when he became president of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad Company and was its president until September, 1916, since which time he has been receiver for the company. He is likewise a director of the Mississippi Valley Trust Company of St. Louis and is a director of the Terminal Railway of St. Louis and its various subsidiary lines. Throughout his life be has been connected with railway interests and his progress has been continuous. His constantly developing powers have qualified him for added responsibilities and duties and he has long figured prominently in official circles in connection with railway interests throughout the middle west.

On the 31st of December, 1878, in Columbus, Ohio, Mr. Schaff was married to Miss Leila B. White, a native of Ohio and a daughter of George and Hettie (Ehrhart) White, both of whom have passed away. Both were representatives of old Ohio families. Mr. and Mrs. Schaff have two children: Howard E., who was born September 23, 1880, at Columbus, Ohio, married Miss Arrie Hughes of Louisville, Kentucky, and is a resident of Homestead, Florida; the younger son, Frederic A., born in Nelsonville, Ohio, May 24, 1884, wedded Mary Lee Meyer of Brownsville, Texas. They reside at Bronxville, New York, and have two children, Mary Jane and Mary Alan Schaff.

In his political views Charles E. Schaff is an earnest republican. Fraternally he has become a Knights Templar Mason and he belongs to the Noonday, St. Louis, Round Table, Bellerive Country and Country Clubs of St. Louis, his social standing, like his business position, being most enviable.

Here is a historic photograph of the Howard Schaff house, formerly located at 27450 S.W. 177 Ave.:

Here is a photograph taken in 2005, for the Krome Avenue widening project, compiled for the Florida Department of Transportation:

And here is what was left after the track hoe operator finished:

The house was a wonderful example of early Dade County vernacular architecture. It was eligible for inclusion on the National Register for Historic Preservation, according to the report for the Florida Department of Transportation, which is widening Krome Avenue, much to the dismay of agriculturalists in the Redland. Apparently, the owner decided that the increased traffic on Krome Avenue, a result of the widening, would make a commercial re-zoning of the property economically feasible. Even though the house would have been situated 204 feet back from Krome Avenue after the widening, developers prefer a piece of property with minimal issues and the presence of a house designated as eligible for the National Register of Historic Preservation would definitely present a problem.

Such is the fate of historic properties in Miami-Dade County. The possibilities for financial gain almost always win over historic preservation.

Grossman Hammock

Posted on May 11, 2016 by JeffOctober 28, 2019

By Jeff Blakley

Did you ever go out to Grossman’s Hammock before it became part of Everglades National Park to see the sulphur spring? Did you ever wonder where it got its name? Did you wonder if perhaps the name was somehow a corruption or misspelling of the Gossman surname?

The first time I visited Grossman Hammock was in the late 1960s, before the land to the east of it had been scarified and turned into agricultural land. The land was still pinnacle rock and sawgrass. It was peaceful and very quiet. Not so much any longer, unfortunately.

The hammock got its name from Samuel Frank Grossman (1861 – 1929) who, with his sons Samuel Frank, Jr. (b. 1904) and Marcus Lawrence (1901 – 1998) bought a large quantity of land in township 55 south in 1917.

While browsing through old issues of newspapers, I came across an interesting article in the July 10, 1926 issue of the Homestead Leader, which I will transcribe here.

FIND RELICS IN OPENING OF TOWNSHIP

Grossman Tract Shows Evidence of Early Inhabitants

MAKE WALKING TRIP

Soil Composition Varies With Hammock, Marl, and Glade

In the reclamation of the township owned near Homestead by the Grossman family, and in its preparation for vast agricultural developments, many interesting experiences have been the lot of those persons who have undertaken this work.

Samuel Grossman of Cleveland, Ohio, and his sons Samuel F. Grossman and M. L. Grossman, of Miami, are owners of township 55, consisting of thousands of acres of fertile land, into which the Grossmans are now constructing a hard-surfaced road beginning a half mile north of Quail Roost drive.

The road was begun several weeks ago, and, according to Mr. Grossman, they expect to complete the 15-foot highway within two months from the time its construction was started.

In telling of the preliminary steps taken to determine just what they had to deal with in their big tract, M. L. Grossman gave a graphic description of a walking expedition over the property last April.

The father and his two sons, with a surveyor and an old-time hunter who knew conditions pretty well, made a complete tour of the property. In the western and northern sections they found deep, black muck soil and large hammocks which were a mile or so long. In the southeast section of the township, gray marl soil was found.

Mr. Grossman said they encountered plenty of game, with deer, wild hogs, water fowl, alligators, rabbits, wildcats, and ‘coons greeting them as they trespassed into their native haunts.

Relics of former Indian camps were found on the hammock portions of the property, where fruit trees, rough lemons, limes, and bananas told of an attempt to provide food for the campers.

At an abandoned camp on Junction Key were found an old sewing machine, pots, and old Dutch copper kettles which, Mr. Grossman said, probably were 200 years old. Evidences of pottery were seen in this camp. Knowing that the Seminoles were not a tribe which made pottery, the Grossmans realized that some red-skinned tribe had inhabited their land years before the Seminoles were there.

There was no drinking water to be had during the expedition over this big tract of land, Mr. Grossman said, excepting from the sloughs. Often they dug down three or four feet to get to water which they dared to drink. It was in digging ofr (sic) water that the party unearthed a giant jawbone — from the carcass, possibly, of some pre-historic animal. Large holes in the jawbone showed where the teeth had been.

It is their intention to start planting on Junction Key by fall, Mr. Grossman said. Fruits and vegetables will be set out on a 100-acre tratc (sic) first, with plans to enlarge the area of planting as it is found advisable. The glade land isto (sic) be set to tomatoes and other vegetables, such as eggplant, beans, and potatoes, throughout the winter season.

With the coming of the Seaboard Air Line Railroad into this district, the Grossmans expect to construct a spur from the main line into their acreage, to provide for transportation of the vegetables to the markets.

___________________________________________________________

Samuel F. Grossman, Sr. was born in Hungary on October 27, 1861 and immigrated to this country with his parents, Marcus and Anna, in 1863. In 1880, with his father, he started in the paper box manufacturing business, establishing the Novelty Paper Box Company. In 1882, along with 4 other men, he filed the incorporation papers for the B’nai Jeshurun temple in Cleveland, Ohio. In January 1906, the business was incorporated as the Grossman Paper Box Company, according to the book A History of Cleveland, Ohio, published by the S. J. Clarke Publishing Co. in 1910. The 1900 census described him as a “capitalist”, which seems to be the term used to describe wealthy businessmen in those days.

In 1901, Samuel married Dora Bryan and they had 3 children: Marcus L., Samuel F., and Dora Violet. Marcus L. (Mark) lived in Coral Gables and was a real estate salesman. After the real estate boom crashed in the late 1920s, he apparently returned to school, where he acquired the education necessary to become a construction engineer in New York by 1940. I wasn’t able to find out much about Samuel F., Jr. or Dora Violet.

If you look at David Torcise’s homesteaders map by clicking on the link at the bottom of the right sidebar on this website (you must have Google Earth installed on your computer), you will see Grossman’s Hammock on it. It is in section 55-37-25. The Kendall Gliderport, established by Mary Gaffney, was in a portion of the Grossman Tropical Farms Company’s plat of 55-37-36, recorded in plat book 30, page 54 of the records of Dade County. Samuel Grossman was the president and Marcus was the secretary of the Tropical Farms Company. The Kendall Gliderport was closed after 1998 when the land was acquired by the federal government as part of its plan to enlarge Everglades National Park.

It is unclear which township the Grossmans purchased or even if they purchased an entire township. If it was township 55 south, range 38 east, it consisted of 23,040 acres and stretched from S.W. 184th St. north to Kendall Drive (S.W. 88th St.) and from Krome Avenue (S.W. 177 Avenue) to theoretical S.W. 237th Avenue. But township 55 south, range 38 east does not include Grossman’s Hammock, so it is possible that they purchased township 55 south, range 37 east. Or it is possible that they bought a portion of a township. Without access to the land records, it is impossible to tell.

With the crash of the real estate boom in Dade County, starting in late 1926, shortly after this article was written, the Grossman’s plans were dramatically altered. The property became the site of an oil drilling operation conducted by the Miami Shipbuilding Company in April, 1944, which is the origin of the sulphur spring that was a popular destination after Mark Grossman opened the Mineral Springs and Lake Chekika park to the public in 1954. In 1970, the State of Florida purchased the park for $950,000 ($6.2 million in 2018 dollars) and renamed it Grossman Hammock State Park. In 1991, it was donated to the federal government to be added as part of Everglades National Park.

It is very interesting to read this article from our present viewpoint. When the article was written, everyone was a booster and an optimist who believed in a limitless future. Depressions have a way of returning people to reality, though. The railroad spur from the Seaboard Coast Line was never built, a bitter fight continues between the land owners in the so-called 8.5 square mile area and the Department of Environmental Resource Management in Miami-Dade County, the wildlife is gone and the well was plugged in 1985 to keep its brackish water, flowing from the Floridan Aquafer, from contaminating the drinking water supplies for Miami-Dade County.

Mark lived in Miami until 1990, when he moved to Houston to be closer to family. He died on December 21, 1998 in Houston, Harris County, Texas. His mother, Dora Bryan Grossman, died in 1952 in Miami.

Rev. Joseph M. Cormack

Posted on February 20, 2016 by JeffOctober 28, 2019

By Jeff Blakley

In this article, my goal is to provide more information about the Reverend J. M. Cormack, whose name appears in other accounts written about the early history of the Florida City and Homestead areas. In those accounts, his name is usually given as J.M. Cormack or Rev. J.M. Cormack but there are no sources given for any of the statements made in those essays.

J. M. Cormack’s full name was Joseph Meek Cormack. His father was James S. Cormack, a teamster, born about 1825 in New Brunswick, Canada.¹ His mother was Mary Jane Meek.² There were at least two children born of this union: William R. and Joseph. James married, second, Elizabeth H. “Jane” Claiborne before 1868. She was 22 years his junior and together, they had five children: John, George, Lillie, Irving and Maude.³ ⁴ Joseph’s father established a successful teamster business in Junction City, Kansas in March of 1868⁵ and his brother William, who was two years older than he, worked with him. James was apparently a successful businessman, for he was able to send Joseph to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois in 1875.⁶ The family had come from Pennsylvania, where Joseph and William had been born.⁷ James and Jane separated in early 1884, when Jane asked for temporary alimony from the court in Junction City, Kansas,⁸ and she sued for divorce in September of that same year.⁹

Joseph Meek Cormack was born on February 28, 1855 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois receiving his A.B. degree in 1881 and was a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity. He received his Bachelor of Divinity degree from the Garrett Biblical Institute in 1883.¹⁰ ¹¹ Garrett was a graduate school of theology associated with the United Methodist Church, located on the campus of Northwestern University. On November 27, 1884, he married Jane H. Marshall in Charter Grove, DeKalb County, Illinois.¹² She was born on December 19, 1859 in Charter Grove. She graduated from Sycamore High School and went on to receive a Bachelor of Literature degree from Northwestern and was a member of the Ossoli Society, which was named after Sarah Margaret Fuller, an early feminist. She was also a charter member of the Beta Chapter of the Alpha Phi sorority. She taught school for several years in Charter Grove, near Sycamore and then was the superintendent of the infant department of the Sunday School at St. Paul’s Church in Chicago in 1884.¹³

Joseph was admitted to the Rock River Conference in Illinois on trial in October of 1882 and then preached for two years at Leland, IL. He then was sent to East Paw Paw, Il and finally to St. Paul’s M. E. Church in Chicago in 1884,¹⁴ where he met Jennie Marshall.

Joseph and Jane (or Jennie, as she was known) had two children, Joseph Marshall Cormack, born August 8, 1893 and Kimball James Cormack, born February 18, 1900. Jane died of septicemia on March 3, 1900 in the Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago, which was due to “blood poisoning” after the birth of Kendall.¹⁵ Joseph and his son, Joseph M. are enumerated in Rockford in the 1900 census, taken on June 5, 1900.

On September 4, 1902, at the age of 47, Joseph married Maude Evangeline Miller in Rockford, Illinois. His new bride was born on February 14, 1875 and was 20 years younger than he. They most likely met through their mutual church activities. She was associated with the Court Street Church in Rockford,¹⁶ while he was preaching at New Milford and Kishwaukee. Maude, like his first wife, was an accomplished woman. She had graduated from Winnebago High School and then attended both Northwestern University and Rockford College. She taught at Lanark High School in 1899 and in the Rockford public schools until her marriage to Rev. Cormack.¹⁷ By his second marriage, Rev. Cormack had another son, Elbert Miller Cormack, who was born on August 13, 1905.¹⁸

After his first wife died, Joseph left his newborn son, Kimball James Marshall, in the care of his deceased wife’s sister Mary, who, having a child of her own, decided to give the little boy to her parents, Thomas Marshall and her mother Rachel, apparently without consulting with the boy’s father. There had been bad blood between the Rev. Cormack, a poor man who had married into wealth, and his in-laws since the birth of Kimball. This ultimately resulted in a long-running battle between Joseph and his in-laws over the custody of Kimball. In 1905, Joseph kidnapped his young son¹⁹ and published a 117 page pamphlet justifying his actions. He fled to Appleton, Wisconsin with his son, only returning to Sycamore and his church in McHenry after being awarded custody by the appellate court.²⁰ By 1910, the situation may have been reduced to a simmer, as Kimball was enumerated in the census of that year, dated April 16, as living with his father in Chicago. That does not mean that he was actually living with his father, though – census data is not proof, in and of itself.²¹

It is possible that Rev. Cormack came to South Florida at the insistence of the Methodist Church. The custody battle had been an ongoing scandal in the Rockford area and the situation very likely didn’t sit well with the elders of the Rock River District of the Methodist Church – North.²² The church hierarchy may have wanted to establish a church in this area and they may have used that goal as a way to try to cool off the confrontation between Rev. Cormack and his in-laws.

If the church hierarchy thought that some distance between the warring parties would help the situation, it didn’t work, for there was a short note in the April 19, 1912 issue of the South Florida Banner reprinted, without attribution, from the Rockford Daily Register-Gazette in Illinois,²³ a story which reported that Rev. J.M. Cormack had come from his home in Detroit, Florida to try to gain custody of his 12 year old son, Kimball Carmack. That short notice, printed in the Homestead newspaper by a fellow Methodist preacher, concealed a great deal, because an account in the Rockford, Illinois Morning Star described a foiled kidnap attempt by Rev. Cormack and two men whom he had hired to help him. They failed in their attempt and it was stated that Kimball’s grandparents were “wealthy people and are determined to try to gain possession of the boy.”²⁴ That was true because Thomas and Rachel Marshall were among the wealthiest people in DeKalb County. They owned 1,000 acres of farmland in 1917.

Rev. Cormack left Chicago shortly after April 16, 1910, when he was enumerated in the 1900 census and purchased two lots in early November in Detroit, where he planned to erect a general store.²⁵ He named it the 7¢ Store.²⁶ On January 28, 1911, he filed for his homestead in the Longview neighborhood, west of Detroit. He claimed 160 acres – the E 1/2 of the NE 1/4 of 34-57-38 and the S 1/2 of the NW 1/4 of 35-57-38. His neighbors were Roy O. Marsh, the surveyor, Hugh H. Ewing, a prominent businessman in Homestead later on and Henning F. Redin, who owned a barber shop in Homestead. His property was on both sides of Richard Road, south of Lucille (S.W. 360th St.) Drive.

Rev. Joseph A. Kahl, another early Methodist minister in this area, had not yet moved to Homestead in 1910. Kahl’s first assignment, in 1910, was in Fort Lauderdale and he lived in Miami until early 1912. Rev. Cormack was the first known preacher of the Methodist Church – North to arrive in this area. It may have been that because Rev. Cormack was so consumed with his custody battle that his ministry suffered and the church hierarchy sent Rev. Kahl to this area to assist Rev. Cormack.

He needed help, because his troubles were not over. In early 1913, his wife, who was then living in Long Beach, California, sued him for divorce, charging him with cruelty. He counter-sued, charging that she had deserted him.²⁷ Cormack’s obsession with obtaining custody of his son very likely had a negative impact on his marriage to Maude.

After the divorce (she is shown as “married” in the 1920 census of Rockford, Illinois), his ex-wife went to live with her parents in Rockford, where she became active in art and nature conservation circles. A notice that appeared in the Rockford, Illinois Morning Star in 1919 stated that Mrs. Maude M. Cormack, a member of the Nature Study society in Winnebago County, met with others to discuss ways of raising funds for the Illinois Audubon Society.²⁸ She was a member of the Nature Study society for more than 40 years. Maude never re-married and died on June 28, 1967 in a nursing home in Pisgah, Butler County, Ohio. She had lived with her son, Elbert, in Hamilton County, Ohio, prior to her death.

Rev. Cormack’s son, Joseph Marshall, graduated from Northwestern University with a B.A. in 1913 and went on to attend Yale University in 1914. His son’s home town was shown as Detroit, Florida.²⁹ During the summer of 1913, between the time he graduated from Northwestern and enrolled at Yale, he came to Detroit to help in his father’s store.³¹ After the war was over, he established his law practice while living with his uncle, John S. Cormack, in Eastland County, Texas.³²

Rev. Cormack made the social rounds and preached in churches when he wasn’t busy in his store, the Florida City Mercantile Co. In 1915, he branched out and began selling packing crates of all kinds.

Florida City Mercantile Co.³³

In early March of 1916, Cormack had almost completed a warehouse addition to his store to accommodate his “increasing trade.”³⁴ The warehouse was likely in the rear of his storefront, as Morris Garfunkel, a furniture merchant from Key West, had erected a two-story building next to Cormack’s store in late 1914.³⁵ He attended the May Day celebration held at Redland on May 1, 1916³⁶ and preached for 6 weeks at the Florida City Methodist Church during the absence of Rev. C. G. Nelson, who went to Oklahoma.³⁷ In July, Rev. Cormack’s son came for a visit and they enjoyed a fishing trip out into the bay with members of the Becker family.³⁸ In early 1918, the son who was the center of his earlier custody battles, Kimball James, came to visit. James had applied to the Naval Academy in Annapolis and came down from Sycamore, Illinois, to visit his father while he waited to be admitted.³⁹ Since Rev. Cormack had two sons in the service, it was no surprise to see that he purchased Liberty Bonds at the annual May Day festival, held in Redland on May 1, 1918.⁴⁰

On March 20, 1919, Rev. Cormack held a clearance sale at his store⁴¹ and on July 3, it was noted in the newspaper that Mr. and Mrs. J. M. Leach had taken over management of the store.⁴² John M. Leach was the father of Marjorie Iva Leach, who married Ben Archer of Key West in 1921. The family had moved to Florida City in 1916.⁴³ Ben and Marjorie established The Homestead Leader in 1923. Cormack’s health, never very robust, apparently took a turn for the worse, as he left for a sanitorium in New York on August 1.⁴⁴ He returned in early September, having been treated at the Methodist hospital in Brooklyn.⁴⁵ The nature of his illness was not stated, but it was likely tuberculosis.

By June of 1920, when J. H. Dietz moved into “the Carmack (sic) tenement” and was “assisting Mr. Carmack (sic) in the store” in Florida City,⁴⁶ it was apparent that Rev. Cormack was no longer taking an active part in his business. He continued to be active in the community though, preaching at the Methodist Church in Florida City and also preaching in Coconut Grove. In April of 1922, the Miami Herald reported that he had sold the stock of goods in his store to Bevis & Roberts, though he retained ownership of the building.⁴⁷

In the summer of 1922, Cormack moved to Miami, probably to seek treatment for his illness. In early September, Cormack sold his properties in Florida City, which included “308 acres of glade and pine land, 8 town lots and several store buildings” to George McKinnon of Miami.⁴⁸ After selling his holdings, Mr. Cormack turned around and signed a 98 year lease on the Arcade Hotel in Miami for $50,000 from the buyer of his properties, George A. McKinnon.⁴⁹ McKinnon was a partner in the Ryan-McKinnon Realty Co. and a prominent Miami businessman.⁵⁰ The hotel was located at 135 N.E. 1st St. and was a three-story building with 31 rooms, built in 1921.

In his obituary, entitled “Rev J. M. Cormack Dies in Miami Sanitarium,” it was noted that “[f]or the last year, Mr. Cormack made Miami his home, and had been living at 12 S.E. Second street.” It was further noted that “[h]e came south for his health, which he never did regain fully, although he seemed to improve considerably at times.”⁵¹ Joseph died on December 31, 1923 in Miami and was buried in Woodlawn Park Cemetery⁵² in Miami on January 3, 1924.

Reverend Cormack’s story is an interesting one – one that demonstrates the need for us to not romanticize the past. He was a human being, like all of us, and he had his successes and his failures. An objective assessment of him is probably not possible at this late date, but I hope that this article has shown some dimensions of his life that were not previously known. Unlike so many other pioneers in this area, he did not seem to have had any kinship ties with anyone else in the community and because of his family troubles, it does not appear that any of his children lived in this area either. According to his obituary, he died in a sanitarium in Miami. No family members are mentioned as being present and only his congregation, if he had one (he was retired, according to his death record), mourned his passing.
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