Andrew J. Poplin

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

Andrew Jackson Poplin (A. J.) is a name unknown to anyone except his descendants – no one currently living in South Dade knows who he was. He shared a trait with many other people in South Dade, then and now: a propensity to move often. He came here in late 1911 and stayed not even 9 years before moving back to where he had come from. While here, he was in Homestead and Goulds and made trips to Cuba, too. Other than his violent end, his story is not dramatic. He was just a working man, doing the best he could, in his eyes, anyway. It is often said that history is told by the victors. That is true. Andrew was not a victor – he was a victim and the stories of victims are rarely told. This is the story of one of those victims.

Andrew was born on March 9, 1865, in Tyson, Stanly County, North Carolina, the son of Jeremiah and Nancy Hinson Poplin.1 In the 1870 census, Jeremiah, born in about 1807, was not enumerated, so he may have died. A. J. first appears, age 6, in the 1870 census, but his mother was not listed. She may have died before 1880, as that census only shows Caroline, 32; A. J., 14; and Mary, 12.2 The three of them were living in the household of Charles W. West. By 1887, A. J. had moved to Bell County, Texas, where Andrew married Josephine Cox on November 1, 1887.3 They had three children: a daughter, Willie, born in 1889 in McClellan County, Texas, and two sons, George and Arthur, born in Bell County, Texas, in 1893 and 1895, respectively.4

Josephine died in 1898, possibly as the result of complications from childbirth. She was 35. In 1903, A. J. suffered a concussion when he stepped off the Interurban in Dallas and fell from the platform.5 By 1910, he and his children had moved to Martha, Oklahoma, where he worked as a carpenter.6

In January of 1912, Andrew was mentioned in the Miami Metropolis as one of the signers of a letter to the editor protesting the treatment of the firemen (the men who tended the boilers on the steam locomotives owned by the Florida East Coast Railroad) who had gone on strike on December 27, 1911.7 “Thugs” hired by the F.E.C. were harassing the strikers in Homestead. The letter was signed by Andrew J. Poplin, David W. Sullivan, Benjamin F. King, George J. Sullivan, Fred S. Loomis and S. J. Connolly.8 Another letter, sent on January 15, was signed by an additional 40 men, mostly prominent businessmen in Homestead.9 10

In May of 1913, Poplin and his daughter rented the house formerly occupied by Frank J. Springer,11 one of the signers of the charter that had established the Town of Homestead a few months earlier. A. J.’s daughter Willie gave birth to her son, Harold Jackson McDuffie, on September 16, 1913 in Homestead.12

A. J. may have gotten into the tomato business in 1912 because in late 1913, he became a charter member of the Florida Growers’ Company, a farmer’s cooperative. Cooperatives tried to improve the profit margin of its members by cutting out the middle men, called commission men, by selling directly to wholesalers.13

In 1915, Poplin was paid $16.50 by the Town of Homestead to build a shed for the town’s new fire engine14 and then, he and Ralph Moon, another local carpenter, worked on the renovation of Sistrunk Hall, a large wooden building in what is now downtown Homestead, which rented space to a movie theater, civic groups and churches.15

In 1916, Floridians went to the polls to elect a new governor. The incumbent, Park Trammell, was term-limited and could not run for re-election. Four men ran for the office: Sidney J. Catts, William V. Knott, George W. Allen and C. C. Allen. Catts initially sought the nomination of the Democratic Party, running against Knott but after multiple recounts, his opponent was declared the winner. Catts used his loss to push his claim that the Democrats had stolen the nomination from him and ran on the Prohibition Party ticket instead. He attacked the Democratic Party “machine” and its supporters in what he said were the partisan courts to further his candidacy. George W. Allen ran as a Republican and C. C. Allen as a Socialist.

The Redlands Catts Club, a group of people who supported Sidney J. Catts, was established in August of 1916. An avowedly racist16 and anti-Catholic17politician, Catts tapped into the deep fears about immigration that existed in Florida and across the nation during that period. The first meeting of the Redlands Catts Club was held in the Woodmen’s Hall at Silver Palm.18 Twenty-two men, including A. J., signed up as members at the first meeting, held on August 5, and 25 more signed up the next Saturday, August 12. The Miami Metropolis published two short articles19 about the events, describing the second gathering as an “enthusiastic meeting.” A careful study of the names on those lists revealed that most of the members were small farmers or businessmen. One of them, Preston H. Lee, was elected as Dade County Commissioner in that fall’s election. Lee represented District 4, which covered Silver Palm, Goulds, Princeton, Naranja and Modello from January of 1917 until January of 1923. There were two medical doctors on the membership list and also Cassius C. Thomas, a dentist and a brother of Edwin W. Thomas, the wealthy owner of the E. R. Thomas Motor Co. Edwin had a country estate on the north side of Silver Palm Drive, not far east of William Anderson’s general merchandise store. He was the inventor of the Thomas Flyer, which won the 1908 New York to Paris race.20 Others on the list of members were Charles and Henry Gossman, George Moody and Judge Redmond B. Gautier. The Gossmans were among the earliest homesteaders in Silver Palm, Moody owned the general merchandise store in Cutler where homesteaders purchased their supplies and Gautier was the Mayor of Miami from 1931-1933. Gautier was sitting beside President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Bayfront Park when Guiseppe Zangara attempted to assassinate the president in 1933.

Catts’ campaign promises, as befitted a candidate running on the Prohibition Party21 ticket, struck a chord in the minds of many Florida voters, because they elected him in a landslide: out of 53 counties, he won in 38.22 In Homestead, Catts defeated Knott with 61% of the vote. In Florida City and Redland, he did even better, garnering 74% of the votes. Princeton and Silver Palm were Catts country: Knott was defeated in both precincts with Catts receiving 80% and 88%, respectively, of the votes.23 Those election results give an insight into understanding the popularity of the Ku Klux Klan in South Dade in the mid-1920s.

Andrew J. Poplin wasn’t famous – he was just a working man. In February of 1917, he went to Cuba to pack fruit and vegetables with Edward F. Brooker, Thomas J. Harris (a future mayor of Homestead) and Clovis D. Walker,24 who later became the director of the Cotton Branch of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Ed Brooker was a brother of Henry Brooker, Sr., who was the father of Henry Brooker, Jr. Henry, Jr. owned Brooker Lumber in Homestead for many years.

In August of 1917, Poplin was struck from the voter registration rolls of Homestead because he had moved to Goulds.25 In Goulds, he farmed and in June of 1919, he filled in for the vacationing superintendent of the F. E. C. pumping station, Jesse Pratt, who had gone to Boynton to visit with “home folks.”26 The pumping station supplied water to the steam locomotives of the Florida East Coast Railway. While in Goulds, Poplin worked as a foreman for a truck farm.27 Shortly after the census was taken, he, his daughter and his grandson left Goulds and returned to Texas, where they settled in Birdville, in Tarrant County.28 By 1922, he had married the former Etta Abbott, as he and his wife attended a party celebrating the 74th birthday of Etta’s mother, Ruth M. Williford, on Dec. 10, 1922.29

He and Etta apparently divorced sometime before 1930, as that census shows them living in households not far apart. Etta was enumerated as living with her daughter by her first marriage, Hesta B. Dickey and her son-in-law, Walter L. Dickey. She told the enumerator that she was divorced. A. J., who lived 9 households away, lived with his daughter Willie and her son, Harold J. McDuffie. He told the enumerator that he was widowed.

On Sunday afternoon, October 12, 1930, Poplin, who was 65, got into an altercation with Charlie Waggoner in front of a house at 309 N. Burnet St. Charlie stabbed Andrew with a knife, breaking the blade in the process. A. J. died in the ambulance taking him to the hospital in Ft. Worth.30 He is buried in the Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Fort Worth, Texas.31 A.J.’s assailant was charged with murder and on March 17, 1931, was sentenced to six years in jail.32 Charlie had already been convicted of burglary but his sentence of five years had been suspended. With his new conviction, he was to serve eleven years in the penitentiary.33

It is rare to be able to follow the life, however imperfectly, of one of the thousands of people who moved through South Dade in the early years of the 20th century. History (and very rarely Herstory) is told by the winners. A. J. was not a “winner” – he left no photographs or documents to tell us his story. However, what little can be discovered about his life will hopefully act as a counter to the romantic tales of what life was like in South Dade in that era.

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John S. Frederick

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

The Town of Homestead, which was surveyed and platted by J. S. Frederick, C. E.,34 in June, 1904, was the next to the last community created by the arrival of the Florida East Coast Railway on mainland Florida. Incorporated in 1913, it is the second-oldest municipality in what is now Miami-Dade County. The last community, originally known as Detroit, incorporated in 1914, is the third-oldest municipality in the county. When Frederick platted the Town of Homestead, Miami-Dade County (known as Dade County until November 13, 1997) covered the area from Stuart south to just below Lake Surprise.

Town of Homestead

Plat of the Town of Homestead

Title Block.

John Stanley Frederick was born on June 24, 1853 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,35 the son of Thomas E. and Martha June Gilbert Frederick. John’s father was a merchant of quite modest means. In 1860, he had a real and personal estate of $2,000 which by 1870 had decreased to just $1,800. One of four children, John had a sister, Alice M. and a brother, William C. Another sister, Susan, born in 1851, apparently died between 1860 and 1870. The family moved around quite a bit: in October of 1850, shortly after his marriage to Martha on June 20 in Cuyahoga County, OH, Thomas, a merchant, was about 70 miles away, staying in a hotel in Centre Township, Columbiana County, OH. In 1860, he was in Champaign County, IL and in 1870, he was in Cumberland County, NJ. By 1880, he had moved to Baltimore, an independent city in Baltimore County, MD.36

Nothing is known about John’s education but in May of 1876, at the young age of 23, he was admitted to the bar in Baltimore, Maryland. From then until 1889, he practiced law, was active in civic affairs and sold real estate there.37

On September 6, 1883, he married Antoinette Elizabeth Gazzam in Utica, NY.38 The Gazzam family was very prominent in Pittsburg, PA and in Utica, NY. Antoinette’s father, Audley William, was a lawyer who specialized in bankruptcy. Antoinette had 3 sisters and one brother: Mary Van Deusen, Edwin Van Deusen, Irene Gilbert and Maria Florence. In late 1889, John and his wife, their two children, Edwin Stanley and Florence Antoinette, and his sister-in-law, Maria Florence, moved to Cartersville, Georgia.39 He may have continued practicing law there. Two more children were born to John and Antoinette in Cartersville: Thomas Emanuel on December 17, 1890 and Audley William, on March 16, 1894.40

As the construction of the F.E.C. Railway made its way down the coast, thousands of merchants, laborers and professionals of all kinds, including engineers, moved to Florida to improve their families’ prospects. John Frederick may have been one of them. It is unknown when he and his family left Cartersville to journey to Dade County, but it probably wasn’t before the spring of 1895, as Audley William was just an infant then.

Eugene Dearborn may have been another. He was born on June 5, 1859 in Mason County, IL.41 In the mid-1880s, the Dearborns lived in Wayne, NE, where Eugene taught school and worked for a railroad company.42 The F.E.C. Railway reached Titusville in February, 189343 and on August 14, 1893, the Dearborns’ daughter, Dora, was born there.44 It is possible that Dearborn worked for the F.E.C. Railway. By early 1894, the family had moved to Cocoanut Grove, where Eugene Dearborn’s father, Marcellus, purchased the SE 1/4 of 10-54-41 on July 24, 1894.45

Frederick’s first residence was in Cocoanut Grove,46 where he and Eugene C. Dearborn entered into a partnership, Frederick & Dearborn, selling real estate. They placed their first advertisement, stating that they were the “authorized agent for the sale of the Brickell (South Side) lots, the most desirable residence portion of Miami,” on June 5, 1896.47 Their “well-equipped office” was on 18th St., south of the Miami River, east of Avenue D.48

MM, May 14, 1897, p. 3.

Advertisement for Frederick & Dearborn49

By early 1897, John had moved his family to 20th St. and Avenue D, then known as Southside.50 His house, “The Wayside Cottage,” was located 2 blocks south of the Miami River.51

In May of 1897, the Dearborns moved into their new 11-room stone home in Cocoanut Grove, erected on 3 acres near the residences of the Trapps and W. W. Culbertson.52 In July of that year, he offered it for sale or exchange, along with the 160 acre homestead purchased by his father, Marcellus, one mile north of his house.53 In 1900, he had it subdivided into 16 ten-acre lots.54 Shenandoah Middle School is located on a portion of that property.

By July of 1897, Frederick and Dearborn had parted.55 That was likely because Frederick was very busy with surveying jobs. How John Frederick made the transition from being a lawyer to a civil engineer is unknown but he may have learned the fundamentals from Abner L. Knowlton, who surveyed the town of West Palm Beach in 1893,56 the Town of Ft. Lauderdale in 1895,57 and the City of Miami in 1896.58 John S. Frederick and Lewis R. Ord assisted Knowlton on the latter survey.

Plat of Miami.

Plat of the City of Miami

Knowlton was an experienced civil engineer who was born in New Hampshire in 1818, served the North in the Civil War and did surveying work for the Northern Pacific Railroad in Washington state before coming to Jacksonville after 1891.59 The plat of the town of Fort Lauderdale was ordered by William and Mary Brickell while the plat of the City of Miami was ordered by William and Mary Brickell, Julia D. Tuttle, Henry M. Flagler and the Ft. Dallas Land Co. in cooperation with the State of Florida.60 61 Both of these projects covered a lot of area and Knowlton had his two assistants to help him. No doubt, there were many more rodmen, chainmen and transitmen working on these jobs but their names have been lost to history.

After Frederick completed his work with Knowlton in early 1896, he embarked on his new career as a civil engineer. In June of 1897, he had “a large contract for surveying certain land owned by Julia D. Tuttle at New River, at which place he has a camp and a force of men and a large houseboat.”62 By the end of 1897, Frederick had completed four large jobs and had also completed the work necessary to move the route of the road from Miami to Coconut Grove some distance west to get it off the property of William Fuzzard. Fuzzard had posted notice in July that effective Sept. 1, the road, which ran through his property, would be closed to public travel.63 Frederick’s surveying work was in lieu of a monetary donation to the cost of building the road, to which fifty-six individuals and companies, along with the Dade County Commission, had contributed.64

In 1898, he was elected as alderman for the City of Miami65 and was also appointed Deputy U. S. Engineer and tasked with surveying the Ragged Keys, which are a few miles north of the northern tip of Key Largo.66 Starting in June of 1899, he subdivided about 1,000 acres of land northwest of the Little River area into 10-acre tracts for the Land Department of F.E.C. Railroad.67 In August, he went to Cutler “to finish sub-dividing into 10-acre tracts certain lands of the Perrine Grant, which work was commenced some 30 days since.”68

John Frederick filed a claim for the SW corner of Bauer Dr. and Richard Rd. on August 5, 1902 and relinquished it on April 5, 1904. His sister-in-law, Maria Florence Gazzam, claimed her homestead at the NW corner of Waldin Dr. and Richard Rd., adjacent to John’s claim, on the same day as her brother-in-law. She patented her claim on December 3, 1905, shortly after marrying George W. Kosel in August of that year. George had claimed the NW corner of Redland Rd. and Plummer Dr. in July of 1902.

Junius T. Wigginton claimed a homestead at the southeast corner of Bauer and Redland on July 17, 1904. He married Frederick’s daughter, Florence, in Lexington, KY on November 30, 1905.69 His claim was one mile east of the claim of his wife’s aunt, Alice Frederick, who had married Harry LeForest Hill.70 Alice and John’s mother, Martha G. Frederick, died at Alice’s home on December 31, 1910.71 Alice went on to marry Erich B. Grutzbach, another pioneer in the Redlands, who claimed a homestead in 1908 at the NW corner of Bauer and SW 207th Ave, one mile west of Alice’s claim. They were married in 1911 in Buena Vista.72

In late June of 1902, John Frederick was hired by the F.E.C. to do a survey of the lands south of the Miami River and supervised a large crew of men which worked until early September.73 Frederick then went to St. Augustine to discuss his work with Joseph R. Parrott, who was the vice-president and general counsel of the railroad. After their meeting, Frederick, who was “very glad the first work through the Everglades [was] finished,” returned to Miami and began working on the “surveying work which had piled up enormously during his absence.”74

That the F.E.C. had planned to continue past Miami is evident by studying the plat of the City of Miami, started by Knowlton with the assistance of John S. Frederick and Lewis R. Ord in late 1895. The survey, which reserved land for the continuation of the railway south of the Miami River between Avenues E and F, is evidence of those plans.75 Frederick’s report was discussed at the next meeting of the Board of Directors76 and the decision was made to advertise for someone to continue the survey that Frederick had started. William J. Krome was hired and he began his Cape Sable Exploration Survey on October 5, 1902.77 and completed it on May 31, 1903.78 Krome submitted his survey to the Clerk of Courts of Dade County in June of 1903 and it was filed for record on July 8, 1903.

Cape Sable Exploration Survey.

William J. Krome’s 1903 Cape Sable Exploration Survey

In November, James E. Ingraham, the 3rd vice-president of the F.E.C., made a trip to South Dade to look over the country and make further plans after Krome’s report had been reviewed. He was accompanied on his tour by William J. Krome, John S. Frederick, Fred S. Morse, who was the land agent for the Model Land Co., and Edward A. Graham,79 who was the captain of Ingraham’s yacht, the Enterprise,80 and a photographer. This is a photograph, taken by Graham, of the party on their way to Paradise Key, which would become Royal Palm State Park in 1916:

Camping Trip to Long Key.

Courtesy of the Florida Pioneer Museum

Ingraham selected 600 acres of land in section 13, township 56 (sic – 57), range 38 to be used by the F.E.C. for buildings, yards and other terminal purposes.81

“Other terminal purposes” included a town, which came to be named Homestead and which was surveyed and platted by John S. Frederick. After completing that work, Frederick returned to Miami to work on the many surveying jobs he was being asked to do. By 1904, he had so much work that he hired his son, Edwin Stanley “Ted” Frederick, to help him.82 By 1906, with his business continuing to grow, John entered into a partnership with Clarence L. Barclay, who came down from Johnstown, PA in November. Frederick renamed his business Frederick & Barclay83 but unfortunately, that partnership did not last long, for Barclay left and went back to Johnstown the following March.84

John S., E. S., or both created 43 out of the 166 plats in Book B, which is just over 25% of the total. In 1909, E. S. Frederick formed a partnership with George O. Butler and the firm, Butler & Frederick,85 became “one of the most active engineering firms on the east coast,” according to John’s obituary.86 Butler was a surveyor and politician who is known as the father of Palm Beach County.87

John S. Frederick died on February 26, 1910 at the age of 53. He came down with a bad cold as a result of wading in waist-deep water while on a job near Ft. Pierce. That developed into pleurisy which resulted in his death. His widow, who had moved to Moore Haven to be near her sons Ted and Audley, died in 1922 in Daytona. Both are buried in the Miami City Cemetery.
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The Cedars

Historic South Dade Posted on by

By Jeff Blakley

The Cedars, South Dade’s earliest farming venture, was named for the Australian pine (casuarina equisetifolia), commonly referred to as a cedar.

1912, Charles T. Simpson wrote this about the tree:

“A strange tree is casuarina equisetifolia or Beefwood, which has escaped cultivation in extreme South Florida. It looks a little like a very slender, vigorous white pine, but on close inspection the branchlets look like miniature scouring bushes. It is a most astonishingly rapid grower and like many rapid growing tropical trees it has hard wood. It is being used here considerably for planting along roads, where it does well, but to me it is very dreary-looking and suggests snow and ice. It has become naturalized on lower Biscayne Bay over quite a wide area which, in consequence, has been called ‘The Cedars.’ It is a native of the Australian region.”63

In 1946, Dr. John C. Gifford wrote “‘There are many old casuarinas in South Florida. On the seashore of Biscayne Bay, not far from Homestead, there was a group of them called ‘The Cedars’. For sailors these striking trees formed a landmark that was conspicuous for a long distance. They were the leftovers of an old nursery which had obtained the seed from Cuba.”75

This farm was started before 1897 by Joseph Jennings, who was born in 1865 in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, the son of Benjamin Franklin Jennings and his wife, Sarah Elizabeth Grandy.76 Little is known of him other than that he had 2 sisters and 3 brothers. He made his first appearance in the Miami Metropolis in September of 1897 when it was noted that he was going to “plant 30 acres of tomatoes this winter.”81

In early Miami, concern was expressed about who would feed the growing population. In October of 1897, an unidentified person wrote to the editor of the Miami Metropolis, asking, “What is going to support Miami? Well, there is a chap named Jennings down the Bay, who has fifteen men at work raising a crop of 20,000 crates of tomatoes.”86 This appeared in the newspaper after it became known that Joseph Jennings, “of Cocoanut Grove,” had met a party of “14 white men from Georgia” under contract to him to work “all winter on his immense tomato farm. He will plant over 50 acres and expects to clear at least $20,000.”88 Charles J. Peacock, the captain of the schooner Rowena,89 took the men down to Cutler, where they stayed at the Richmond Inn and spent the night before being “transported to the scene of their coming labors” at “the Cedars, the fine plantation of J. Jennings.”90 The following June, a Tampa newspaper reported that “Joseph Jennings of Cocoanut Grove shipped from twelve acres planted in tomatoes 6,000 crates and from ten acres of Irish potatoes he shipped 250 barrels.”91

Joseph Jennings was enumerated in the 1900 census of Precinct 4 (Cocoanut Grove), which covered the area from 20th St., south of the Miami River, down to Cutler. He was single but Harry R. Peacock boarded with him.92 In that census, Joseph’s occupation was given as “trucker” and Harry’s as “boatman.”

Jennings was not the only man farming at The Cedars. In 1901, Ernest Beaty and Cleve Morgan, from Hamilton County, Florida, put “in ten acres of tomatoes at ‘The Cedars,’ twelve miles below Cutler. They are sure to make 600 crates to the acre and in the market every crate will be worth from $1.00 to $3.50 a crate; so you can figure for yourself that the ten acres will beat any 80 acres of long cotton.”93 This was in the Cutler column and was written by the editor of the Jasper News, which was published in Jasper, Hamilton County, FL. Later in the column, he gave the names of some of the Hamilton County people in Dade County: Cato Friar, Mack Morgan and Janie and Beatrice Simpson. Janie “married a prosperous butcher named Ullendorf and Beatrice, who was the widow Johns when she left here, has married a prosperous farmer named Sheritt.” Phillip Ullendorf owned a butcher shop in Miami and Charles Sherritt was a member of William J. Krome’s Cape Sable Exploration Survey in 1902-1903.

In 1902, J. C. Gallaher planted “a crop of tomatoes at the Cedars, a place south of Cutler where there are quite a number of growers located…He talks encouragingly of the magnificent crop prospects down there.”94 Other farmers mentioned in connection with The Cedars were Capt. A. F. McCully,95 Mr. McMurray96 and Rooney & Harden.97

An advertisement by the Miami Land & Development Co., published in the South Florida Banner in 1914, stated that grapefruit, orange and other fruit trees would thrive on their land, as proven by ” … the old nursery grove at the Cedars that has been growing in a wild state, without care or cultivation or fertilizer or attention for several years.”98

And there were the usual social incidents – The Cedars was no paradise: “Sam Brown, a negro who shot Jesse Washington, another negro, last Wednesday week, the latter dying Saturday of his wounds, was given a preliminary hearing Monday before justice R. M. Smith and held over to the May term of the circuit court. The shooting occurred at The Cedars, thirty miles down the bay.” 99

The Cedars was an important source of fruit, vegetables and fish as late as the summer of 1905. A Capt. Miller, otherwise unidentified, visited “his vegetable farm at the Cedars” in 1905.100 The George Washington, a schooner owned by Gilbert Johnson, took a load of “tomatoes and vegetables” to Miami on May 25 and in July, Johnson took a load of “Biscayne Bay sponges” to Miami to be sold.101 Also in July,”young Johnson,” presumably Gilbert’s son, sold “229 pounds of fish” which consisted of “angel and mutton fish, podies (sic – pogies), groupers and grunt, all caught with hook and line.”102

After 1905, cropping at The Cedars seems to have declined due to competition from farmers further inland. With the availability of railroad transportation, it was not economically feasible to sail from The Cedars to Miami to sell fish and vegetables. It was mentioned occasionally as a destination for bathing and fishing or because the land was part of a real estate transaction.

Jennings’ name made the papers in the summer of 1906 over his acquisition of 59,980 acres of land northwest of Flamingo, in Monroe County. He paid the Florida Internal Improvement Fund 41 2/3 cents per acre and then flipped it to the Palgrove Land Co. in New Jersey for $1.00 per acre, making a quick $34,988.34 profit.103 That did not go over well with the general public and Jennings left Florida, apparently, for no further trace of him has been found. Jennings may have sold his Dade County holdings to John Brand, of Elmira, NY at about this time.104 Brand was a prominent wholesale tobacco dealer and director of the Chemung Canal Trust Co. in Elmira and a director of the Miami Telephone Co. and the First National Bank in Miami.105 In 1910, The Cedars, which consisted of 2,600 acres “of beautiful prairie land lying on the coast below Cutler,” was sold to a Chicago syndicate.106

While The Cedars was mentioned in newspaper accounts, its location was never specified. The first clue as to its location appeared in a description of the route of two roads requested by Charles Gossman and 45 other men in 1901. They asked to have a road built from the intersection of Silver Palm Dr. and SW 117th Avenue east to “to the head of ordinary boat navigation on Black Point Creek in Township 56 S Range 40 E so as to give them a dry outlet and a short road to the bay.”107 They also requested a road to be built “from Cutler south and to the Cedars neighborhood following a generally Southwesterly course along the first pine reef from Cutler through Sec. 35-55-40 and 3-9-8108 and 17-56-40109 to a junction with the road first aforesaid 110 and then Southward along the line between Townships 56-39 and 56-40 and between Townships 51 – 39111 and 57-40, or as near as may conveniently be to obtain a dry location, to a point to the head of Jennings drainage canal extended to the pine…”112 The line between ranges 39 and 40 is SW 117th Ave. The reason for their request was because the railroad had not yet been extended into South Dade and a route to the mouth of Black Point Creek would enable the farmers to get their crop to market.


The 1903 F.E.C. Land Map

This is a portion of the map of the land holdings of the F.E.C. Railway, drawn in December of 1903. The diagonally hatched portion of the map indicates land owned by either the Model Land Co. or the F.E.C. Railway. Black Point Creek was located 2 miles below the southern border of the Perrine Grant. The line between sections 16 and 17 and 20 and 21 is Silver Palm Drive. That portion of Silver Palm, if it was ever built, no longer exists.

How do we know that this was the location of Jennings’ plantation? Because in 1904, a hurricane struck just south of Miami and destroyed the house of Capt. Gilbert Johnson, who lived at The Cedars. An account of his experience was published in the Miami Evening Record on October 21.113 He told the Record reporter that the storm surge rose to eight feet and washed all of his household goods away. He and his family took shelter in his schooner, the George Washington, “which was heavily anchored in a canal in the prairie.” His fishing smack, the Henry Lee, was driven a mile inland, cutting a swath through the cedars as it went.”114

A close study of an aerial photograph taken for the Miami-Dade County Office of the Property Appraiser shows a thin line of vegetation that marks the location of the Jennings Canal. It runs along SW 312th St. (Campbell Drive) west from Biscayne Bay to about SW 107th Avenue. This canal runs on a line dividing sections 8 and 9 to the north side and sections 16 and 17 on the south side in township 57-40.

The Cedars, which was a substantial piece of property, may have extended as far south as S.W. 344th St., east of Florida City, because in 1911, William H. Hardin, a brother of Otis A. Hardin, who was an early merchant in Detroit, was “placed in charge of a big ditcher and has gone to Miami to lighter it down to Cedars where he will disembark and cut ditches towards Detroit.”115

The Jennings Canal runs through the middle of this aerial photograph of the area. Note the faint outlines of the farm fields, marked by the vertical vegetation lines, that once existed there. Those who farmed there have been almost entirely forgotten. It is not widely known, but the marl lands of the East Glade, from the property of John Ehrehart and that of William S. Burkhart on the north down to the lands owned by the Miami Land & Development Co. of Detroit were where the first fruit and vegetable crops, sent to Eastern markets during the winter months, were planted. As the lands west of the F.E.C. railroad were cleared of their native pines and associated vegetation, the farmers abandoned their fields near the bay and moved to the former high pineland.

The Cedars, which was widely known as late as the late 1920s, has been completely forgotten. Such is the sad state of the “collective memory” of South Florida. But, as William Faulkner famously said, “The past is never dead. It is not even past.”
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William S. Burkhart

Historic South Dade Posted on by

By Jeff Blakley

Some people are gullible and there have always been men and women willing to take advantage of that. South Florida, starting in the early 1890s, became a fertile ground for hucksters to pursue their vocations. Convincing people to come to a place that never experienced frost, where you could get rich by growing fruits and vegetables without fertilizer or work other than digging holes for the plants and where every sick person would to be restored to glowing health simply by moving here was the story that was told by hundreds of promoters. William S. Burkhart was among them. His specialty was patent medicine, what today is called “alternative medicine” by those who recoil in fervent protest at being called quacks or purveyors of snake oil.

William Sherman Burkhart was born on April 6, 1862112 in Hubbard Springs, Lee County, Virginia.116 His father, Noble C. Burkhart, was a farmer of very modest means, owning real estate worth $550 and having a personal estate of $300 in 1870.118 His son was educated in the local schools and attended Cumberland College119 in Rose Hill, also in Lee County.120 Cumberland College was more than a high school but less than a college. On January 1, 1889, he married Mary L. Dishman,121 the daughter of a shoemaker in Washington County, Virginia.122 At the time of his marriage, Burkhart was a “fruit agent,”123 what was later known as a commission man – the middleman between farmers and wholesalers. His wife died in 1922 of breast cancer and is buried in Spring Garden Cemetery in Cincinnati. Burkhart then married Lenora Schenk Forney on June 20, 1923. Lenora’s first husband, Stehman Forney, was a very well-known civil engineer who worked for the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey for over 50 years. He died in New York City in 1916.

Burkhart, who was not a medical doctor nor did he have any formal education in that field, took advantage of what has been termed the Golden Age of Patent Medicines.124 The social changes that occurred in this country after the Civil War, which included the rapid industrialization of the country, an increasingly urban population which lacked the herbal knowledge passed down by women for centuries, the lack of laws that would rein in purveyors of quack cures and the proliferation of newspapers and magazines as sources of information were all to the benefit of Burkhart and his fellow quacks. In the late 19th century and well into the 20th, he was known to millions, world-wide, for his patent medicine concoctions guaranteed to cure every ailment known to mankind. Today, no one other than his parents’ descendants know who he was.

One of his most heavily advertised concoctions was Dr. Burkhart’s Vegetable Compound:

Dr Burkhart s Vegetable Compound Front

Dr Burkhart s Vegetable Compound Back

Courtesy of the National Museum of American History125

He sold many others, as shown in this page from a promotional pamphlet he sent to his sales women and men:

Page 1

Patent medicines were so named because they were originally “manufactured under grants, or ‘patents of royal favor’, to those who provided medicine to the Royal Family” in England.126 The history of patent medicines, which are still sold today but under the name of alternative medicines, is quite interesting.

He introduced his Vegetable Compound on January 1, 1891127 and went on to advertise his product nationwide.128 During this time, he also sailed to Europe semi-annually to attend to his factories in London, Paris and Germany.129 His sales amounted to half-a-million dollars a year.130

He first came to Miami to spend the winter in 1905.131 Here, he found a thriving market for his patent medicines that he guaranteed would restore anyone to vibrant health. Encouraged by what he saw as a bright future in the Magic City, he, like many others, invested in real estate.

His first purchase was of 90 acres between NW 22nd and 27th Avenues and NW 20th and 23rd Streets that he purchased in 1911. 15 acres of the property was a grapefruit grove and the balance was planted in tomatoes, beans and pineapples.132 In 1915, taking advantage of the appreciation in prices due to the growing population in Miami, he platted the land as Dr. W. S. Burkhart’s Winter Gardens subdivison.133

He then purchased 120 acres of high pineland near Claus Vihlen’s property in the Eureka area (in section 3-56-39), possibly from John Austin Hall, who claimed that land as a homestead in 1905 and patented it in 1908.134 Burkhart also purchased 60 acres in the adjoining section, 34-55-39. He called this property Morning View.135

On February 17, 1911,136 he “purchased 1,160 acres of land along the north side of Black Point Creek”137 through the Richardson Investment Co.138 Seminole Plains, the name he gave to that purchase, was east of Old Cutler Rd., south of John H. Ehrehart’s holdings and north of Black Point Creek. On that land, Burkhart’s share croppers grew cabbage, beans, cucumber, egg plant, tomatoes, potatoes, sugar cane and other crops for the market, transporting them to the packing houses at Perrine via Franjo Road and the Ingraham Highway, also known as East Dixie. That road is now known as Old Cutler.

Before 1909, Dade County had built a wooden bridge across Black Point Creek as part of building what is now known as Old Cutler. It burned down and Dade County did not rebuild it until some time after the end of 1911, when Burkhart complained that the County had not rebuilt it, leading prospective growers to not rent his property.139

On the map above, Old Cutler Road crossed what was then Black Point Creek, before it was transformed into Black Creek Canal C- 1, just west of the number 1 where the number 17 (section 17-56-40) is shown.

After that bridge was rebuilt, Burkhart’s sharecroppers had additional options to sell their crops to commission men in Goulds for shipment north on the F. E. C. railway.

On June 30, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt reluctantly signed into law the Pure Food and Drug Act. That law was an almost word-for-word copy of a law passed in Indiana in 1899 as the result of the work of Harvey W. Wiley.140 As with all laws seeking to control powerful people, it took many years, until 1927, when the Food and Drug Administration was created, before the law resulted in making food and drugs safer for Americans. The passage of the law did not slow Burkhart down. From 1907 to 1925, he advertised even more heavily and in more states than he did from 1891 to 1906.141

In Miami, Burkhart applied the same sales techniques he had learned in promoting patent medicines to a new field: real estate, farm land and agricultural products. He fed the press a steady diet of claims that raise the eyebrows of those who read them now. Among them:

In November of 1912, Burkhart touted the high quality of the sugar cane he was growing at Seminole Plains, claiming that it was superior to that being imported from Cuba. Because of the quality, he announced plans to plant 1,000 acres of his land in sugar cane and build “a sugar mill to grind the output.”142 By October of the next year, Burkhart announced plans to plant 1,700 acres in sugar cane but admitted that only 60 acres had been planted.143

In 1913, he announced the formation of the Cooperative Plantation & Sales Co., managed by B. C. Jenkins, of Cincinnati. It would be formed to market the syrup produced from his sugar cane.144 A search on “B. C. Jenkins” in Cincinnati from 1900 to 1930 failed to return any hits.

In early 1914, he stated that “practically every store in the county has agreed to install Seminole Plains Syrup as its leading brand.”145

In late 1914, he said he was going to plant 1,200 acres in tomatoes, three times as much acreage as Tom Peters and one-quarter of the total acreage planted in the Homestead District that year.146

The Cooperative Plantation & Sales Co., which Burkhart claimed to have established in 1913, never incorporated, so in 1916, he announced the formation of the Cooperative Fruit & Vegetable Club, with Burkhart as president and E. H. Threadgill as secretary and treasurer. Allegedly, 80% of the stock was subscribed to, mostly by northern capital.147 No records were found for the Letters Patent for either one of these organizations.

In 1927, Burkhart started to grow papaya, which took off in popularity in 1928. Improved varieties of the plant were offered by the Sub Tropical Experiment Station on Brickell Avenue in Miami as early as 1913.148

He was one of many who grew papayas in Dade County. Burkhart said he built a factory capable of producing 10,000 pounds of papaya marmalade and crystallized papaya candy every day. That is 10,000 pounds of each product.149 In 1929, he stated that papaya syrup was “supplanting maple syrup for buckwheat cakes” in New England.150 However, he did have a store in downtown Miami, at 31 N.E. 1st Street, where some of his syrup, marmalade and candy was sold.151

In 1928, he claimed to have spent $100,000 ($3,107,788 in 2023 dollars) improving Seminole Plains in the previous year.152

His 180-acre papaya plantation was “protected by a six-foot dike constructed eight months ago” and had a pump capable of removing 500,000 gallons of water an hour. … Blocks two acres long and one acre wide checkerboard the plot and roads surround the blocks. Underlying strata of rock prevent the moisture of the four-foot deep soil from escaping. … In figuring out how to make the “papaya grow larger that it had heretofore been known to do in Florida,” he “hit upon the idea of blended soil. … Fortunately, he [had] every kind of soil needed on his own acres. He carries what he calls black diamond from the southeast corner of the plantation to blend with glade and marl; he brings red soil from his farm in Redlands to add to that and then he puts in some compost.”153

Burkhart was a consummate marketing person. After reading many newspaper accounts of his accomplishments, it is very difficult to accept much of it as truth. An accurate account of Burkhart’s activities, at any time, is difficult to determine solely by reading newspaper accounts about him. Almost all of the information in the newspaper articles reads like an advertisement, not objective reporting. Every statement of “fact” in those articles came from Burkhart. In none of the articles was any agricultural figure, well-known or not so well-known, mentioned. Dr. Johann Peterson, another quack who owned Bonita Grove on Hainlin Mill Dr., never mentioned Burkhart as a competitor – both grew papayas and both touted its health benefits.

In 1923, he put about 290 acres of his property on the market as the Seminole Plains subdivision to take advantage of the appreciation in real estate prices. He kept the balance of the property, farming potatoes and papayas.

Plat of Seminole Plains154

In about 1925, he established Royal Palm Gardens on a portion of his Seminole Plains property. By 1928, he said he had “100,000 small palms growing in lines as straight as an arrow and one mile long, beginning away back at the highway.” He also had a house on the property, “a creamy yellow cottage, built on the lines of the East Indian structure that is the parent of our American bungalow.” The house was located next to the East Dixie Highway and was adjacent to a slat house covering over two acres with another 450,000 palm trees. When he “finished planting his baby palms, there will be 500,000 in the gardens,” he told a reporter for the Miami Herald.155

The newspapers reported that he owned anywhere from 1,000 to 2,500 acres of land, depending on what initiative he was promoting at the time the article was published. Tax delinquency lists published in 1929 show that he or family members owned at least 589 acres in sections 9, 16 and 17 of township 56 south, range 40 east.156 The holdings of the Campo Rico Farms were south and west of Burkhart’s holdings.

Burkhart had two children: Mary Mabel and William Shearman, born in 1896 and 1900 respectively. William S. continued to live in South Dade until at least 1935, when he and his family, who lived on Cadima Avenue in Coral Gables in 1940, told the enumerator they had lived in Goulds in 1935. His occupation in 1940 was as a “vegetable grower.”157 Burkhart cultivated potatoes on the family land and kept meticulous records, according to an article in the Miami Herald in 1936.158 By 1950, William and his family had moved to Ft. Lauderdale, where he became a real estate salesman.159 William’s children, Beverly and William, lived in the Orlando area and his son-in-law, James W. Olgivie, Jr., was a biochemistry professor at Johns Hopkins and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.160 Mary Mabel married Nobel Gildersleeve in 1918 and they lived in Philadelphia, where Gildersleeve was a wealthy executive of a ship-building company. They wintered in Miami Beach, where Noble was enumerated in the 1930 census as living in a house worth $30,000, a substantial sum at that time. His occupation was given as “stock broker.” Mabel died in 1962 and her husband in 1964. Both are buried in Portland, Connecticut.

In 1933, Burkhart furnished Dade County with free Canary Island Date Palms to landscape Franjo Rd.163 In another article that same year, he had a total of 50,000 Canary Island Date, Queen, Washingtonia, and Royal Palms,”in some directions extending in rows almost a mile long.”164

W. S. Burkhart rose from humble beginnings in the hills of Southwest Virginia, the eldest of 11 children, to a fortune unimaginable to his siblings and died at his home in Reading, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati, on November 13, 1941. No trace remains of his sojourn in Dade County and not much more in Cincinnati. He is buried beside his first wife in the Spring Grove Cemetery.

His property here was sold off after his death. Some of it was purchased by G. Walter Peterson, a big potato grower in Goulds, and August Burrichter, another potato grower who lived in Homestead. John W. Campbell, another big grower in Goulds, probably purchased some of Burkhart’s property also. Once those sales were completed and his son had moved out of the area, the very wealthy man whose fortune was built on self-promotion and real estate speculation was quickly forgotten.

In my article about Franjo Road, I mentioned Burkhart at the end of the article. That is because Burkhart’s land adjoined John H. Ehrehart’s property. A substantial part of the Lakes By the Bay subdivision was built on land formerly owned by Burkhart.

This article is part of a series about the history of the land east of U. S. 1 from Cutler down to Florida City, a part of the history of South Dade that has not been addressed in print to the best of my knowledge.
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