James Rufus Dorsey

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

I am indebted to Ed McMichael for much of the information in this post. Without his help, it couldn’t have been written. Or, perhaps I should say, a much leaner version with much less information in it would have been written.

Jean Taylor, in her book The Villages of South Dade, wrote a short piece on Ruf, as he was called, and his family. He was also known as “JR”. In this post, I wanted to create a more detailed picture of Ruf than Jean was able to do in her book.

James Rufus Dorsey was born on October 7, 1883 in Lovejoy, Clayton County, Georgia, which had been carved out of Henry County in 1858. The town of Lovejoy was founded on September 16, 1861. James’ great-grandfather, John Dorsey, along with a brother, Frank, had settled in Henry County, coming from Maryland shortly after 1800. Stephen Green Dorsey, one of John’s sons and James’ grandfather, became one of the largest landowners in Henry County and also owned more slaves than anyone else. It shouldn’t be surprising that Stephen Green Dorsey was a judge in Atlanta – prominent landowners often hold important positions in their communities. John J. Dorsey, James’ father, was born in 1850 and died on the 1st of January, 1889, due to pneumonia contracted while helping to battle a fire that destroyed a large portion of the town of Lovejoy. After his death, his widow and her family moved a short distance to East Point, Georgia, which is in Fulton County, where they lived on Dorsey Avenue.

James grew up in East Point and apparently had a good deal of mechanical talent because by 1910 he shows up in the census of East Point as a “telephone repairer.” The first telephone company in the Atlanta area had been established in 1879 and by the mid-1880s, the Southern Bell Telephone & Telegraph Co. had been formed. Southern Bell opened a switching office in East Point sometime between 1902 and 1905. Ed McMichael has a photograph of three operators at the East Point exchange, taken on January 10, 1905. One of the operators, Jennie Tom Brown, became James’ wife.

A second telephone company, the Atlanta Telephone and Telegraph Co., began in 1899 – the first AT&T, not to be confused with the other American Telephone and Telegraph company (AT&T), which was formed in 1885 as a subsidiary of the American Bell Telephone Company to build and operate a long-distance network. As is often the case, this new upstart grew rapidly and soon overtook Southern Bell in numbers of subscribers. However, that was not to last for very long, as Southern Bell bought out the Atlanta Telephone and Telegraph company in 1919. By that time, James had been in Homestead for at least 6 years.

James and Jennie were married in Jacksonville, Florida on August 12, 1909. Since Jacksonville was the northern terminus of the Flagler System and James was an adventuresome young man, he may have decided to head on down to Florida to see what everyone was talking about. This was the time, of course, when Flagler was building his Key West Extension and you can be sure that word of that project was wide-spread. Perhaps he and Jennie were not quite ready for the big move, though, because on April 25, 1910, they were enumerated in East Point, living with Jennie’s parents, Thomas J. and Martha A. Brown.

James and Jennie’s first child, James Rufus Dorsey, Jr., was born on November 7, 1910 but died the next day. After settling their affairs in East Point, James and Jennie moved back down to St. Augustine, where their first daughter, Marian Elizabeth (“Mannie”), was born on December 14, 1912.

John U. Free and James D. Redd had met while working on the railroad in the Keys but it is unlikely that James Dorsey worked on the Extension. In a short item that appeared in the November 14, 1913 issue of The South Florida Banner, it was stated that “J. R. Dorsey, wife and daughter from East Point, Ga. has been hired by the Dade County Telephone Company as lineman and will be here about the 15th or soon after.” When they arrived, they lived in a rented house that was owned by J. U. Free on what is now N. E. 5th Avenue. The Dorsey’s second daughter, Francis Aire, was born in that house on September 10, 1915. It is not known how James Dorsey came to be hired to work for the Dade County Telephone Company, established in 1911, but there is a possibility that J. R. knew J. U. Free from the time when they both lived in the Atlanta area – before J. U. Free headed south. If J. R. (“Ruf”) had no prior knowledge of a job working for J. U. Free, his experience in East Point surely came in handy, because by September 12, 1918, he was the manager of the Dade County Telephone Company.

The Dade County Telephone Company grew to have 380 subscribers by July, 1923, when it was purchased by Frank Shutts, who also owned The Miami Daily Herald in Miami and was the president of Miami’s telephone company, The South Atlantic Telephone & Telegraph Co. The Dade County Telephone Company served the area from Florida City all the way up to Kendal (often spelled with one “l” in those days). James was a man of many talents. In addition to being employed by the Dade County Telephone Company and its successors, the Homestead Telephone Company and Southern Bell, he farmed, bought and sold real estate and managed the Homestead School Bus company that his wife, Jennie, had established in 1923. The company picked up children and carried them to and from Florida City and Neva King Cooper elementary and Homestead High school until the early 1950s.

James Rufus Dorsey died on May 10, 1973, at the age of 89. He is buried in Palms Woodlawn Cemetery in Naranja.

I will post more about the connections between the Dorseys and other families in Homestead in the future. For now, I want to keep my posts focused on people who settled in this area before 1920.

Two Early Developers in Homestead

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

I started out my working life as a rod man for a civil engineering company and I’ve never lost my fascination with land records as a rich source of information on the residents of a particular area. Ed McMichael informed me a few days ago that his grandfather, James Rufus Dorsey, had rented a house on what is now N.E. 5th Avenue when he came to Homestead in 1913. It didn’t dawn on me until I had devoted some thought to that information that Ruf’s house was located on the land that John Ulric Free had patented in 1910. That discovery set me off in another direction, because I had read in Jean Taylor’s book that J.U. Free had “bought 50 acres and cut it up into lots for Homestead’s first subdivision.”

Jean Taylor spent 16 years working on her book, The Villages of South Dade and it is an indispensable book for anyone researching history in this area. Without it, we would have lost a great deal of information about the early history of this area. However, and I’m certain Ms. Taylor would agree, her book, because it is based on oral history, should not be relied upon to provide the definitive answer to any particular question. Instead, it should used as a guide. Today, researchers are blessed with vastly easier access to primary sources and information that Taylor simply had no way of obtaining. She did a wonderful job and provided a splendid introduction to the history of this area, but we, as researchers, need to try to confirm what she wrote.

The subdivision that Ms. Taylor refers to is that of J.U. Free’s subdivision of his homestead, recorded in Book 1, page 9. Free’s subdivision was of his entire homestead, 160 acres, and it was recorded on March 2, 1910, before J.U. Free was granted the patent on his homestead on June 13, 1910. That land was subsequently further subdivided, starting in 1913 with Free’s 2nd Addition to Homestead. Earlier, in December of 1910, a Mr. Walbridge had subdivided the 5 acres encompassed by Mowry and N.E. 1st Street and Krome Avenue and N.W. 1st Avenue. Real estate speculation and development was intense in South Dade at that time, something that seems to have continued ever since.

As I was browsing through the early resolutions on the City of Homestead website, I came across the name R.F. Tatum repeatedly – he was the first mayor of the Town of Homestead. I had tried to research him before, but hadn’t had much luck. When I looked at the plat of Tatum’s Ridgedale Addition, though, I discovered his wife’s name, Jessie R. That proved most helpful in my research. The plat is dated June 26, 1917.

Tatum s Ridgedale Addition

Tatum’s Ridgedale Addition

R.F. Tatum’s full name was Russell Fleming Tatum and he was born on January 1, 1878, one of the children of Gaines Webster Marquis Tatum (1852-1930).

R F Tatum

Russell Fleming Tatum’s WWI Draft Registration card

Note Russell’s occupation (real estate agent) and his address, 1728 Brickell Ave., Miami, at the time of his registration, which was September 9, 1918. He had resigned his position as Mayor of the Town of Homestead by this time and James D. Redd was filling the position temporarily. Note also Russell’s employer: Tatum Bros.

The Tatum Bros. were Judson H. (1859-1923 – J.H.), (Bethel Blanton (1864-1943) – B.B.), Johnson Reed (1866-1938 – J.R.) and Smiley Mosteller (1870-1935 – S.M.) The Tatum Brothers were enormously influential in the development of Dade County. B.B. bought the Miami Metropolis newspaper in 1899 and he and a brother “owned an abstract company, dealt in acreage and city lots, both in a large way, and built the first street railway in 1906.” They were active in the Baker’s Haulover area of Miami Beach, in addition to operating as the Miami Land & Development Company, which owned 35 sections of land east of Florida City and played an important role in the history of Florida City. They also operated the dredge that dug part of the canal from Miami up to Lake Okeechobee.

The settling of the Homestead area, as well as the rest of Dade County, was a tale of rampant real estate speculation. Some were better than others at it and they became very wealthy. Others failed miserably. It is a twisted and tangled tale that will likely never be unraveled but I’m fascinated by it and will be posting more on the subject in the future.

Alexander Catell Graw

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

While reading an article in Tequesta by Jeanne Bellamy, I ran across the name A.C. Graw, which was familiar to me from viewing a photograph of what is thought to be his yacht, moored in the Florida City canal near what is now the intersection of Krome Avenue and East Palm Drive.

Courtesy of the Florida Pioneer Museum

Bellamy had written that “The Homestead Enterprise was founded in 1912 by J.A. Kahl, a Methodist minister, who sold his interest in 1915 to A.C. Graw, former Philadelphia publisher.” She went on to write that Graw and his family were on their way to California aboard their yacht when their trip was aborted by the outbreak of WWI. According to Bellamy, Graw and his yacht entered the Florida City canal on February 16, 1915. Bellamy’s account of how Graw came to the Homestead area is incorrect but to tell the full story is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that Graw likely came here because of his friendships with men involved in the temperance movement, most notably, Joseph A. Kahl, the owner and publisher of the South Florida Banner.

So who was A.C. Graw? His full name was Alexander Catell Graw and he was born on November 14, 1860 in Haddonfield, Camden, New Jersey. His father, the Rev. Jacob Bentley Graw, born on October 24, 1832 to George and Louisa Graw, was a Methodist minister who was a prominent member of the temperance movement. In 1901, Alexander Graw wrote a biography of his father, Forty-Six Years in the Methodist Ministry: Life of J.B. Graw, D.D. 1832-1901. If you are interested in reading portions of the book, you can download it from this website by clicking on the Researchers tab in the menu.

As early as 1880, Alexander’s occupation was as a “printer.” A fierce opponent of alcohol, like his father, he published a prohibition newspaper in Camden, NJ for nearly 20 years. Alexander owned the printing firm Graw, Garrigues & Graw in Camden, New Jersey. In 1900, at the age of 40, he married his wife, Jennie, who bore him two children: George Lamonte (16 February 1901 – 26 July 1980) and Elizabeth I., born about 1904. Graw named his son after George M. La Monte, who ran for governor of New Jersey in 1889 on the Prohibition ticket. George L. Graw was very active in agricultural circles in Homestead.

At the time of the 1910 census, Alexander was a magazine publisher who lived in Haddonfield, Camden, New Jersey. According to the demographics that I looked at, Haddonfield is a very upscale community with a median household income in 2010 of $112,105. Median means half-way, so half of Haddonfield residents had a household income of more than $112,105 and half less. Haddonfield is located about 10 miles east of Philadelphia, on the other side of the Delaware River. No doubt, Alexander Graw commuted to his job in Philadelphia. Perhaps he kept his yacht moored in the Delaware River.

In the 1920 census, he appears in precinct 24 in Florida City. He apparently didn’t stay that long in Florida City, though. Jeanne Bellamy wrote that Graw “started the first newspaper in Hialeah at the instance of its developers, James H. Bright and Glenn Curtiss.” On June 14, 1923, The Homestead Enterprise reported that Mr. and Mrs. A.C. Graw, of Hialeah, had received visitors from Florida City. He still had local connections, though, because in that same issue there was an advertisement on page 10 naming him as one of the directors of the Citizens Bank of Homestead. By 1930, Graw and his wife were living in Dania, in Broward County. He was still a newspaper publisher, at least according to the census.

In the April 27, 1918 issue of the Miami Herald, it was reported that A.C. Graw was the editor of the Homestead Enterprise. That continued through at least October 20, 1920 but ended before 1923, when he handed off the responsibilities of the position to his son, George. In addition to what the censuses show, Alexander undertook any job that needed to be printed. He apparently purchased and installed printing equipment for newspapers, book publishers or any other business that required his services.

During the boom years in Homestead, a new newspaper, owned by Ben Archer, the Homestead Leader, started publication in the late summer of 1923. As the Great Depression deepened in the late 1920s and advertising revenue fell, Ben Archer purchased the Homestead Enterprise in late 1931 and the first issue of the Homestead Leader-Enterprise was published on November 6, 1931.

Alexander Graw died at the home of his daughter, Isabel E. Ford, in Jackson, Mississippi on January 19, 1931 and is buried in the family burial ground in Beverly, NJ.

The Florida East Coast Railway

Historic South Dade Posted on by

By Jeff Blakley

In this post, I’m going to detour from my previous posts about pioneering families so that I can bring the role of the Florida East Coast Railway into the picture. Because history is not a popular subject to read about, the vast majority of people now living in Dade County have no idea how important the Florida East Coast Railway was to the development of this part of Florida.

When we have a visitor at the Museum, one of the displays that I direct their attention to is the one about the FEC.

FEC Display 1024x768

While they are looking at the display, I tell them that the building that houses the Florida Pioneer Museum in Florida City was the station agent’s house, built in 1904 by the Florida East Coast Railway and that it was moved from Homestead, where it was located on S. Flagler Ave., in the mid-1960s. If they are intrigued about the subject, we direct them to two books on the railroad, both available from Amazon and other booksellers: “Speedway to Sunshine: The Story of the Florida East Coast Railway, by Seth Bramson (revised edition, published in 2003) and Florida’s Great Ocean Railway: Building the Key West Extension, by Dan Gallagher, published in 2003. The first book is by Mr. FEC, Seth Bramson, and tells the tale of the FEC from the beginning. Mr. Gallagher’s book is a detailed and fascinating history of the construction of the Key West Extension.

Many visitors are under the mistaken impression, because they learn about the magnificent hotels that Flagler built in St. Augustine, Ormond Beach, West Palm Beach and Miami, that Flagler built his railway for tourism. That is not true: Flagler built his railroad as part of his program to develop the east coast of Florida. Henry Flagler, along with John D. Rockefeller and others, were the founders of Standard Oil and that is where Flagler’s fortune came from. If you’d like to read a very interesting history of Standard Oil, I’d recommend that of Ida Tarbell – she pulls no punches.

Flagler had already built his fortune by the time that his doctor recommended that he take his wife, who was seriously ill, to Florida which, with its warmer climate, might be helpful in her recovery. Unfortunately, that didn’t help and his wife died in 1881. But Flagler had seen Jacksonville and saw a new business venture to embark upon: that of a real estate developer. In short order, Flagler built the Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine and bought three small railroads, improving them by converting them to standard gauge trackage. His railroad reached Daytona by the spring of 1889. Seeing the development to the north of them, landowners south of Daytona began to inquire of Flagler when he would extend his railroad further south. That began in 1892, when Flagler obtained a charter from the State of Florida which granted him permission to build his railroad all the way down to Miami. As far as I know, no one has written a definitive account of how Flagler built his railroad from Daytona down to Miami. However, there is an excellent article, Henry Flagler and the Model Land Company, published in Tequesta in 1996, by William E. Brown and Karen Hudson that goes into considerable detail about the land holdings of the Flagler System and how they came to be. I found it fascinating reading and would encourage readers of this post to read the article – it explains an awful lot that counters the romantic notion that Flagler built his railway for tourism.

In short, Flagler was the last of the late-19th century robber barons. He came to Florida to make money and for no other reason. His railway provided a means for settlers to reach their homesteads and to market their produce. The Key West Extension was built for trade with Cuba and Latin America, not for tourism or any other reason. By importing pineapples from Cuba, with unfavorable tariffs for local producers, the FEC drove pineapple farmers in Dade and Monroe counties out of business. Flagler and his lieutenants were hard-headed businessmen who wheeled and dealt for the most favorable terms for their ventures. That should be abundantly evident to anyone who has a passing familiarity with the Florida East Coast Railway. Unfortunately, it is a story that many do not know.

A very large number of the early settlers in South Dade County were involved in some way with the FEC, if only as their only means to get their produce to market. An objective account of the FEC’s cut-throat business practices has yet to be told. There are a number of hints about the subject in the accounts about early pioneers that I’ve read so far, but no one, to my knowledge, has put them together to shed some light on the subject.