The Cutler Extension

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

Published histories of South Dade always mention the arrival of Flagler’s F.E.C. Railway in Miami in 1896 and the construction of the Key West Extension, which started in the spring of 1905. However, I’m not aware of any published account of the construction of the portion of the railroad between Miami and Homestead. Initially known as the Cutler Extension, it was renamed the Homestead Extension after it reached what became the Town of Homestead on July 30,1904.1

Flagler and some of the officers of his company had planned to take the railroad to Key West as early as 18932 but that information was a closely-guarded secret designed, no doubt, to prevent others from engaging in real estate speculation that would not be in the best interests of the Florida East Coast Railway. Flagler had formed the Florida East Coast Railway company in 1895 as a holding company for his many small railroads.3

After reaching Miami in 1896, Flagler did not authorize any more construction, likely because the ownership of the Perrine Grant, through which his railroad would ultimately pass, was unclear.

Perrine Grant Survey

Perrine Grant Survey

By 1898, though, the legal status of the Perrine Grant had been resolved in favor of the heirs of Dr. Henry Perrine and the F.E.C., so Flagler established the Perrine Land Grant Co. to manage the lands granted to Perrine,4 5who had been killed by a party of Seminole Indians under the leadership of Chekika on the morning of August 7, 1840.6

On July 1, 1902, a preliminary surveying party under the supervision of Aaron L. Hunt, assistant civil engineer of the F. E. C. Railway, left for Potter’s Mill,7 which was likely a sawmill on the homestead of Stephen S. Potter, part of whose land included what is now the main entrance to the University of Miami at Sanford Drive and Ponce de Leon Blvd. Potter had proved up his homestead claim on July 24, 1894.8 Hunt was in charge of the surveying party for two weeks, until John S. Frederick, the civil engineer who laid out portions of the City of Miami and also the platted the Town of Homestead, took over.9 John was a brother-in-law of George Kosel, an early pioneer in the Redlands, as his wife, Antoinette Gazzam Frederick, was the sister of Maria Gazzam, George’s wife.

John S. Frederick continued the survey down to below Homestead before returning to Miami late in the summer of 1902. William J. Krome then took over, making a more thorough survey in preparation for his survey of a possible railway route to Key West via Cape Sable, which he started in mid-December of 1902 and completed in June of 1903. Before leaving on his Cape Sable expedition, Krome had surveyed enough of the route to Homestead that crews in Miami could start work.10

Construction of the Cutler Extension started on the south bank of the Miami River shortly before January 30, 1903. Charles T. McCrimmon, who had the contract to clear the right-of-way for the railroad, “had 150 colored laborers … camped just south of the Miami River”11 clearing the right-of-way and constructing the railroad grade so that ties and rails could be placed by the track laying machine.

On the north side of the Miami River, another crew of workers had started work on the railway bridge.12 By April 1, 1903, all of the “huge timbers” that were to be used in the bridge had been placed for “several hundred yards on both sides of the track” and another crew on the south side of the river was “putting in piers for the bridge.”13

It took six months for the railroad bridge across the Miami River to be completed. On October 6, 1903, the first construction train crossed the Miami River. Captain Lucien Baker was the engineer in charge of the locomotive, which pushed a track-laying machine that was used by the crews placing the ties and rails. The right-of-way had already been cleared by McCrimmon’s crews and the grade was completed so the work of laying the rails proceeded rapidly.14

By April 17, McCrimmon’s crews had cut out the right-of-way down to Jackson Peacock’s homestead.15 This was near the present intersection of S.W. 22nd Avenue and U. S. 1. By the end of May, the grading crews had reached “DeBogory’s mill,” the location of which is unknown but had to have been further southwest. Peter DeBogory, a Russian immigrant, had claimed a homestead near Sanford in 1883, where he was an orange grower. By 1900, he had moved to the neighborhood just outside the northern city limits of Miami, where he lived in an area heavily populated by African-Americans16 and worked as a machinist. His son, Alexander, established a bicycle repair and welding shop where the Miami Police station now stands in downtown Miami in 1916.17

On September 25, 1903, The Miami Metropolis reported that E. Ben Carter, general roadmaster of the F.E.C., had authorized McCrimmon to proceed with the right-of-way clearing down to Long Key.18 The Long Prairie, shown a short distance below Homestead on the 1903 F.E.C. Railway land holdings map, crosses Krome Avenue just south of Lucy Street, the dividing line between Homestead and Florida City. “Long Key” seems to have been the name for all of the land southwest of the Long Prairie down to what is now known as Long Pine Key in Everglades National Park.19

F E C Railway Map

The 1903 F.E.C. Railway Land Holdings Map

Krome had returned from his Cape Sable expedition in late June of 1903 and he promptly picked up where he had left off in December of 1902, continuing the survey that John S. Frederick had started in July of 1902. On September 1, he and a party of men who had been camping out on lots adjacent to the offices of The Miami Metropolis, left for Black Creek,20 which was just south of the present day intersection of S.W. 211 St. and U. S. 1. The newspaper account said that he was going to work on the drainage project going on in that area at the time, but in reality, he was continuing the survey down to Homestead. Flagler and the top men of his company, including Krome, rarely spoke to newspaper reporters seeking more information about what they were doing. Krome and his crew reached Homestead by September 18, but were driven back to Modello, a few miles north, by a “heavy storm” which destroyed their camp. They had to fall back to their supply base in Peters.21 As this account was written in 1918, it is likely that the date of September 18 is incorrect, because The Miami Metropolis reported on a severe storm that struck Miami on September 5, being “the fiercest storm ever witnessed here in the memory of the oldest inhabitants.”22 That storm was very likely a hurricane.

McCrimmon and his crews completed clearing the right-of-way and grading the road bed down to Homestead by early March of 1904.23 Laying the rails from Miami to Homestead was all that remained to be done. That started on October 6, 1903 on the south side of the Miami River24 and advanced several miles each day, due to the use of the track-laying machine.

On November 13, The Miami Metropolis reported that “the railroad people are putting in a siding … 1,700 feet in length” at Perrine25 for Thomas J. Peters’ tomato packing business.26 The siding was graded and ready for the arrival of the track-laying machine, which had stopped on the north side of Snapper Creek on November 27, waiting for the crossing to be built across the waterway.27 This is the location of the Dadeland North Metrorail station today.

Perrine Plat 1903

Plat of the Town of Perrine – 1903

Flagler and the top echelon of the Florida East Coast Railway were closely monitoring the progress of the construction project. On November 27, 1903, The Miami Metropolis reported that James E. Ingraham had returned from an exploration trip of “several weeks” to the Long Key area and had secured 600 acres “in the heart of the homestead country” from the government in section 13, township 58 south, range 38 east “to be used for buildings, yards and other terminal purposes.” He was accompanied by William J. Krome, John S. Frederick, Frederick S. Morse, and Capt. Edward A. Graham.28 Frederick S. Morse was the F.E.C.’s land agent and the man in charge of selling the lands owned by the Perrine Land Grant and the Model Land Companies. Edward A. Graham was a mariner who captained not only several of the rear paddle-boat steamboats used in the construction of the Key West Extension, but was also the captain of the Enterprise, Ingraham’s personal yacht.

1 Camping Trip to Long Key in the Everglades

The November, 1903 Long Key Exploration Party
Courtesy of the Florida Pioneer Museum

2 Camping Trip to Long Key in the Everglades

On the Camp Jack Trail, en route to Long Key.
Courtesy of the Florida Pioneer Museum

Edward A. Graham is the man pictured in the lower left corner of the photograph.

On December 18, Mr. Flagler and his wife, 4 top officials of the F.E.C. Railway, the mayor of Miami, John Sewell, the future editor of The Miami Herald, Frank B. Stoneman and B. B. Tatum left the Royal Palm Hotel in downtown Miami and traveled down to a point one-half mile north of No Man’s Prairie, where the track-laying machine stood idle, waiting for a trestle to be built across the finger glade.29 No Man’s Prairie was where Kendall Lexus, at 10775 S. Dixie Highway, is now located.

The track-laying machine was in the Perrine Grant on the first day of the new year,30 having traversed the Benson Prairie, where the Falls Shopping Center now stands, on a 400 foot long trestle31 and by February 5 it had crossed the Freeman Prairie,32 named after Dr. Mary Freeman, an early physician in Cutler and Perrine. The Freeman Prairie was located at S.W. 158th St. and U. S. 1 before the canal was dug and the prairie drained. By February 19, the tracks had been laid to the Peters Prairie,33 located between present day Quail Roost and Marlin Drives.

Below Peters, no newspaper articles have been found to document the progress of the track-laying machine. This is likely because the area was sparsely settled, with few homesteaders near the route of the railroad and no packing houses to ship produce. There were only 17 claims for homesteads in the sections traversed by the railroad south of Peters and only five of them were claimed before railroad construction started in 1903. With no audience to write for, the newspaper reported nothing about the progress of the railroad. In early March of 1904, McCrimmon and his crews had completed the clearing of the right-of-way, graded the roadbed to the future location of the Homestead depot34 and had returned to Miami.

In June of 1904, shortly before the arrival of the rails, John S. Frederick completed the plat of the Town of Homestead.

Town of Homestead

Plat of the Town of Homestead

The last rail for the Cutler Extension, now re-named the Homestead Extension, was laid on the afternoon of July 30, 1904.35 With the completion of the railroad to Homestead, the number of homesteading claims filed in South Dade increased substantially as new settlers realized the potential for becoming wealthy through investing in real estate. The goal of the F.E.C. Railway to open up the area for exploitation proved to be a success and doing so set the stage for Flagler’s next ambitious project: the building of the Key West Extension. Construction on that project started in Homestead in April of 1905 but also in several locations in the Florida Keys at about the same time.
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Rev. Joseph A. Kahl – Part III

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

In part II of this series, I wrote an account of Rev. Joseph and Mrs. Harriet Woodbury Kahl’s life from their first pastorate in Hunter, Cass County, North Dakota down to Homestead, Florida. In that article, I covered his journey from Hunter to Miami to Fort Lauderdale and finally to Homestead. There, in addition to his preaching about temperance, he started publishing The South Florida Banner, Homestead’s first newspaper. The first edition, of eight pages, was published on March 15, 1912. In that article, I corrected the historical record about how Harriet Woodbury, Kahl’s wife, died and ended the essay with an account of Rev. Kahl’s plans for the newspaper in 1914.

Rev. Kahl was a Methodist minister, not a businessman. Yet, he founded a newspaper and surmounted numerous obstacles to create a successful business. His first problem was to find someone to print the paper. Logically, he would have gone to S. Bobo Dean’s The Miami Metropolis but for some reason, either cost or lack of capacity, he was unable to get his paper printed there. Instead, he traveled all the way to West Palm Beach on his motorcycle, where he arranged1 with Guy Metcalf, the owner and publisher of The Tropical Sun, to print his fledgling newspaper. Metcalf’s publication was Dade County’s first newspaper, established in 1886.2 His second problem was marketing but he knew a lot of people because of his fiery speeches on the evils of alcohol and because of his wife’s activities in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.3 It helped that his printer was also a real estate speculator who had purchased section 16 (the school section) adjacent to the soon-to-be Royal Palm State Park, southwest of Homestead4 and was vigorously promoting the sale of that land. By 1912, the Redland District was the center of feverish real estate speculation, the homesteaders having sold off substantial portions of their patented claims to men and women from all over the United States. News of the area had been widely promoted before Kahl established his paper by The Miami Metropolis, The Miami Herald, The Florida City News, The Detroit News, national newspapers and the Miami Land & Development Company, which founded the city now known as Florida City. Unfortunately, there are no known extant issues of The Florida City News or The Detroit News.

Kahl’s newspaper featured advertisements from both local and Miami businesses, but he struggled to pay his bills. In late 1913, he enlisted the help of Ed Mitchell, the publisher of The Hunter Herald in Cass County, North Dakota.5 Mitchell had come down to the Miami area as early as February, 1911, when he and some relatives were shown land by the Richardson-Kellett Real Estate Co.6 Kahl most likely knew Ed from the time he was preaching in Hunter in 1910. On February 13, 1914, Kahl announced that he had sold a 50% interest in the newspaper to Mr. Mitchell.7 He had previously announced other substantial changes to the paper, including a new building and equipment.8 Up until March 20, 1914, the newspaper had only listed J. A. Kahl as publisher and editor. With the March 26, 1914 issue of the paper, that changed to J. A. Kahl, publisher and editor and Ed Mitchell, business manager. In addition, the newspaper name was changed to The Homestead Enterprise and it was now published by The Homestead Publishing Co.

Kahl’s ambitions for his newspaper had always been greater than his financial ability to deliver. With the construction of a new building and the purchase of printing presses in the fall of 1913, his bills started to mount and the first signs of financial stress soon appeared. The first evidence of that was a writ of replevin9 filed by the Underwriter Typewriter Co. in May of 1914.10 That matter was apparently resolved, but because there are only three surviving issues of The Homestead Enterprise for 1914 after the first issue of March 26, it is impossible to determine how rapidly Kahl’s financial difficulties increased.

In addition to mounting financial troubles, Kahl’s health was apparently deteriorating. He may have suffered from high blood pressure. Starting in early January of 1915, three new developments give us a hint of Kahl’s health issues.

Rev. Kahl attended the annual Methodist Conference in Tarpon Springs, FL during the week of January 11, 1915. At that meeting, he asked to be relieved of his duties as a pastor and to be placed in a supernumerary position. His request was granted and when he returned to Homestead on the 19th, he published an editorial in the January 21 issue that stated he had been doing “double duty in the past two years” and that it was “impossible to do justice to both church and the paper since both had grown to such proportions that each demands the undivided attention of a man.”11

Medical matters are always very private and Rev. Kahl wrote nothing about his health until he was forced to do so. As his health worsened, though, he enlisted the aid of his brother, R. George Kahl, who arrived in Homestead in the early summer of 1914 to help him on the paper. George’s daughter Alice was appointed assistant principal at the Redland school in August of 1914.12 George traveled to Miami on business matters13 for the Enterprise and helped manage the paper while his brother was sick.14. He also purchased 10 acres of land from a homesteader, Theodore R. Kuntz, in early 1915, apparently planning to stay.15 Theodore Kuntz had been the director of a dynamite factory in Schleslen, Germany before emigrating to this country and becoming friends with Otto Froreip, another early homesteader.16 George joined the citrus canker inspection force in early March17 but resigned in May to put “his time to good advantage on the Enterprise.”18

On February 16, 1915, Alexander C. Graw, with his wife and family, moored their 46′ yacht, the Isabel, near the Florida City Pavilion on the canal just east of what would become Krome Avenue.19 Graw was a wealthy publisher and editor from Philadelphia who had been the editor of the magazine New Jersey Resorts and Realty for over ten years. He was very familiar with resorts all along the east coast of the United States and had spent a considerable amount of time in his yacht cruising to resorts from Delaware to Long Island. He had spent six months on his trip down to Florida, stopping at all of the “chief resorts” on the way.20 Graw had spent time in Miami, visiting the Ocean Beach Realty Company’s property on Miami Beach and no doubt was very aware of the money to be made in real estate.21 After arriving in Florida City, he wasted no time before making the acquaintance of Rev. Kahl, with whom he shared a passion for the temperance movement and who was also a Methodist. He wrote two lengthy articles about the attractions of Miami and Dade County for the Enterprise which were published on May 13 and 20, 1915.

Graw s Yacht

A yacht moored in the Florida City Canal, possibly the Isabel

Courtesy of the Florida Pioneer Museum

In addition to his health issues, Kahl was hit with another lawsuit in May of 1915 by Guy Metcalf’s newspaper, The Tropical Sun. Metcalf sued for $2,000 assumpsit damages because he had not been paid for printing Kahl’s newspaper.22 That case was resolved on January 14, 1916, when neither Kahl nor his attorney appeared in court in Miami. Metcalf was awarded $833.50 for his printing work and $95.82 in interest.23

Meanwhile, Ed Mitchell had become friends with Frank Bartmes, Homestead’s second mayor. Bartmes had purchased Sistrunk Hall24 in August of 191425 and had hired Ed Mitchell to manage the movie theatre in the building. Ed had lived in Homestead since mid-1913 and had been a member of the Redland District Band, which performed at the first Redland May Day Festival on May 1, 1914.26 In August of 1914, Ed had purchased William Hogard’s house on Church Street, near the First Baptist Church27 in the Hogard Addition to Homestead and it seemed that he was going to become a permanent resident. However, by May of 1915, Ed had moved to Fort Lauderdale,28 along with Frank Bartmes,29 who resigned as Homestead’s mayor, to manage Frank’s motion picture business there. Since there are so few surviving issues of The Homestead Enterprise for 1914, it is impossible to determine the details of what happened.

In the first four months of 1915, Kahl was apparently reasonably healthy – he visited Longview and also went to Miami, attending to business. Late in June, though, he took a turn for the worse, not being able to go to the office.30

Kahl’s health steadily worsened. On July 15, 1915, he published a notice dated July 10 in the paper stating that due to “continued ill-health,” he was “compelled to relinquish the management of the Homestead Enterprise, the same to take effect July 12, 1915.31 In that notice, he stated that A. C. Graw was going to take over management of the paper. A “friendly meeting” of Kahl’s creditors was held in the office of the Enterprise the evening of July 20 and there was a discussion about forming a new publishing company.32 A. C. Graw, Edwin Nelson and Irwin R. Matthews, a brother-in-law of Kahl’s, formed a stock company and applied for Letters Patent for The Homestead Publishing Company on January 6, 1916.

George Kahl, possibly concluding that there was nothing more that he could do for his brother, left Homestead for Coronation, Alberta, Canada to manage a lumber yard on July 2033, leaving his daughters, Alice and Lillian, in Homestead. Alice was a school teacher and Lillian gave private music lessons.

Sometime prior to November 4, 1915, Ed Mitchell filed suit against Kahl and the newspaper was sold to Edwin Nelson on the Dade County Courthouse steps on December 6, 1915 for $480.34 Edwin Nelson was a wealthy businessman who came to Miami in 1896 and was the president of the Dade County Securities Company, which specialized in mortgages and bonds.35 His sister, Clara, was the wife of Perry C. Hainlin, for whose family Hainlin Mill Drive is named. At about the same time, the Bank of Homestead filed a foreclosure suit against Kahl’s property in Homestead. The tax certificate was purchased by the Sun Land Company in Miami and redeemed in December of 1918.36

On November 25, 1915, the Homestead Enterprise reported that Kahl had suffered “a stroke of paralysis” on the previous Saturday (November 20) and that Dr. Tower was doing everything possible to make him comfortable. By January 20, 1916, he had recovered sufficiently to be able to leave by train for his parents’ home in Iowa.37

Rev. Joseph A. Kahl left Homestead a broken man, emotionally, physically and financially. He had lost his wife, his health and his business in less than two years. He left his daughter Myoma, not yet 5 years old, in the care of his deceased wife’s parents, Charles and Myra Woodbury. A short note appeared on the front page of the December 5, 1918 issue of The Homestead Enterprise stating that Rev. Kahl passed away peacefully at his brother’s house in Germania, Iowa38 on November 7, 1918. The information came via Irwin R. Matthews, his brother-in-law, and an obituary was to be published when more details became available. That obituary was never printed. Rev. Joseph A. Kahl has not been treated kindly by history, for no one has ever acknowledged the important role he played in the early history of this area. It is my hope that this series of articles will serve to correct that oversight.

Rev. Joseph A. Kahl, Part I
Rev. Joseph A. Kahl, Part II

William D. Horne Comes to Homestead

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

Jean Taylor, in her book, The Villages of South Dade, wrote the following account of how William D. Horne came to Homestead:

“William D. Horne delivered ice, worked in a grocery, and by 1904, owned his own home and a bicycle and grocery store. When he heard about the new town of Homestead being opened by the Florida East Coast Railway, he approached them about opening a store for the workers and a boarding house for the occasional visitor. The railroad thought it an excellent idea. W. D. Horne then sold his home, store and bicycle shop and took Ida for a vacation at the World’s Fair in St. Louis. Neither of them had been out of the state before. They had a wonderful time and talked about the trip for years.

“Mr. Horne made his way to Homestead by bicycle and chose two lots from a map furnished by the Model Land Company near the depot. He and two friends built a store with living quarters above. Materials were brought down by the railroad, the first shipment of anything other than railway supplies.”1

William Dixon Horne was born on January 20, 1875 in Eridu,2 Taylor County, Florida, the son of Josiah Warren and Sarah A. Vann Horne. Living close by were Emory and Frances Vann, his mother’s parents. Not far away were Thomas J. and Martha Mathers, the parents of Amanda E., Robert J. and John R. Mathers. Amanda married Thomas Alexander Campbell, Robert J. married Mary Alice Campbell, a sister of Thomas and John R. married Rebecca F. Horne, a sister of William D. In the 1880 census, at the age of 5, he was living with his parents in Taylor County.

Kinship ties were very important in the settlement of South Dade. The Horne, Vann, Mathers and Campbell families were tied together through marriage:

Emory Vann (1815-1900) – Frances Hinton Vann (1817-1900)

Sarah Ann Vann (1844-1909) – Josiah Warren Horne (1838-1917)

Josiah Warren Horne (1838-1917) – Sarah A. Vann (1844-1909)

Rebecca Florence Horne (1869-1928) – John Reid Mathers (1861-1934)

Leutisher Felicia Horne (1873-1910) – James Wesley Campbell (1875-1952)

William D. Horne (1875-1957) – Ida Virginia Campbell (1880-1962)

Josiah E. Horne (1871-1938) – Ella D. Cash

Alonzo C. Horne (1886-1972) – Alice Fitzpatrick (1894-1965)

Thomas Mathers (1827-1913) – Martha Ann Lewis (1830-1898)

Amanda Elizabeth Mathers (1859-1934) – Thomas Alexander Campbell (1852-1931)

John Reid Mathers (1861-1934) — Rebecca Florence Horne (1869-1928)

Robert John Mathers (1867-1929) – Mary Alice Campbell (1872-1965)

Thomas Alexander Campbell (1852-1931) – Amanda Elizabeth Mathers (1859-1934)

Archibald James Campbell (1877-1955) – Juanita Polk (1885-1964)

Ida Virginia Campbell (1880-1962) – William D. Horne (1875-1957)

Mollie Belle Campbell (1898-1987) – Oscar F. Thomas (1890-1919)

The Vann, Horne, Mathers and Campbell family members came to this area to better themselves, like many others. The Taylor County News published a report on February 22, 1945 that was written by James H. Wentworth in 1873 about Taylor County and read by him to the Rotary Club in Perry. In that report, Wentworth wrote that the “inhabitants are nearly all poor and it takes about all they can do to make a living…”3

The first known member of these families to leave the Taylor County area was Thomas A. Campbell, who, with his wife Amanda Mathers, was enumerated in City Point, Brevard County in 1900. They had likely moved there in the mid 1880s, joining his brother-in-law, John Reid Mathers and his wife, the former Rebecca Horne.4

Robert J. Mathers, who married Mary Alice Campbell, a sister of Thomas A. Campbell, moved to Eau Gallie, about 20 miles south of City Point. He and Dr. Eugene Brainard came down to Miami in September of 1897 to look for business opportunities.5 In early October, Julia Tuttle sold Mathers lots 9 and 10 in block 22 of the City of Miami.6 These lots are on the south side of N.E. 10th St. between N. Miami Avenue and N.E. 1st Avenue. His brother John opened a mercantile store at 123 Avenue D, now the northwest corner of North Miami Avenue and N. 10th St., in 1901.7 8 John’s stay in Miami was not long – he was stricken from the list of registered voters in the City of Miami in September of 1903.9 He moved back to Eau Gallie where he accumulated a fortune and built the Mathers Bridge.

The United States declared war on Spain on April 21, 1898 and R. J. Mathers was likely in a position to profit from that conflict as he had built a mercantile store on his lots. According to Paul George, Camp Miami,10 where soldiers who were to be sent to Cuba were billeted, was located just south of Mathers’ store.

1918 Miami Map

1918 Plat of Miami

The first appearance of Will Horne in Miami was when it was noted in The Miami Metropolis that he had purchased lots 3 and 4 of block 24 in the City of Miami in 1900.11 He and his wife, Ida Virginia Campbell, had gotten married in Harmony, Madison County, Florida on February 4, 1900 but it is likely that he had been in Miami before then if he then purchased two building lots 3 months later. W. D. built his house on one of these lots. A notice in the newspaper on October 11, 1901 advertised a lot for sale next to the home of W. D. Horn.12 He did not dispose of these lots until October of 1912, when he sold them to Benjamin A. Lowe, a grocer.13 In May of 1901, Robert Mathers sold his business to A. J. Campbell and W. D. Horne.14 A. J. Campbell was Archibald James Campbell, the son of Thomas A. Campbell, and a brother of Horne’s wife, Ida Virginia. Will was probably in Miami before 1900, because his sister, Rebecca, was married to John R. Mathers and it is very likely that John and Rebecca visited his brother Robert in Miami. It may have been because of those visits that Rebecca’s brother decided to settle in Miami.

In August of 1902, A. J. Campbell left the business15 and shortly thereafter, W. D. left also,16 having sold the business to Charles H. and Frank Gautier.17 Charles was a grocery merchant in Miami and was the brother of Frank, who was a traveling salesman for a wholesale grocery company in Jacksonville. There is no newspaper documentation of Horne in the Miami Metropolis from October of 1902 until September of 1905.18 However, the Miami Evening Record published an advertisement for the Horn & Campbell Store, at the corner of Avenue D and 2nd Street, on January 1, 1904. That business dealt in “dry goods, notions, clothing, hats, novelties” and made “a specialty of fine shoes for men, women and children.”19 It may be that Charles and Frank Gautier sold the business back to Horne & Campbell after a short period of time and opened up their own grocery store, Gautier Bros., on a corner of the same intersection, because an advertisement in the Miami Evening Record advertising that business appeared on January 2, 1904. Advertisements for Horn & Campbell continued well into 1904 but in October of that year, the name of the business changed to Campbell & Campbell, successors to Horn & Campbell. Will came to Homestead in October, but it was not likely his first trip down.

Will Horne did well in business – he had enough money to visit the World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri in early July, 1904. He may have gone with his brother-in-law, Robert J. Mathers, who was also doing quite well. Mathers took a 7-week-long vacation trip to St. Louis, Atlanta, and West Florida.20

Robert J. Mathers was elected to the city council in Miami in September of 1900,21 so he knew the movers and shakers in the area. It is very unlikely that W. D. was not included in social affairs in Miami. On August 21, 1905, in a front-page article in The Miami Metropolis, it was noted that the Florida East Coast Railway had spent $47,465.68 for supplies in the Miami area in the last three months. R. J. Mathers was among the men and businesses mentioned. Mathers established the Diamond Furniture Co. at 938 N. Miami Avenue in 1911 and it was incorporated in 1915. The business occupied a two-story building and had 20,000 square feet of floor space.22 R. J. was a wealthy and influential businessman.

Will Horne had probably been in Miami since before 1900, so he was well aware of the plans and activities of the Florida East Coast Railway. Jean Taylor wrote that “Mr. Horne made his way to Homestead by bicycle and chose two lots from a map furnished by the Model Land Company near the depot.”23 The map was the plat of the Town of Homestead, which was laid out by John S. Frederick in June of 1904.24 It was not possible for anyone to travel to Homestead on a bicycle in 1904. He could have walked (or ridden his bicycle when possible) on the railroad right-of-way but given his social connections, it is more likely that he came down on the train. It is also very likely that he was backed by capital from Miami – he was only 30 years old in 1905, after all. Taylor, who rarely cited her sources, likely copied the story about Will and his bicycle trip from an article published in Homestead Leader-Enterprise in 1956.25 The article, by an unknown author, does not quote Horne as stating that he came to Homestead by bicycle.

Taylor also wrote that Will “and two friends built a store with living quarters above. Materials were brought down by the railroad, the first shipment of anything other than railway supplies.”26 Charles T. McCrimmon had the contract with the F.E.C. to clear the railroad right-of-way and prepare the roadbed for the railroad track-laying machine and he had a portable sawmill that he used to mill the pine trees into lumber. The railroad also had been delivering fertilizer and providing access to markets to farmers all along the line from Miami since late 1903, as long as loading and unloading operations did not unduly delay the trains.27 28 In January in Perrine, McCrimmon was sawing 20,000 feet of lumber per day.29 By March of 1904, McCrimmon had finished the grading of the right-of-way for the extension down to Homestead.30 It is highly unlikely that W. D. Horne had lumber shipped from Miami to build his store – he likely used lumber milled in the immediate vicinity of Homestead.31

The idea that Homestead was founded by individuals from rural north Florida with no help from businessmen in Miami is not true. There was a well-developed network of men and women in Miami, of whom Horne was a part, who were knowledgeable and had the money to execute their development plans. Taylor, like any author, knew her intended audience and picked selected individuals to give more coverage to than others. In doing so, she ignored many men and women who also played an important role in the development of South Dade County.
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Women in the Wilderness

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

In the published histories of South Dade County, not much has been written about the women who claimed homesteads in the area. There were 46 women who claimed homesteads, 22 of whom fulfilled the legal requirements and patented their claims. Eleven women relinquished their claims, which were later picked up by male homesteaders and thirteen claims were canceled. The number of female homesteaders surprised me when I first started writing about history in South Dade. I was further surprised when I created a spreadsheet of homestead claims and discovered entries that were either canceled or relinquished, increasing the total number of claims by women.

In this article, I am going to focus on one of those women, Mrs. Ethel C. Booe, who homesteaded the land directly west of William J. Krome and north of Lily Lawrence Bow and Mahala A. McRae. Sarah J. Merck, Ethel’s mother, claimed a homestead on the south side of Avocado, next to Mahala McRae.

Ethel C Booe

Homesteading Claims on “Widow’s Row”

These homesteads were along both sides of Avocado Drive, which was given its name by Col. Hugh Johnston, the owner of Tropical Lodge, which was east of Krome Avenue on Avocado. In a few accounts, this part of Avocado Drive was called “Widow’s Row,” allegedly because the women who homesteaded there were widows. In addition to Booe, Merck, Bow and McRae, Martha Finch and Frances Lewis also claimed homesteads in the immediate vicinity. Those who are shown as “widows” in the documentary record were, quite often, divorcees. It was socially unacceptable in that era to be a divorcee, so often women stated that they were widows when in fact, they were divorcees.

A RARE CASE

“The editor had a pleasant interview the past week with Mrs. E. C. Booe, who had been visiting her brother, W. B. Merck, and was on her way to her home at Homestead and learned some curious but interesting facts about that section of our state.

“The first and most rare was that in her particular section, within a radius of one and one-half miles, there are and have been for some time living as many as sixteen widows, maiden ladies and young women looking out for their places with not single male member of a single family on the spot. They have their groves and raise vegetables to perfection on their own farms. She says she has as many as fifty varieties of fruit and that it is as healthy as it can be. The land is covered with a thick growth of pines that are from 75 to 100 feet tall.

“This season there were hundreds of acres planted to tomatoes from which a snug sum was realized by the truckers. Land is selling all the time and becoming more valuable. Mrs. Booe went there years ago and took up a homestead and is therefore on the ground floor with good prospects of realizing a good sum should she want to dispose of her 150 acres.

“Mrs. Booe was for a couple of years a resident of Ocala where, with her interesting little children, she made many friends. She conducted the Savoy and the Montezuma hotels during her stay here.”1

Lily Lawrence Bow was a divorcee, not a widow. Circumstantial evidence indicates that Ethel C. Booe was a divorcee, not a widow. Martha H. Finch was a widow and so was Mahala A. McRae, but Mahala was also the mother of Bird Fitzpatrick – she did not homestead without a support network. Martha Finch was from the same area of Michigan as Frances Lewis, Anna Longaker, Fred Loomis and Tom Evans, so even though she was a widow, she was not without local connections. Sarah J. Merck, Ethel’s mother, was a widow who relinquished her claim four years after filing. Frances Lewis was Annie Mayhew’s aunt and a confirmed spinster, not a widow. Only Ethel C. Booe came here from Ocala with no known local support network.

Ethel was born in June of 1870 in Gainesville, Hall County, Georgia, 50 miles northeast of Atlanta, the daughter of Elisha and Sarah J. Merck. She had an older brother, Walter, and they apparently decided to move to the booming town of Orlando in the mid-1880s. There, Ethel met and married Joseph D. Booe, who had claimed 80 acres of land as a homestead early in that decade and patented it in 1884. The 1880 census of Orlando enumerated him as a fruit grower but he was also an entrepreneur, as by 1887, he owned rental property on Pine Street in Orlando.

J D Booe s Cottages Pine St

Courtesy of Orlando Memory2

Joseph and Ethel’s first child, Cecil DeWitt Booe, was born in July of 1889 and their daughter, Mary Louise, was born on November 7, 1893. Both Joseph and Ethel were industrious and by the late 1890s, they managed the Magnolia Hotel, which was a short distance west of Orange Avenue,3 the main north-south avenue in Orlando at that time, on the north side of Pine.

Magnolia Hotel

The Magnolia Hotel on Pine Street in Orlando in 1884
Courtesy of Florida Memory4

Joseph and Ethel’s marriage evidently ended sometime in 1901 or early 1902 because the name of the Magnolia Hotel changed to the Hotel LaCasa5 and Ethel moved to Ocala,6 where her brother Walter had established the Ocala Wagon Works.7 In Ocala, Ethel managed the Savoy Hotel for less than two months8 and then the Montezuma Hotel for a less than a year.9During this time, her brother Walter sold his business and moved to Eustis, in Lake County.10 The business community in that era was very fluid and dynamic – businesses opened, closed and changed ownership with astonishing rapidity.

The Great Freeze of 1894-1895, combined with the arrival of Flagler’s railroad in Miami in 1896, rearranged the agricultural landscape of Florida. Many growers who were wiped out by the 1894-95 freeze and another freeze in 1899 that gets little attention in the historical record11decided to move to the Miami area. As a result of these new arrivals in the Miami area, there was a lot of travel and communication between the Orlando/Ocala area and Miami. It is not known how Ethel made the decision to claim her homestead, which she named The Navajo,12 but that she did, on August 10, 1906, before Mahala McRae on January 8, 1907 or Lily Lawrence Bow on March 7, 1908.

Ethel’s son Cecil probably did not accompany his mother to this area as he graduated from high school about the same time his mother claimed her homestead and went off to college at Cumberland University, a Presbyterian institution in Lebanon, Tennessee, from which he graduated in 1910.13 There is no record of Ethel’s daughter, Mary Louise, attending the Homestead school, which was opened in 1906.14 In September of 1910, she was back in Ocala, where she attended high school.15

In a letter to the editor of The Ocala Evening Star, published on October 12, 1908, Ethel praised the Homestead area and noted that “the people are not the kind you generally find in new countries, but refined, educated and most of them with plenty of money and you would be surprised to see the number of people are who are wealthy.” Ethel had been welcomed by her neighbors when she arrived and complimented as a “fine musician.”16

It seems unlikely that Ethel spent a great deal of time on her homestead, as she kept up her ties with family and friends in Ocala and apparently traveled back and forth frequently. How she attempted to comply with the legal requirements for homesteading is unknown but she may have side-stepped those rules by paying cash for her homestead on March 18, 1911, five months before her five years was up. She had recently married into money, so it is possible that her new husband provided the funds. Her homestead was worth substantially more than she paid for it ($1.25/acre) and she more than recouped her investment by selling the northern 40 acres to David R. Leavens, of Ontario, Canada.17 Leavens contracted with Charles R. Williams, an adjacent homesteader, to clear the parcel of its pine trees and to plant a grove. Williams was killed on September 16, 1916 by members of the Rice gang south of Florida City after the gang robbed the Bank of Homestead on the 15th.18 In early 1912, Booe listed the remainder of her homestead for sale with the J. T. Wigginton Co. in Miami. Wigginton was another early homesteader who married the daughter of John S. Frederick. He had claimed his homestead in July of 1904, at the same time his father-in-law was laying out the Town of Homestead. Booe sold her homestead because she was “living in another part of the state and [could] not look after it.”19

Ethel married Benjamin H. Seymour, a wealthy businessman and real estate speculator in Ocala at the home of her sister, Eula Merck Wiley, in Jacksonville on August 18, 1910. His first wife, Necia, had died the previous October. B. H. Seymour was familiar with real estate in Miami and points south, having traveled as far south as Knight’s Key on the Key West Extension in 1910.20 It is unlikely that this was Benjamin’s first trip to the area – he may have been one of many in the Ocala area who touted the possibilities of the “Homestead Country” which convinced Ethel to claim a homestead.

Benjamin H. Seymour was the first cousin of two other Seymours in Dade County. John T. Seymour owned, with George Zapf, the Seymour-Zapf sawmill near Anderson’s corner in 1906.21 Robert H. Seymour was the census enumerator for the Florida census of Dade County in 190522 and a prominent Miami attorney. Robert and John T. Seymour were the sons of John W. and Martha A. Seymour and Benjamin was the son of William and Asenath A. Lyle. John W. and William were brothers – the sons of Elihu and Martha Adare Seymour, thus making Ben, Robert and John first cousins.

After Ethel sold the balance of her homestead claim in 1912, she was not often mentioned in the Homestead newspapers. When she came to visit, it was to see Cora Clark Brewer, the wife of Thomas Brewer, the first County commissioner from the Homestead area. Cora was from Okahumpka in Lake County and must have been a good friend of Ethel’s. One of the last records of Ethel visiting this area was in 1923,23 when she and her children visited with the Brewers and also with Virgil M. Grennell and his family. At that time, Ethel was divorced – she had reclaimed her previous married name of Booe.

Benjamin H. Seymour married, for the third time, Blanche Smith of Tarpon Springs, Florida on January 19, 1924. Ethel, a divorcee once again, moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, to be with her son and daughter. She died there on May 1, 1931 at the age of 58. Her gravestone gives her name as Ethel C. Booe but her death certificate names her as Ethel C. Merck Seymour.

The written histories of this area are incomplete because they give no information about those who left and thus leave the reader with the impression that everyone in South Dade County was one big happy family which enjoyed regular get-togethers at the Guild Hall in Redland and at the homes of other pioneers. Nothing could be further from the truth. People came here, cut down the virgin pine forests, planted groves and sold out for a hefty profit after only being here for a few years. Ethel Booe, as well as all those mentioned in my article on William Wirt Culbertson, furnish proof of that assertion. There were get-togethers, to be sure, but no long-lasting community bonds were ever created. The early days of South Dade County did not differ in any respect from the settlement of any other location in the United States. Pioneer life in this area was all about extracting as much wealth from the wilderness (timber, game and the destruction of entire ecosystems for agricultural purposes) as possible while profiting off the labor of people lower on the social ladder. What is different is that not enough families have stayed here over a long enough period of time to create an appreciation of and desire to celebrate and share the history of this area.