The Story of Franjo Road

Historic South Dade Posted on by

By Jeff Blakley

I wrote my article about Baile’s Road, which I had always been curious about, because it did not follow the rectangular grid of Dade County’s streets and avenues. There is another road in South Dade which does not follow that rectangular grid either: Franjo Road. The story begins with John Hill Ehrehart, a man who came from a family of modest means but accumulated a fortune and moved in high-society circles. After his death, he sank into obscurity. He was well-travelled, having spent time in Colorado, New Mexico, Georgia, North Carolina and Florida. Most of his life was lived in New York City and small towns in the northern part of the state but he had large real estate holdings in the last three states.

Franjo Road

John was born on May 24, 1856 in Hughesville, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania,1 the first child of the Rev. Charles John Ehrehart and his wife, Martha Elizabeth Hill.2 His father was a well-to-do Lutheran minister with real estate valued at $8,000 and a personal estate of $2,000 in 1870.3 Charles graduated from Pennsylvania College in 18504 and from the Gettysburg Seminary in 1852,5 was one of the founders of the Shamokin Institute, a public school in Coal Township, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania and the principal of the preparatory department of Pennsylvania College, a Lutheran school, from 1865-1870.6 It was renamed Gettysburg College in 1921.

Ehrehart graduated with a civil engineering degree from Pennsylvania College in 1874.7 His first job was as a locating engineer on the portion of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway that passes through Pueblo, Colorado. In 1880, he was in Little Falls, Herkimer County, New York, where he worked on the New York, West Shore and Buffalo Railway, then being built there.8

Screen Shot 2018 05 26 at 10 18 37 AM

West Shore Railroad and Erie Canal at Little Falls, N. Y.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

John H. Ehrehart met his wife, the former Frances L. Weeks, in Little Falls and they were married on her birthday, May 24, in 1883.9 She was the daughter of William H. Weeks, a leather merchant.10

The New York, West Shore and Buffalo Railway, a competitor of the New York Central Railroad (NYC), owned by William H. Vanderbilt, was forced into bankruptcy in a rate-war initiated by the NYC and then purchased by them in 1885.11

John and his wife disappeared from the documentary record after he spent 1888 – 1889 in Utica, NY as a civil engineer and surveyor.12 In 1897, he was an employee of the New York Central and argued for a lower assessment of the company’s properties in the Rochester area13 and in 1900, he argued for lower corporate franchise taxes in Buffalo, where he stayed at the Iroquois Hotel.14 From 1901 to 1905, he worked for the State of New York in the Tax Commissioner’s office in Albany.15 He and his wife then moved to Horseshoe, in the Adirondacks, which was founded by Abbot Augustus Low. That is a fascinating story to read. The Ehreharts were still in the area in 1910, when they were enumerated in the little town of Piercefield, not far from Horseshoe Lake.16 The Adirondacks were served by the New York Central, which employed Ehrehart.

As early as 1908, the Ehreharts made the Hotel Marie Antoinette in New York City their home. The New York Sun reported in that year that Mrs. Ehrehart owned “a camp on Pleasant Lake in the Adirondacks that was threatened by a forest fire.”17

John and Francis first came to Miami and stayed at the Royal Palm Hotel during the winter of 1904-1905.18 The Royal Palm was the place to see and be seen in Miami. The Ehreharts, who stayed at there every winter from 1904 until 1926, when it was badly damaged by the hurricane of that year, made the acquaintance of many rich and powerful people. John, whose first job was with the Atcheson, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Co., may have come to Miami due to his friendship with Col. Henry R. Duval, who was a director of that railroad.19 Duval owned a considerable amount of land in the Cutler area.

In September of 1905, Ehrehart purchased 240 acres from Carrie Root for $1,200 in section 9, township 56, range 40 east.20

In May of 1906, he purchased 800 more acres but we don’t have a legal description for that purchase. It most likely adjoined his existing holdings.21 In July, Ehrehart bought another 80 acres, this time for $1,500, more than what he had paid for 240 acres less than a year before. This land was sold to him by Frank A. Root (Carrie’s husband and a well-known boat-builder in Miami) and it was the N 1/2 of the NE 1/4 of 10-56-40.22 There are no more mentions of land purchased by him, but by September of 1907, when Miss Frances Young married Wilfred B. Focht, Ehrehart had accumulated almost 2,000 acres,23 most of it purchased through the agency of Samuel H. Richmond.24 25

Section 9 55 40

Ehrehart’s 1905 and 1906 Purchases

Ehrehart signed a contract to build a house for himself and his wife in early October, 1906. The lumber for the house had come from a sawmill in Naranja, that of George Zapf.26 He named it “Franjo,” the first mention of the name being in the wedding announcement of Wilber B. Focht and Frances A. Young.27 Francis Young was the daughter of James H. Young, who owned the sawmill that produced the lumber used to build the dock at Cutler in 1900.28 “Franjo” was likely a contraction of the first names of Frances L. Ehrehart and her husband, John.

Because John was so well-connected in the railroad world, he no doubt made many trips to the Keys on the Oversea Railroad. In 1909, he and his wife returned to Miami from one of those trips.29

The first mention of what is now known as Franjo Road was in 1911, when “a fine rock road to Perrine” was being built to “bring the products from the farm much nearer transportation facilities.”30

That rock road is identified as the “Perrine Road” on the 1924 plat of Tenalla Ocean Farms, recorded in book 8 on page 124 of the Miami-Dade County records. The plat shows the property of J. H. Ehrehart at the northwest corner of what is now Old Cutler and Franjo Road, across the road from Franjo Park, which is the property shown on the plat as belonging to Dade County.

Ehrehart Property

Property of J. H. Ehrehart

In April of 1912, the newspaper reported that “J. D. Brown,31 one of Cutler’s enterprising growers” had “charge of the 400-acre plantation of J. H. Ehrhart, a wealthy New York investor.”32

Brown was in charge of Ehrehart’s plantation in South Dade and also managed his “large peach orchard” in Georgia.33 In 1917, Ehrehart offered his “summer home in Mt. Airy with 6 acres of land, two orchards with 20,000 peach trees and 1,200 apple trees at Cornelia and Mt. Airy, GA for $28,000.34 He also owned 800 acres of peach orchards in Pinehurst, North Carolina which he had accumulated between 1915 and 1920.35 When he and his wife retired to Miami in the early 1920s, he continued buying and selling real estate.36

In 1924, The Miami News noted that Ehrehart had sold 1,000 acres to the the Tenalla Ocean Farms Corp. for $89,000.37 The Tenalla Ocean Farms Corporation was incorporated in early 1924 by Arthur J. Gannon, an architect and builder in Miami and Dexter E. Richards, the former owner of the Bell Coal Company in Cincinnati, Ohio and a principal in the investment banking firm of Field, Richards & Co. in that city. Dexter’s first wife, Emma, who had died in 1923, was a sister of Reamy E. Field, the other principal of the company. John retained the 5 acres where his house was located, as shown on the plat. There was an initial burst of land sales in Tenalla Ocean Farms, but by the late 1920s, the Tenalla Ocean Farms Co. joined a long list of speculative real estate ventures that had failed as a result of the bursting of the real estate speculation bubble that had started in 1896.

The 1930 U. S. census enumerated residents living on the Perrine Road.38 The name was changed to Franjo Road some time before early 1940, when C. M. Seifert built a house on the road.39 In 1933, Dade County beautified the road by planting 450 Canary Island date palms on either side of the road. The palms were donated by Dr. William S. Burkhart and the project only cost the County “$600, because of Dr. Burkhart’s tree gifts and the use of convict labor for most of the work.”40 Burkhart and his son-in-law owned thousands of acres of land immediately south of Ehrehart’s holdings in sections 9, 16 and 17.41

There are no known photographs of the Ehrehart house but one might turn up in the future. A farming community known as Franjo Farms existed in the area but no research has ever been done about the people who lived and worked there. The Town of Tenalla was never built and part of the Tenalla Ocean Farms property was later acquired by August Burrichter,42 a potato farmer who owned land in the northern East Glade. G. Walter Peterson, a prominent potato grower in Goulds, also purchased some of Burkhart’s land and later sold it to the developers of Saga Bay.43

Ehrehart’s wife Frances died at a Fort Dallas apartment house on May 18, 192944 and John died at his home at 1020 N.W. 5th Avenue on December 17, 1934.45 They are likely buried in Little Falls, New York.

Like many other wealthy people, the Ehreharts came to South Florida and became well-known and respected. When they died with no one to carry on their name, their only legacy became the name Franjo attached to a minor road in South Dade. They were not from Florida and are not buried here. No building is named after them and no one today, if asked, would be able to answer why Franjo Rd. is so named.

It is a real tragedy that the history of South Dade has been so ignored. If it hadn’t been, perhaps the town of Cutler Bay would be known as Tenalla or Franjo instead.
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Originally posted on May 26, 2018. Completely rewritten on November 28, 2023.

Kendal Grove

Historic South Dade Posted on by

By Jeff Blakley

On March 25, 1904, the Miami Metropolis reprinted an essay that was written by an unidentified person for the Fernandina Star, a newspaper published in Fernandina, Nassau County, Florida. Entitled Perrine Land Grant, An Interesting Writeup of the Famous Cutler Region, the piece offered some interesting observations about agricultural activities taking place in that area.33

The Perrine Grant, for those who even know where it is, was given to Dr. Henry Perrine in 1838, subject to conditions which were not fulfilled in his lifetime as he was killed on Indian Key in 1840. His heirs applied for and were granted an extension to comply with those conditions but they did not do so and the grant should have been returned to the public domain in 1850. Why that did not happen has not been investigated. The heirs of Dr. Perrine did not become the owners of the property until 1897 and that only happened after lawyers working for Flagler overcame public opposition and convinced Congress to issue the title.

In the article, the writer stated that tomato growers Thomas J. Peters and his brother William I. Peters owned 325 acres, the Easterling Bros. owned 200 and Joe and James Griffin owned 25. There were also fruit growers: Lucy C. Carnegie, Dr. J. D. Palmer and James A. Smith had small groves and Fred Kidder, “a large rice planter in North Carolina, has purchased 300 acres of prairie land and intends to put out 50 acres in grapefruit next winter and has eight acres in tomatoes now. If they are a success, he will plant 50 acres in tomatoes next year.”46

Frederic Kidder was born on January 12, 1847 in Wilmington, North Carolina, the son of Edward and Ann Kidder.47 His father, Edward W. Kidder, was a very wealthy wholesale lumber dealer, having real estate assets of $127,000 and a personal estate worth $246,000 in 1870. In 2023, those amounts are $2.9 and $5.8 million.48 Edward, who was born in New Hampshire,49 sent his sons Gilbert and Frederic to Harvard College, from which Frederic graduated in 1870.50

On February 2, 1882,51 Kidder purchased two rice plantations: Lilliput and Kendal, located on the west bank of the Cape Fear River just north of Southport.52 The biographical entry in the Harvard College publication for Kidder, published in 1888, was short: “Since graduation has been engaged in the lumber-business and rice-planting at Wilmington, N. C. (No Report)”53

The Kidder family was in the upper class and members of the family were frequently mentioned in the period of 1870 to 1910 in the Wilmington newspapers. In February of 1890, Kidder and Dr. George G. Thomas went to Cuba for unspecified reasons.54

There was no mention of any connection between Kidder and Florida until this appeared in The Wilmington Morning Star in 1903: “Mr. H. M. Flagler is the guest of Mr. Fred Kidder at Kendall plantation.”55

William J. Krome, who was the chief engineer of the Key West Extension after Joseph C. Meredith died in 1909, made a note in his diary, dated May 1, 1904, that “Mr. Kidder, an old friend of Mr. Flagler’s,” visited Krome’s surveying “camp at Little Card Point some time ago.” The meeting between Flagler and Kidder was not a casual one, it seems.56

Work on the Cutler Extension of Flagler’s F.E.C. Railway started on the south bank of the Miami River in January of 1903. By October, the railroad tracks had been placed as far south as S.W. 136th St., south of the area now known as Kendall.57 The rails reached Perrine, south of Kendall, in late November of 1903.58

The first mention of Frederic Kidder in the Miami newspapers occurred on October 30, 1903, just five months after he and Flagler had discussed business, when Samuel H. Richmond reported that he had sold 200 acres of prairie and 40 acres of pine land to Mr. Kidder, of Wilmington, N. C.59

On May 7, 1904, William E. Raulerson and his wife sold Kidder the east half of lot 5 in block 115 of the town of Cutler for $150.60 61Kidder may have had plans to live in Cutler, which was only three miles south of his land holdings, but that did not happen.

It is quite possible that Flagler, whose company was granted tens of thousands of acres of flood-prone lands by Florida’s Internal Improvement Fund, discussed rice cultivation with Frederic Kidder in 1903. In 1906, Samuel H. Richmond and John S. Frederick spent “two weeks in surveying a body of land in the Perrine grant now owned by a northern company for the purpose of experimenting in the culture of rice in that section. They have made their headquarters at camp Wonder, on the tract, where the land is of a marshy nature and the nearest fresh water three miles away. The land is to be ditched and drained and a thorough test of its rice growing qualities given by its northern owners.”63

The next mention of Kidder in Dade County came in September of 1904, when the Jacksonville Times-Union reported that J. E. Ingraham (the 3rd V-P of the F.E.C. and an officer of the Perrine Grant Land Co.) said that the Government had reserved land for an “experiment station in section 11 of the Perrine Grant. This tract joins that recently purchased by Fred Kidder and means much for that part of Cutler precinct. The railroad station at that point will be on or near Mr. Kidder’s property and will probably be named Kendal, after his plantation in North Carolina.”64 It is not known if the “experiment station” was ever established. It likely wasn’t, as there was an existing tropical experiment station on Brickell Avenue close to downtown Miami.

By October of 1904, Kidder had hired a force of men to clear and plant 35 acres of his new property in grapefruit trees.65 By November, he had purchased more land and had “built three houses and a fine barn on the premises.”66 During this period of time, he was working with H. T. Carter and John J. Hinson67 and by October of 1905, he had a grapefruit grove of over 100 acres at Kendal Station.68

While we do not know the exact location of the 200 acres of prairie sold to Kidder by Richmond, it is likely that it was in section 11-55-40, as about 50% of that section is marl prairie, which was subject to flooding during the summer in South Florida. Section 11, at the northeast corner of the Perrine Grant, is bounded by SW 104th St. on the north, SW 120th St. on the south, SW 77th Ave. on the west and SW 67th Ave. on the east.

Perrine Land Grant

Perrine Land Grant Survey

The survey below, while dated 1909, is essentially the same as the survey of 1903, as George Butler, the surveyor, made notes on it showing his new corners. Why he did that is unknown, because the whole area had been surveyed in 1847 by John Jackson and those points, once established, were not changed.

Kidder Grove

Kendal Grove

The Kendal stop on the railroad was initially a flag stop, as shown in the above survey from 1909. A flag stop was just a platform – there was no building or station agent – where men would signal to the locomotive engineer to stop to pick up freight. The platform was on the east side of the railroad tracks but when the depot was built after 193069 The platform shown on the 1909 survey probably still existed as it served as a disembarking point for passengers. However, the existence of the spur meant that flat cars were left on the spur to be loaded with freight bound for points north or south. Southbound freight likely consisted of cross-ties harvested from the dense pine forests in the area. The railroad built a spur in Goulds, originally known as Gould’s siding, further south, for the same reason. Northbound freight was probably vegetables destined for Miami and points further distant. The location of the platform/depot was a little south of Johnson St., now SW 98th St.70 The stop was an important one because the FEC did not spend the money to build spurs at their stops unless they were going to make a profit by doing so. No doubt, Kidder shipped grapefruit and oranges from his property, 200 yards away from the depot71 but as settlers poured into the area, they also used the platform to ship their agricultural products to northern markets.

By early 1911, the County had built a new road, now known as U. S. 1, parallel to the railroad tracks between Flagler Grove and the depot.72 73

John J. Hinson, who came to Dade County in 1891 before Miami was incorporated,74 may have worked for John Sewell and John S. Frederick in laying out the Town of Miami in 189675 and was the foreman of a gang of men building roads south of the Miami River.76 In December of 1902, Hison’s payroll amounted to $774.11, which was paid for by Dade County in January of 1903.77 In 1903, he worked as a foreman on the Cutler Extension.78 In 1904, he went to work for the Flagler interests as the foreman for the Flagler Grove, which was established on 80 acres in the SW 1/4 of 2-55-40. In 18 months, Hinson claimed to have cleared and planted 70 acres in grapefruit trees.79 Hinson held that job until the property was sold to George E. Merrick in 1920.80

In 1906, S. H. Richmond sold Hinson twenty acres “at Kenday (sic – Kendal) near the famous Kidder grove.”81 Per the above survey, the SE corner of Hinson’s property, half of which included lot 6 of the SW quarter of 2-55-40, was the same point as the NE corner of Kidder’s property.

Jean Taylor, in her book The Villages of South Dade, wrote that Kendall was named for Henry John Boughton Kendall,82 who managed the holdings of Sir Edward James Reed in South Dade County. Reed owned millions of acres of land in Florida in the late 19th century. Professional genealogists are very familiar with how amateur family historians, lacking documentation to prove their assertions, link their surname to that of someone famous with the same surname. Frederic Kidder was in the Kendal area for no more than 3 years and his presence was quickly forgotten. Kendal Station was named after Kidder’s Kendal Plantation in Brunswick County, NC, not for Henry J. B. Kendall.

The last mention of Frederic Kidder in the Miami newspapers came in June of 1906, when a small parcel he owned in section 26-55-40 in the Town of Cutler was included in a list of owners of parcels who were delinquent in paying their property taxes. That list was based on bills issued in 1905.83

Kidder, who had battled rheumatic ailments in his younger years,84 may have sold his properties and gone back to North Carolina. He died in a sanitarium in Litchfield, CT on October 27, 1908 and is buried in the family plot in the Oakdale Cemetery in Wilmington.

Kidder’s Florida properties were not listed in the probate papers for his estate. How his properties in South Dade were disposed of will have to be the project for another historian. The key to solving that puzzle will no doubt be found in a title search of the Flagler Grove property.

March 20, 2026: This article was extensively revised after the two included surveys were found by Ryan Tenner at HistoryMiami and provided to the author. While not conclusive legal proof that Flagler Grove was established, at least in part, on the property once owned by Frederic Kidder, they point to where historians should be looking. Ryan Tenner, an undergraduate student at the University of Florida in Gainesville, has a bright future ahead of him.
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Frederic M. Vermilye

Historic South Dade Posted on by

By Jeff Blakley

The most significant obstacle to historians striving to tell the story of South Dade is the fact that in this area, as is still true of all of South Florida, the demographics were very fluid. People came and went with astonishing rapidity. When they left, they took their stories with them, of course. It takes a great deal of research to find and put together the surviving fragments of the lives of those who came and then left.

While reading the December 9, 1915 issue of the Homestead Enterprise, I saw this short note on page 4: “Mrs. Vermilye and sister Mrs. Day, of New York, arrived last week to spend the winter with Mrs. Vermilye’s son, F. M. Vermilye, of Silver Palm.” Having never encountered the Vermilye surname before in my study of the history of South Dade, I was naturally curious.

“Mrs. Vermilye” was Julia E. Vermilye, the wife of Dr. William Edward Vermilye, but I was unable to identify Mrs. Day. She could be either Gennet or Catherine Murdock, sisters of Julia Vermilye. They were visiting Julia’s son, Frederic Montgomery Vermilye.

Frederic was born on February 21, 1865 in New York City. Little is known about his childhood, other than he attended the Greylock School in Williamstown, Massachusetts in 1880 and Williams College, also in Williamstown, in 1886. His grandfather, William Montgomery Vermilye, with his brother Washington Romeyn Vermilye and George Carpenter, founded Carpenter & Vermilye, a New York brokerage company that was well known for selling bonds for the United States to finance the Civil War.53 In 1857, Carpenter & Vermilye was located at 44 Wall Street.73 In 1859, it became just Vermilye & Co. and in 1905, it was renamed Dillon, Read & Co.

Frederic M. Vermilye was the president of a railroad contracting company in New York but spent most of his time at Sutro & Kimbley, a brokerage company at 32 Wall Street.79 He married first, Kate Jordan, a writer and dramatist, in 1897 but she divorced him in 1904.85 In 1908, he married Catherine M. Wyman in Philadelphia but they were divorced in 1911. He married, for the third time, Joanna Hamilton, on Nov. 21, 1919 in Greenwich, CT but he died less than two years later, on March 1, 1921, at the age of 56.

Frederic M. Vermilye’s connection with South Florida started when he enlisted in the Army and served “honorably and faithfully” in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.86 In April of 1913, he stayed in Miami for a “month or more … made a number of investments in local real estate …[and] expects to make other investments upon his return ninety days hence.”87 Frederic sold a parcel he purchased in Homestead in early 1913 to John C. Baile in October of that year.88 This land, 20 acres, was located 660′ north of North Canal Drive on the east side of Tennessee Rd.

Apparently, the sale to J. C. Baile wasn’t closed for some reason, so in May of 1914, Frederic sold the land to the Bay Biscayne Co., whose president was William B. Ogden.89 William Butler Ogden was a very wealthy man from Baltimore whose father, Mahlon D. Ogden, founded the firm of “Ogden, Sheldon & Co., … [which] became by far the largest and most important real estate firm in the city [Chicago], the members of the firm themselves being large owners of real estate.”90 In 1870, Mahlon had real estate worth $50,000 and a personal estate worth $150,000.91 Of his 15 children by two wives, only 5 survived his death in 1880. No doubt, those children received sizeable inheritances. Wm. B. Ogden, one of those surviving children, was named after Mahlon’s brother, William Butler Ogden. In 1908, he bought the estate of Edward J. Brown in Lemon City for $14,000, remodeled the house and named his property the Tee House Plantation.92 93 J. C. Baile was Ogden’s estate manager94 and allegedly a brother-in-law, though that has not been documented.95 It is likely that some of the capital for Baile’s Campo Rico farm east of U. S. 1 in Goulds came from Ogden.

Vermilye’s third wife’s sister, Mary Louise Hamilton, spent the winter with Wm. B. Ogden at the Tee House in Lemon City in 191496 and then became his second wife in 1915. She died in Atlanta of pneumonia in 1918.97 Vermilye was adjudicated bankrupt in September of 1917 98 but that didn’t prevent him from being issued a license to sell real estate in 1919.99 Being able to profit from buying and selling real estate, as so many others were doing, no doubt enabled him to improve his financial condition greatly. It also helped that shortly before Frederic married Mary Louise Hamilton’s sister, Joanna, Ogden gave him a parcel of land as a wedding present because he was in financial straits, owing a great deal of money to him.100

Shortly after Frederic’s death on March 1, 1921, his real estate holdings were put on the market to settle his estate. One of those parcels was the grove in Silver Palm. Emma A. Howard, the wife of Edson C. Howard, of Fox Lake, IL, bought the property. Edson and Emma Howard were the owners of the Mineola Hotel in Fox Lake, IL, a wealthy suburb of Chicago and a destination for well-to-do tourists. The Howards first came to Miami in 1916101 and lost no time in buying and selling properties,102 accumulating a considerable fortune. Edson died in 1926 at the age of 83 at the Mineola Hotel. Emma lived until 1940. Because they were hoteliers, they became friends with Webster and Gertrude Caraway, who ran the Berwick Hotel in Miami, at 1208 12th St., which is now Flagler St. In 1921, Webster offered to trade his $9,000 equity in an 8-room brick building in the Broadmoor subdivision for a grove or the “right kind of cruising boat.”103 On March 21, 1921, Caraway deeded the Broadmoor property to Emma Howard for $9,500.104

Caraway took the proceeds of that sale and bought the Vermilye property in Silver Palm from Emma A. Howard for $3,000.105 Very shortly after closing that sale, he sold a portion of it to George A. Dolan, who improved it by “cleaning up and tractoring (sic) his new grove.106 In November of 1924, Webster Caraway moved onto the remainder of his property, located on Tennessee Rd. between S.W. 240th St. and Silver Palm, part of Charles W. Hill’s homestead claim, to put it “into the best of condition before putting it on the market.”107

George was enumerated in Miami in 1920 as an auto mechanic who worked in a garage.108 In 1923, the Miami Herald published a piece that stated that George had been in Florida for four years, the last three of which had been in Dade County. He was the “owner of a prosperous garage at Silver Palm and also takes care of a grapefruit and orange grove near that citrus center.”109 That garage was the one which William Anderson had opened in May of 1920, near his mercantile store at the corner of Newton Rd. and Silver Palm Dr. It was initially managed by Edward F. Albury (1894-1944) but he left to pursue other ventures.110 Anderson may have hired Dolan to take Albury’s position. By 1924, the Dolans had moved back to Miami, to the Allapattah neighborhood.111 They lived there until the hurricane of 1926 struck Miami. George and most of his family were injured in that storm.112 That led them to decide to move back to Illinois for in 1930, the family was enumerated in Pana, Christian County, IL, where George worked as a “car repairer” in a garage.113

Vermilye, who had no children, left no mark on the history of South Dade. He is buried at Woodlawn in Miami. His wife Joanna had been admitted to the bar in Illinois114 but when she came here, she worked as a law clerk in Miami until she could pass her bar exam. She later moved to West Palm Beach, where she practiced law until she died in 1953. She is buried at Woodlawn in West Palm Beach.

The history of South Dade is the history of those who came and left. Those who stayed for longer than 5 years are a tiny portion of those who came here, intending to make this their “permanent home,” a phrase that is encountered very frequently in the local newspapers of the first decades of the 20th century. That rootlessness, which is not unique to this area at all, explains a great deal of why and how this area has developed over the years. Without roots or a place to go to learn about the history of this area, the people who live here make decisions that are important only to themselves, not paying much attention to the larger “community.” They could do nothing else.
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The House That McNeill Built

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

If you turn west on NW 6th St. from Krome Avenue, you will see a two-story New England style house on the right, at 77 NW 6th St. It is an unusual house for Homestead, with its steep roof line. I’ve long been curious about it and only knew it as the McNeill house but knew nothing about who built it or its significance. It turns out that it was the home of Mary S. McNeill, the daughter of Joseph Abraham and Sarah Nixon McNeil. Mary was a church historian who wrote a history of the First United Methodist Church of Homestead in 1974.

Joseph McNeill built the house in 1938105 after coming here from the Isle of Pines in Cuba in 1925.115 The family first lived at 26 NW 6th St. in a house that was demolished by the Community Bank of Homestead, which built a branch office there.116 The First United Methodist Church of Homestead, which owns the historic house, would like to find a person with the money, an interest in history and a vacant lot to move the house to. The Church is very interested in the history of Homestead and really does not want to have the house demolished.

McNeill House

The McNeill House

The house has not been designated as a historic property by the City of Homestead’s Historic Preservation Board, so that makes it easier to move the house. While moving a house, particularly a two-story house, is quite a project, it can be done. The exterior sheathing is not in good condition, but the bones of the house are in excellent condition. The lumber, which is rough sawn and full-dimensional is probably not Dade County pine, as the house was built in 1938, after most of the native timber had already been cut. The floors are pine and there is a beautiful wooden staircase leading to the second floor. The house also has a fireplace on the first floor.

If anyone is interested, please reach out to the Church office at 305-248-4770. Because the house needs to be moved, the price will be nominal.

Joseph A. McNeill

Joseph Abraham McNeill was born in Canada to Scottish parents on December 4, 1869.117 As a young man, he moved to Buffalo, NY118 119 where he worked as a carpenter.120 While there, he may have made the acquaintance of his future wife, Sarah Nixon, the daughter of William and Sophia Nixon, all of whom were born in England. Nixon also owned a farm on the Isle of Pines.121 On November 5, 1911, Joseph married Sarah Nixon at Nueva Gerona, Isle of Pines, Cuba.122 Her parents were enumerated in Buffalo, NY in the 1900 census. William was apparently well-to-do, as his occupation given on the census of that year was as a “radiator manufacturer.” Two of his daughters were bookkeepers in medical offices, his son John was a woodworker at a carriage builder and his son Frank was a wallpaper dealer. William was not enumerated in Buffalo in 1910, likely because he was on his farm in the Isle of Pines.

Joseph acquired land on the Isle of Pines, now known as the Isle of Youth, likely in the town of McKinley from the Tropical Development Company of Buffalo.123 He and Adam Gaiser, another resident of Buffalo, sailed for the Isle of Pines in early January, 1905124 on board the Morro Castle.125 American settlement on the island started shortly after the Treaty of Paris ended the Spanish-American War in 1900.126 Joseph, along with 10 others, wrote glowing testimonials about their new home for the Tropical Development Co.127 The hundreds of other Americans who moved there grew oranges, grapefruit, mangos, tobacco and pineapples and other crops. The residents on the Isle of Pines came from every state in the Union, but the majority were from Nebraska, Kansas, Pennsylvania, New York and Florida.128 According to the Buffalo Morning Express, in 1902 Americans owned half of the land on the island and were the majority of the tax-payers.129

There are conflicting reports of what J. A. McNeill did while he was living on the Isle of Pines. One account states that he was a “superintendent of construction on the Isle of Pines for the Cuban government”130 while another states that he “purchased 120 acres on the Isle of Pines at the current rate of $25 an acre…”131 He may have done both. For those interested in the complex issues that played out on the Isle of Pines between 1904 and 1925, Samuel Finesurry’s review of Michael E. Neagle’s book, American’s Forgotten Colony: Cuba’s Isle of Pines, is an excellent starting point. Whatever work J. A. McNeill engaged in during his time on the Isle of Pines, by the time the Hay-Quesada Treaty was ratified by United States on March 13, 1925, he had had enough and decided to return to the United States.

J. A. and Sarah’s only child, Mary Sophia, was born on the Isle of Pines on October 10, 1914. She and her parents arrived in Key West on March 25, 1925 on board the S. S. Governor Cobb,132 a steamship that was leased to the P & O Steamship Co., a Flagler company, during the winter season when it made daily runs to Havana.133 Why the family settled in Homestead is unknown but they likely had friends who lived here. Dan Roberts‘ brother, George D. Roberts, lived on the Isle of Pines and when he died in 1961, was buried in the American Cemetery in Nueva Gerona. Dan sold a large number of the Isle of Pines variety of grapefruit trees in his nursery. Joseph and Sarah first lived in a house at 26 NW 6th St.134 and then, in 1938, J. A. built the house at 77 NW 6th St., where he lived until he died in 1969.

Staircase

The staircase at 77 NW 6th St.

Ist Floor Rafters

The full-dimension 2″ x 10″ pine rafters on the 1st floor

After arriving here, J. A. established himself as a carpenter and his wife and daughter got involved with the Ladies Aid Society at the White Stone Methodist Church, at N.W. 1st Ave. and 4th St. The first mention of them attending a social function of the Society appeared in the Homestead Leader on September 9, 1926, shortly before the hurricane that is known as the “1926 Miami Hurricane” hit South Dade on the 18th. The center of that hurricane, contrary to popular belief, passed over Perrine, not Miami, and destroyed crops and groves all over South Dade. No doubt, the Ladies Aid Society provided aid to those affected by the storm in the Homestead area. Those attending that social function were the Mesdames Tupper, McNeill, J. W. Avery, H. H. Ewing, Geo. Fuller, M. J. Deyo, Newton G. Ball, I. S. Showalter, J. T. Cann, A. J. Ennis, Dibble and the Misses McNeill and Priscilla Cann. A meeting on December 2 added the names of Mesdames E. A. Ennis, Geo. Ranson, Fred Prussner, Ernest Carter and the Misses Mary Sifling and Viola Prussner.

J. A. McNeill designed and supervised the construction of what is now known as the Cloninger Castle, at 31500 S.W. 187th Ave. It was built in 1929 for Reuben Pearse Walker, a retired monument manufacturer from Wilkes-Barre, PA. The house was 51 feet by 44 feet, including a 10-foot wide veranda which encircled the first floor. Construction was of native rock, backed by poured concrete walls, with steel doors and windows. The house had 4 bedrooms, a dining room, breakfast room, kitchen and bathroom. The tower, 18′ in diameter and 26′ tall, included part of the living room on the 1st floor and parts of the bedrooms on the 2nd floor.135 The stonework was done by Vannie L. Harris, Sr.136 whose grandson, Jim, owner of Harris & Schroeder Builders, builds custom homes in the Homestead area. McNeill built “many of the best homes”137 in Homestead, though they have not been identified. The house, which was damaged by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, sits roofless and windowless, likely because the owner, who is from Venezuela, has elected not to restore it because dealing with the City of Homestead and Miami-Dade County is too difficult.

RPB331 Coral Castle House

The Pearse Walker home on Redland Road

Mary S. McNeill graduated from Homestead High School on May 26, 1933. The graduates were: Burton Branch, Wilbur Free, Charles Glenn, Wm. Henn, Edward Little, James Roberts, Lester Smith, Augustus Wynn, Mary Akers, Ella Arozarena, Estelle Booth, Nellie Gooding, Flossie Gorday, Rubie Lee Groover, Amy Horne, Margaret Hendricks, Ingeborg Mattson, Mary McNeill, Evelyn Smith, Ruth Steffani, Anna Steffani, Eva Sullivan, Julia Sullivan and Rae Woodbury.

In 1955, Mary was the head bookkeeper at Brooker Lumber.138 Mary was active in the Methodist Church all of her life but I didn’t do much research on her as this article is about the house that her father built. Perhaps readers will contribute their memories of Mary for others to read.

In 1959, at the age of 90, J. A. McNeill was photographed by Maitland Davidson on a ladder painting the second floor of his house.139 Mary’s mother died in 1965 and her father in 1969, 6 days after his 100th birthday. Mary passed away in 2011 at the age of 96 and is fondly remembered by many members of the congregation of the First United Methodist Church of Homestead and doubtless by many others who no longer live in Homestead. She sold her house, built by her father, to the Church to pay for her health care in her later years. If you know someone who might be interested in buying and moving it, please have them call the Church office at 305-248-4770.
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