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, 1909.1 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, 1915.2 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 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.
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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 so few histories of South Dade have been written, the vast majority of people now living in the south end of Dade County have no idea how important the Florida East Coast Railway was to the development of this area.

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

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 tell them about 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. F.E.C., Seth Bramson, and tells the tale of the F.E.C. 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. The F.E.C. imported cheap pineapples from Cuba and set discriminatory freight rates for local producers, thus driving 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 F.E.C.’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.

John W. & Florence M. Hunt

Historic South Dade Posted on by

By Jeff Blakley

Florence Hunt, like Dr. John B. Tower, is lionized in the existing historical accounts of this area. Why that is so is an interesting question because, just like the other unmentioned doctors in this area, there were many more women who nursed others than Florence Hunt.

John Wilbur Hunt was born on December 18, 1865 in Huntsville, Choctaw County, Mississippi. John Jackson Hunt and Mary Eliza Cook, John Wilbur’s parents, had settled in Choctaw County in the early 1840s. John J. claimed 40 acres in the southeast quarter of section 9, township 17N, range 8E in Choctaw County and had proved it up on September 1, 18483 In 1871, Montgomery County was formed from Choctaw and Carroll Counties4 and Huntsville was now just over the county line in Montgomery County. Huntsville is hilly and forested – the economy there was not based on cotton, as was true further west in the county. John’s father was a farmer with $2,340 in real estate and $735 in his personal estate.5 Sometime prior to 1880, John J. Hunt moved his family to Burrton, in Harvey County, Kansas.6 John Wilbur Hunt, 15, was enumerated there, with his four sisters, all older than he. Burrton was established in 1873 and incorporated in 1878. What role John Jackson Hunt played in this, if any, is unknown. Both John J. and his wife Mary are buried in the Burrton Cemetery.

Florence Higbee was born in December, 1873 in Pleasant Grove, Coles County, Illinois.7 Her parents were Harvey and Mary Jane Higbee and she had four brothers and a sister.8 Harvey claimed a 160 acre homestead in Greenwood County and proved it up in 1883 but then moved to Edmond, Oklahoma. His daughter, Florence M., married John W. Hunt on May 27, 1892 in Logan County. Edmond is in Oklahoma County, just across the county line from Logan. Florence’s parents are buried in the Gracelawn Cemetery in Edmond. Edmond was established right after the great Oklahoma land run on April 22, 1889. It is possible that John W. Hunt participated in that event and why he moved from Burrton, Kansas to Edmond, Oklahoma.

John was 26 at the time and Florence was 18. They had 4 children: Harry Houston (22 October 1893 – 10 September 1983), Wilbur Wesley (20 Aug 1895 – 8 Dec 1965), Ruby L. (27 Jan 1893 – 11 Sept. 1927), and Maude Vivian (8 October 1904 – 2 March 1983). All of the children were born in Edmond, Oklahoma, 100 miles northeast of Lawton, Oklahoma, where James M. Powers was from. Even though the Hunts were from Oklahoma, it is unlikely that the Hunts knew the Powers.

According to Jean Taylor in her book, The Villages of South Dade, John was a U.S. marshal in Edmond, Oklahoma. In 1904, John Hunt, along with eight other deputies, was dismissed from his position after their supervisor, “Ben F. Hackett, United States marshal of the central district of the Territory,” was fired by President Theodore Roosevelt for “incompetence and failure to punish his subordinates for misconduct.”9 Taylor also wrote that Hunt owned a bakery and a restaurant there and that his son, Wilbur, was the baker. An advertisement in The Daily Oklahoman, offering a “first-class bakery and restaurant for sale cheap” probably confirms that.10 11 The advertisement gave the name “F. M. Hunt” and the location was McLoud, Oklahoma. McLoud is about 42 miles southeast of Edmond. John apparently came to this area first, leaving his wife and family behind in Oklahoma. Taylor wrote that John Hunt “owned a bakery and restaurant there and his son, Wilbur, worked as a baker. He stayed in Miami awhile having a good time and then purchased two lots in Detroit right in back of Edward Stiling’s home. He sent for his wife, Florence, his two sons, Wilbur and Harry, and his two daughters, Ruby and Maude, who arrived in Detroit in January, 1913.”12

Hunt lived in Homestead before he purchased his lots in Detroit. He first worked as a baker for William Nobles13 in the bakery Nobles operated in a wooden building owned by J. U. Free14 that later was purchased by Charles T. Fuchs, Sr.

In April of 1913, “Mr. J. W. Hunt and wife with two sons and two daughters have moved in the Watson residence at Detroit. Mr. Hunt and sons are now clearing their two lots preparatory to building their new home.”15

Taylor wrote that John was a hard-working man, well-respected in the community, and was elected as an alderman for the new Florida City Town Council in 1914.16 He was also a Town Marshal in 1917 and commuted to Key West where he worked as a carpenter in the summer of 1917. Because of her husband’s heavy drinking, Florence left him in 1917 and he ended up living in “a shack out in the Everglades.”17 John’s sister, Mrs. A. G. Collins, who lived in Tampa, visited him in 191818 and he had Reese Self arrested on a warrant charging him with enticing his 14-year-old daughter Maude from her home in 1919.19 Perhaps his marriage was rocky and perhaps that is why his wife moved her hospital to Homestead but he did not live in “a shack out in the Everglades” before 1919. A realty transfer notice that appeared in the July 24, 1920 issue of the Miami Herald shows that M. J. Porter sold lot 6, block 39 in Florida City to J. W. Hunt.20 This lot was four blocks south of Palm Ave. (now Palm Drive) and one block west of the railroad. In 1919, Andrew D. Clinton was “hauling lumber for J. W. Hunt seven miles down the canal to build a camp where Mr. Hunt is intending to put in a crop.”21 John W. Hunt died on July 29, 1929, at the age of 63, and was buried in Section C, Lot 41, grave 1SE at Palms Memorial in Naranja on August 2. There is no marker on the grave. His obituary stated that he had engaged in “small truck farming on a three-acre plot in the Florida City east glade” for the last nine years.22

Florence was an experienced nurse but not the only nurse or midwife in the area. There were many others. But she was the only one who went on to establish a hospital. The first known reference to her duties as a nurse was in 1914, when she was “on a case at Homestead.”23 Florence rode with Dr. Tower on his motorcycle at first, before opening her hospital in Florida City in 1917. Her hospital was in a “big 2 story house on Old Dixie Highway, 1 block north of Palm Ave.”24 This house was originally a smaller house and was extensively remodeled by Andrew Terburg in 1925 for the then-owner, Florida City Mayor Bryan H. Edwards.25

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The former Hunt Hospital. Photo courtesy of Jeff Blakley

In June of 1919, Florence bought two lots in the Jane D. Tower Addition to Homestead, where she built her new hospital.26 In July, she contracted with Ralph O. Moon to build the hospital. It was to be finished by September 1.27 The Miami Herald said that “[c]ontracts are being let for the erection of a new building in Homestead into which Mrs. J. W. Hunt plans to remove the Florida City hospital. By being in Homestead, the hospital will be more centrally located and more convenient to patients.”28 Work started on August 729 and, in an interesting difference from now, the town Council issued a building permit on August 14.30 The Florence Hunt Hospital was located on the south side of N.W. 4th St. (Palmetto at the time) in the middle of the block. The building was quickly finished and the hospital moved from Florida City to Homestead. The Miami Herald noted that “loss of the hospital is a misfortune to Florida City, not easily repaired.”31 32

She also apparently owned lot 25 in the same subdivision, because in 1927, Florence’s address was 110 N.W. 4th St., which is at the intersection of N.W. 1st Avenue and 4th St. and not in the middle of the block, where the hospital was located. Florence operated her Florence Hunt Hospital until she became ill in 193833 and had to close it. Florence Mahallia Hunt died on September 4, 1940 at the age of 66.34 35 She was buried in Section B, Lot 80, grave 1N in the Palms Woodlawn Cemetery in Naranja, next to her daughter and son-in-law, Maude V. and Wilbert Leppanen.

Revised August 21, 2019
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