Rev. Joseph A. Kahl – Part I

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

When I first started writing articles for this website, I decided that I would explore the lives of people mentioned in early newspaper articles about Detroit, now known as Florida City. I subsequently posted essays on James M. Powers, William C. Norwood, the Brooker brothers, Bryan H. Edwards, and John and Florence Hunt. With this post, I’m going to switch to Homestead residents and explore the life of the Reverend Joseph Adolph Kahl. It is a fascinating story and one that I could not have written without the able assistance of Linda Bebee, a researcher in South Miami and Louise Kahl Young and Stephen Kahl, both of whom live in Texas. This post will be part of a series, because Joseph Kahl was a very important man in the early history of Homestead and he tragically lost his wife in 1913, barely two years after he moved to this area. The story cannot be told in one post because it would be too long.


J.-A.-Kahl.png

Reverend Joseph A. Kahl, circa 1900
Courtesy of Stephen M. Kahl

Joseph Kahl was born in Rock Island County, Illinois in March of 1871, according to the 1900 census. His death certificate, kindly furnished by Louise Kahl Young, states that he was born on May 12, 1871. He was one of eight children born to Detlief and Wilhelmina Kortrum Kahl. In 1876, when Joseph was just five years old, his mother died and his father re-married to Anna Tegtmeier on March 31, 1877. She brought three of her own children to the marriage and had three more with her new husband, creating a family of two adults and fourteen children.

After his first wife died, Detlief Kahl moved across the Mississippi River to Muscatine County, Iowa. From there, the family moved to Jasper County, where Joseph’s sister, Mary, was born. They then moved to Hardin County, where they settled down and stayed in Sherman Township. The Kahls must have been deeply religious because a Kahl family history states that their home was “the center of religious meetings and a place where traveling ministers would stay en route to their churches.” They must have also placed a high value on education because after Joseph completed his primary education he appeared in the 1900 census of St. Paul, Minnesota, living in the household of Emma Wenger, while he was attending school at Hamline University, a Methodist institution. In 1905, he appears on the Minnesota state census as a clergyman at Hamline University. At that time, he had lived in Minnesota for 9 years – since 1896. As he was 34, it appears that he had completed his seminary work and was a clergyman at the University, because that is what is listed as his occupation.

The Methodist Church sent Joseph to Driscoll, North Dakota, perhaps at his own request. George Kahl, one of Joseph’s brothers, had filed a claim in Burleigh County in 1903 and proved it up in 1908. In 1905, Joseph filed a claim on 160 acres, the N 1/2 of the SE 1/4 and the N 1/2 of the SW 1/4 of section 26 in T138N, R75W in Burleigh County and proved it up on May 2, 1910. A check of the Burleigh County newspapers in the period from 1905 to 1910 reveals a number of instances in which Joseph Kahl is mentioned. He was the pastor of the Methodist Church in McKenzie and preached in a number of other places in the county. On October 11, 1910, he participated in the Methodist Conference in Bismarck. There are no further mentions of Rev. Kahl after that date, so presumably he left for Florida after that date. The town of Driscoll, in Burleigh County, is an important location to keep in mind in this series on Joseph Kahl.

Now, I need to pick up the story of Harriet Mae Woodbury, the future wife of Joseph A. Kahl.

Harriet Mae Woodbury was born in an immigrant wagon on the banks of the Blue Earth River, near Blue Earth, Faribault County, Minnesota on November 1, 1876. Her parents were Charles H. Woodbury, Sr. (1850-1936) and Myra Maude Little (1856-1939). The family moved north, to McDonaldsville, Minnesota in 1880 and then to Ada, Minnesota. They then moved west to Forest River, North Dakota, before moving once again, south, to Abercrombie, North Dakota, about 190 miles east of Driscoll. Sometime between 1906 and 1907, they packed up and moved again, to Driscoll. While all this family moving was going on, Harriet was busy getting an education. She attended primary school in Grand Forks, North Dakota and then went to high school in Montpelier, Vermont, where her aunt, Mrs. C. A. Gale, lived. Finishing high school, she taught school in Abercrombie and Wahpeton in North Dakota. In 1903, she registered at the Still College of Osteopathy in Missouri and graduated in 1905. Somehow, she also found time to file a claim for a homestead on 160 acres in Burke County, North Dakota, way up in the northwest corner of the state, in 1906. There, for a period of time, she taught school in Portal, right on the border with Canada. She didn’t receive a patent on this property, though, as she abandoned the claim in less than a year, deciding instead to do post-graduate work in osteopathy in Los Angeles, California. In the fall of 1907, she returned to Driscoll to visit her parents, who had moved from Abercrombie and entered the hotel business. In an article which appeared in the December 11, 1907 issue of the Bismarck Daily Tribune, we read that “Dr. Harriet M. Woodbury, osteopath physician, is now located in her office at the Woodbury hotel. Dr. Woodbury comes here very highly recommended from Los Angeles, Cal., and Driscoll is to be congratulated in having so good a physician locate here.” On May 28, 1908, Dr. Harriet Woodbury was elected fourth vice-president of the Driscoll Epworth League. Her sister, Ellen A., wife of Irwin Roy Matthews, was elected secretary. The Epworth League was an organization for young people, ages 18-35, in the Methodist Church.

It is not unreasonable to conclude that she met Reverend Joseph A. Kahl through her activities in the Epworth League. On August 20, 1908 she and the Reverend were married. She was 32 and he was 37.

Kahl Marriage

Bismark Daily Tribune, August 22, 1908

In part II of this series, I will continue to explore the lives of Rev. Joseph A. Kahl and his wife, Harriet, after they arrived in South Florida.
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James Daniel Redd

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

How often have you driven south on U.S. 1 and seen the sign designating J. D. Redd Park on the right, at the intersection of N. E. 6th Avenue and the highway? Did you ever wonder who he was?

James Daniel Redd was born on November 12, 18831 in Shaw’s Fork, Windsor Township, Aiken County, South Carolina. The 1900 census shows that James’ parents had 10 children, all 10 of whom were still living. In the 1910 census, he was one of seven children shown, so three of those children had left the household. His parents were Mashack C. (1850 – 1918) and Margaret Annabelle Fouts (1853 – 1927) Redd. They were farmers and James was a farm laborer. When Mashack died on February 6, 1918, his wife and one of his sons, Chester M., wasted no time in settling the estate, selling the farm, livestock, household furnishings and all of the implements in an auction that started on March 1.2

The book Florida: The East Coast, published in 1926, stated that Redd had arrived in Dade County in 1906.3 The April 17, 1942 issue of a newspaper entitled Community Review touting J.D. Redd as a candidate for the Dade County Commission also gave that year for his arrival. When J. D. and his brother Chester were in Aiken for his mother’s funeral in 1927, The Journal and Review reported that he had left for Florida “some twenty years ago.”4 In the 1910 census, James appeared as a “telephone lineman,” living on Quarter Boat #5, along with 19 others, in Upper Matecumbe Key in Monroe County.5 Grier Ralston Smiley, who was the husband of Nora Janet Krome, sister of William J. Krome, lived on the same boat.6 He was the Resident Engineer. Grier’s brother-in-law, Philip L. Wilson,7 the husband of Clara, another sister of William Krome, was the Division Engineer and also lived on Quarter Boat #5. J. D. was obviously working on Flagler’s Key West Extension and knew Krome, who had claimed a homestead in South Dade in 1903.

James married Fanny Ethel Nottage, who was born in Key West in 1883. They were married on January 20, 1914 at the Fleitas house at 719 Eaton Street8 when they were both 31 years old. Fanny was a graduate of the Key West Conservatory and “fine performer” on the piano.9 Fanny’s mother was Marian T. Fleitas, who was born in Florida but whose father was from the Bahamas. Marian’s second husband, Francisco Fleitas, was born in Cuba. He was her second husband as she was married to a Nottage first. Fanny E. Nottage is shown as a “step-daughter” in the Fleitas household in the 1910 census of Key West. Marian’s maiden name was Albury, as her mother, Frances Albury, is also shown in the household. In the April 5, 1912 issue of the South Florida Banner, there is a note that says that “Mrs. F. Feleiter, of Key West, is visiting her cousin, Mrs. W. J. Froedell.” The references are to Marian Albury Fleitas and Maisie I. Parks Tweedell, wife of Walter Jackson Tweedell. How James met Fanny is hard to say, but a possibility is that since Fanny was a cousin of Walter Tweedell’s wife (he married Maisie Parks in Key West in 1904), Marian brought her daughter along with her on her frequent visits to Homestead, where she introduced her to James.

In 1927, Marian’s husband, Francisco, sold cigars from a space in the Redd Building. The Redd building opened the week of November 16, 1922.10

J D Redd

Note the sign for Francisco’s store on the left side of this photograph. He shared space with Benjamin W. Morris, a prominent realtor and developer. Unfortunately, the City of Homestead demolished this entire block in 2017 to make way for Homestead Station, a combination movie theatre and bowling alley with a 7-story parking garage.

In the 1920 census of Homestead, Fanny’s parents were living in the Redd household. Francisco was 71 and Marian T. was also 71. Francisco had been born in Cuba in 1859 and was a naturalized citizen of the United States, being naturalized on May 15, 1893. He was active in Cuban politics and was a supporter of Jose Martí.

James had two brothers who also moved to Homestead. They were Frederick Hubert Redd (26 August 1892 – 18 April 1950) and Chester Mashack Redd (15 May 1880 – 9 April 1954).

Fred owned a dry cleaning business at 10 S. Krome Avenue, next to his brother James’ store, The Men’s Shop, at 4 S. Krome. He was born in Windsor, Aiken County, South Carolina and in 1917, according to his draft card, he was an insurance agent for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in Charleston, S.C. He was not married at that time. He came to Homestead in 1919 and in the 1920 census, he was single and living in a boarding house operated by James and Henrietta Chambliss. He soon opened his dry cleaning business, which he operated until he died on April 16, 1950. Fred married Othelia Fuchs in 1922 and they were living with her father, Charles T. Fuchs, Sr., in 1930. This was in the depths of the Depression – times were hard.

In 1910, James’ older brother Chester, his brother Martin’s widow Kate Shellhouse and her 9 month old daughter Thelma were living with Chester’s parents in Windsor Township.11 Kate was the daughter of a neighboring farmer, Henry Shellhouse. Kate married John H. Brody in November of 191612 but died of pneumonia during the influenza epidemic in 1918. Thelma was then adopted by J. D. “Papa Jim” Redd, who brought her from South Carolina down to Homestead. Chester and his wife came to Homestead in 1914 and purchased 20 acres of Hattie Bauer’s homestead.13 In 1920, Chester lived in a rented house with his second wife, Lottie Pearl Barton Redd and their two sons, Coley, 7 and James, 2. Coley was born on January 3, 1913 in Aiken and was the son of Chester and his first wife. James was the son of Chester and Lottie Pearl. Chester was a farmer for most of his life but also speculated in real estate, as so many of his contemporaries did. In 1930, he was living with his family on N.W. 6th St. and his occupation was given as “truck farmer.” In 1945, Chester’s occupation is given as “laborer” and he was living with his wife and two of his children, Marjory and James. Chester died on April 9, 1954. He and his wife are buried at Palms Memorial.

Of the three brothers, James is the best known. He was very active in civic affairs and was elected County Commissioner for a number of terms. Jean Taylor wrote that James D. Redd met John U. Free while working on Flagler’s railroad in the Keys and that when they came back up to Homestead, they became partners in business. From what I’ve learned, all three brothers were of humble origins and they worked hard to achieve what measure of success they obtained. None of them homesteaded land here or got any other breaks from the government. James must have been the most skilled in dealing with other people, as he was a successful politician who was elected to the Homestead City Council in 1913, the year that Homestead was incorporated. He subsequently served on both the City Council and the Dade County Commission. In 1921, Walter Tweedell resigned from the County Commission because of his failing health and Redd was appointed to take his place. Redd was the County Commissioner representing Homestead from 1921 until the fall of 1942, when he lost the election to Preston B. Bird, 13,178 to 16,824. He served continuously except for 1935-36, when he declined to run for re-election due to health issues. He was a member of the Homestead City Council from 1913 until 1935.

Redd was responsible for a large number of accomplishments. He was instrumental in getting James Sottile to donate the land for Bayfront Park and also worked hard to get Card Sound Road opened. He donated the land where James Archer Smith Hospital was built, got the County to clear and scarify the land that is now the park named after him and assisted in getting the municipal swimming pool next to the light plant on N. Flagler built. His list of achievements runs to many pages – a book could be written about him.

J.D. Redd died on February 24, 1965 at the age of 81. His wife, Fanny, had died on September 17, 1957. He, his wife, and his wife’s mother, Marian, are buried at Palms Woodlawn.

Now, the next time you drive by J.D. Redd Park on Homestead Boulevard, you’ll be able to tell your passengers something about the man for whom the park was named.
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Revised September 4, 2019

Elbert H. Ring

Historic South Dade Posted on by

By Jeff Blakley

While browsing old newspapers on various topics related to early Florida City history, I’ve come across the name E.H. Ring on a couple of occasions. Maybe it is people who go by their initials who intrigue me or something else – I don’t know. But I wondered who this man was. When I happened across his name on an early plat in Florida City, I got even more curious because the plat showed that E. H. Ring and his wife lived in Grayson County, Virginia.

Florida City Heights

Florida City Heights

E. H. Ring’s full name was Elbert Holmes Ring – no wonder he liked to go by his initials! He was born on November 12, 1867, most likely in Grayson County, Virginia because that is where he, his wife and his daughter are buried, in the Summerfield United Methodist Church Cemetery.

Before 1900, at the age 0f 33, he had made his way all the way across the continent to Malheur County, Oregon14, where he lived in Bully Precinct, with his wife, Mamie D. Querollo.15 Mamie was a niece of Katy Prato. Katy’s maiden name was Fopianno and she was the head of household 97.

Mamie D. Querollo was born in 1878 in Beaver Dam township, Butler County, Missouri. Butler County is in southeast Missouri and borders the Mississippi River. Her father, Augustine, was from France and her mother, Maria Fopianno, was Italian.16 She married Elbert H. Ring on February 7, 1897 in Malheur County, Oregon17 and their daughter, Julia, was born on March 21, 1897. Mamie died of complications of childbirth on July 20, 1904.18 In the 1900 census of Malheur County, Charles Becker and his wife, Marie were in household 94 and Elbert and Mamie Ring were in household 97.

Elbert went back to Virginia and married Cora V. Thomas on September 12, 1906 in Grayson County19 and then went back to Malheur County, Oregon, where, on April 28, 1910, he was enumerated as an employee of Charles Becker.

Charles Becker (not the same Charles Becker who lived in Oregon) and his wife Mattie were early residents of Florida City, settling there four years after the Rings. Jean Taylor, in her book, The Villages of South Dade wrote that in his early life, Charles “ran a cattle ranch in North Dakota and Montana.” That is true – the 1930 census shows his son Lawrence as being born in 1897 in Montana and his son Charles H. as being born in North Dakota in 1902.20 Was Charles Becker in Oregon related to the Charles Becker who had lived in Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Canada and California before ending up in Detroit, Florida? Possibly but proving that as true would be difficult, if not impossible. The future Detroit, Florida, Beckers were in Lemon Grove Township, San Diego County, California in June of 1910.21 Charles had lived in San Diego County since 1898 and was a fruit grower. He had looked at property in South America, Panama and in many places in Florida before selecting property in Detroit after making three visits there, the last in early May of 1914, when he purchased 160 acres in Detroit.22

The first mention of Elbert H. Ring in Detroit, Florida appeared in The Daily Metropolis on December 27, 1910 when the newspaper reported that “Mr. E. H. Ring has had a saw mill in operation for several weeks and lumber is being made as fast as possible for building purposes.”23 This was very shortly after the first pioneers arrived from Detroit, Michigan on a Florida East Coast Railway train just two months earlier.

In addition to operating a sawmill, Ring was an election inspector for an election held in Detroit in the spring of 1912.24 Mabel Delp Ring, E. H. and Cora’s daughter, was born on February 12, 1913 in Detroit, Dade County, Florida.25

Elbert’s brother-in-law, Edgar Thomas, moved to Detroit from Grayson County, Virginia, probably in early 1911. He and James Tanner laid the keel for a 20-passenger boat to ply the waters of the central canal in November of 1911.26 He and Elbert made a trip to Lake Okeechobee in the boat, named the Virginia, a year later.27 Ed used the boat to take people on rides down the newly completed Detroit canal28 to the bay.29

Men With Alligator

Courtesy of the Historic Homestead Town Hall Museum

In this photograph, Ed Thomas is part of a group of men who showed off the skin of an alligator that they had killed. The men standing in the back row are, from left to right, John W. Hunt, one of James B. Brown’s sons, Ed Thomas, James B. Brown, Mr. Schultz and William Watson. Sitting in the front row are an unidentified man on the left and Ernest Thomas, Ed’s older brother.

James Benjamin Brown was another early pioneer in Detroit who owned a sawmill. He came to Detroit from Tennessee.

Ring was also an inspector for the F.E.C. Railway and was mentioned in the newspaper in May of 1912 as being in Miami, where he was making his “regular rounds.”30 In early April of 1913, his wife left for their old home in Virginia to spend the summer, taking their newly born daughter, Mabel, with her.31 32 Two months later, while Elbert was in Virginia on a “short trip,” their house in Detroit burned to the ground.33

The loss of his house may have been what caused Ring to stay in Virginia, for he does not appear in any local newspaper accounts after his house burned down. He had purchased land adjacent to Detroit from the Miami Land & Development Company, and on September 25, 1915, he caused the plat of Florida City Heights to be recorded in Book 3, page 211 of the records of Miami-Dade County. At that time, he and his wife lived in Grayson County, Virginia. Lots in his subdivision apparently did not sell, because Ring appeared on a delinquent tax list in 1918, owing a total of $24.49 for lots 1 – 23.34 He was enumerated in the 1920 and 1930 censuses of Grayson County. Elbert H. Ring died in Grayson County on October 19, 1937.

It seems that Elbert H. Ring lived an adventurous life. He grew up in the wooded Appalachian foothills, worked on a cattle ranch in Oregon for 13 years and then moved to the new town of Detroit, Florida in 1910, where he and his wife were active in civic affairs and business. He then moved back to Virginia, his ventures in Detroit not being particularly successful. I’ve written this post partially out of curiosity about who E. H. Ring was and partially because I’m trying to explain why so very few people know anything about the history of this area. They move away, that’s why. Did E. H. Ring feel any connection to this area? No, not at all – he only lived here for perhaps two and a half years. How many of his descendants know that he was in Florida? Very few, if any, I’d wager. So it is for so many people who have floated through this area ever since it was opened for settlement by the construction of Flagler’s railroad. History can’t be told without connections and very few people who now live here have any connection to this area.

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This article was completely re-written on August 25, 2019.

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, 1909.35 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, 1915.36 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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