Agriculture in Early Goulds

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

Portions of the history of Goulds have been told but much of it has never been written. Jean Taylor, in her book The Villages of South Dade, probably wrote more than anyone else has about Goulds but she didn’t focus on the settlement of Goulds. Instead, her focus was on the families who lived in the Goulds area. This article will focus on the town and the industry that created it.

There were a few small-scale subsistence farmers in the Goulds area before Flagler’s railroad reached the area in mid-1904, and the arrival of the railroad resulted in a modest increase in the number of homesteads claimed. Before 1904, only 7 homesteads had been claimed. From 1904 until 1909, 10 more had been claimed. Those homesteads were in the pine rockland west of the area that came to be called Goulds and those men cut down the virgin Dade County pines and turned them into railroad ties and lumber for building. The sawmills that produced that lumber were near the railroad but were not in existence long enough to be documented in the historical record. Their products were shipped from Gould’s Siding, which was, by 1911, the location of the Goulds Depot. The Goulds depot was located just north of S.W. 224th St. on the east side of the railroad tracks.

Goulds Cauley Store Lee Photo

From left to right: Cauley’s warehouse, store, hotel and the F.E.C. Railroad depot.
Photograph courtesy of the Florida Pioneer Museum

Most of the land east of the railroad tracks, which is now the busway running parallel to U.S. 1, was subject to flooding and not eligible to be homesteaded. Those low-lying lands, called the “front prairie” by William J. Krome when he did his survey for Flagler in 1902-1903, were granted to the Model Land Co., Flagler’s real estate holding company. Wealthy and politically-connected men like John H. Ehrehart, Dr. William S. Burkhart and John C. Baile purchased much of this land and started farming operations on it shortly after the arrival of the railroad. Thomas J. Peters, who had farmed the Cutler prairie as early as 1898, showed how profitable tomato farming could be and others, hoping to become rich, tried to follow his example.

Farmers came to Goulds for the winter farming season from all over the United States. Willard S. Stove came from Salt Lake City while Seth W. Brundage, who later owned an awning company in Miami, came from Newkirk, Oklahoma. Through the end of 1911, 42 farmers were mentioned in the Miami Metropolis. They farmed in their home states and came down to Goulds during the winter to continue farming. All of them leased their land (most of them from John C. Baile’s Baile Farm) and farmed small plots of less than 40 acres. Among the largest farmers were William I. Peters, a brother of Thomas J.1; E. R. McClain, William H. Cauley, Edward F. Moffat2 and William H. Owens.3 All of these farmers had over 100 acres in tomatoes. Edward F. Moffat owned 250 acres that weren’t part of the Baile Farm and he leased his land to individual farmers.

Along with the farmers came the labor force needed to harvest and ship the produce: pickers, crate-makers and packers. Goulds was not an enumeration district in the 1910 census but even if it had been, the census was taken in April and May of 1910, after the seasonal farmers had left. Thus, it is not possible to precisely determine how many farmers and laborers were in Goulds during the farming season because almost all of them were migratory. The seasonal labor force was substantial, however. William H. Cauley hired Josiah E. Horne, a brother of William D. Horne, to build his general merchandise store in 19104 and in January of 1911, Cauley opened his hotel, which was run by his future father-in-law, Charles W. Hill.5 A short notice in the February 24, 1911 issue of The Miami Metropolis stated that Mrs. W. I. Dolan of Chicago reported that “her equipment was inadequate to feed and care for the enormous crowds. Mrs. Dolan came last winter with her large boarding tent sufficient to feed one hundred people.” In the same article, it was noted that W. H. Cauley “expected 400 pickers and packers” to visit his store “during the height of the season.”6

Cauley s Store

Cauley’s store, left, and hotel, right. Photograph courtesy of June Lindley

The Baile Farm had a packing house on the East Glade that was connected to the F.E.C. Railway by a narrow gauge tram line. The vegetables were transported to the Goulds platform (the depot was not built until mid-19117) by an automobile converted into a traction engine.

Campo Rico Engine 2 Depot

Photograph courtesy of the Florida Pioneer Museum

The farmers at Goulds were very productive. By February, 1911, the packing houses were having difficulty shipping the crop because Goulds only had a ten-car siding (a section of track that ran parallel to the main tracks) and they urgently needed more siding tracks.8

At first, the tomato crop shipped from Goulds was just the fruit. Because there was no way to sell the over-ripes and fruit that was otherwise unmarketable, those tomatoes were either left to rot in the field or discarded. That changed in 1910, when Garland L. Miller traveled to Chicago to persuade Joseph N. Grant, of the Grant & Beall Company, to come to Goulds to build a canning plant. Miller had come to Miami in 1909 and worked as a traveling salesman for a book company before getting into the real estate business. He started working for Walter Waldin and later became secretary and treasurer of the Walter Waldin Investment Co.9 Walter was a brother of Bernhard “Barney” Anton Waldin, for whom Waldin Drive (S.W. 280 St.) is named.

Canning fruits and vegetables became commercially viable after the Civil War. Numerous small firms were established nationwide starting in the early 1890s. George S. Beall, born in Ohio in 1859, established himself as a merchant in Columbus, Ohio in 1884 and went on to establish a department store in Minneapolis. He married Madeline Stevenson in 1880.10 Joseph N. Grant, born in Trenton, NJ in 1864, got into the food canning business before 1900, when he was enumerated in the 1900 census as the superintendent of a cannery in San Francisco. He moved around a lot and when his first wife died in 1901,11 he sent his daughter to live with her aunt in Wooster, OH. Meanwhile, he was in Cincinnati, the headquarters of the T. A. Snider Preserve Co.,12 and somehow met and married George S. Beall’s wife’s sister, Kittie, in 1902. George S. Beall died in 1903 and Grant & Beall, Co. was established sometime after that date. While Grant & Beall had an office in Chicago in 1910 at 42 River Street, 13 the company does not seem to have been a major player in the industry. It is unknown how Garland L. Miller knew Joseph Grant but he convinced him to come to Goulds and build a canning factory.

The construction of the canning factory began in early March of 1911 and it was “located between the packing house of J. C. Baile and Chase & Co., along side the motor line leading to Baile Farms and on the right of way of the F. E. C. railroad.”14 J. N. Grant visited the site while the building was being erected and stated that he was building the plant but did not expect to make any money the first year.15 That proved to be true, but some farmers made out very well by selling their crop to the Grant & Beall Co. factory instead of shipping their tomatoes as “fancy” grade. The first season, the plant shipped 9,000 five-gallon cans of tomato pulp to northern markets.16

Grant Beall Co

The Grant & Beall Co. Tomato Canning Plant in Goulds in 1913.
Photograph courtesy of June Lindley

After the 1911 season was over, Grant made a decision to convert the plant from a pulp factory to a catsup factory. This was after learning that about 10% of the pulp was lost due to spoilage, even though it was shipped quickly by the F.E.C. Railway. Onions and spices were added to sauce made from tomatoes brought from as far away as Dania to be processed. The product was shipped out in 50 gallon barrels, 550 of which were at the factory in May of 1912, to buyers like Heinz and Campbell.17

Laban Frazier Lindley, June’s grandfather, was born in Paoli, Indiana in 1887, the son of Dr. Laban Fisher Lindley and his wife, Anna. Later in life, he worked as a pharmacist for Lewis S. Bowles, who owned a retail drug store in Paoli. But before settling down and getting married in 1922, he worked in the Grant & Beall Co. tomato canning plant in Goulds, starting in 1913. He continued working in Goulds every winter for the next five years. His WWI draft card gives his occupation as being the Assistant Superintendent of the Tomato Products Co.’s tomato pulp factory in Goulds, Florida. He was registered by Ben Shepard, Clerk of the Circuit Court for Dade County. The date on the card, June 5, 1917, is in the same handwriting as his precinct, which was N.W. Paoli, Orange, Indiana, so it may be that Laban filled out the card in Dade County and then took it home, where he worked for E. O. Grosvenor,18 who was a manager for the Williams Bros. Company, which owned the tomato canning plant in Paoli.

The Williams Bros. Co., founded in Detroit, Michigan in 1881,19 rented a tomato canning plant in Paoli, Indiana in the summer of 1911 and built their own plant in 1912.20 The company went into bankruptcy in June of 191621and was liquidated by the summer of 191722 so it may be that the Tomato Products Co. purchased the Williams Bros. Company’s assets in Orange County. That plant was very busy: one farmer brought 138 tons of tomatoes, grown on just three acres, to the plant in early October, 1917.23

The Tomato Products Co. may have been a subsidiary of the Kentucky Brokerage Co., as that company also sold used lumber and building materials in Coon Hollow, Kentucky.24 The company still owned the Goulds plant in 1917, when the Kentucky Brokerage Company was mentioned in a short article in the Miami Metropolis.25

Laban Lindley

Laban F. Lindley. Photograph courtesy of June Lindley

As for Joseph Grant, he apparently transferred the assets of the Grant & Beall Co. to the Kentucky Brokerage Co. in 1915. It was incorporated on March 22, 1915 in Frankfort, KY by his second wife, Henrietta, and his daughter, Elva V. Grant.26

The T. A. Snider Preserve Co., established in 1884 in Cincinnati, Ohio, purchased the Goulds plant in late 1917 or early 1918. This advertisement appeared in The Homestead Enterprise on April 25, 1918:
T A Snider Ad in Homestead Enterprise

When a hurricane-spawned tornado passed through downtown Goulds in September of 1919, the canning factory was not mentioned as being damaged, even though Chase & Co., which was adjacent to the plant, was. This was likely because the T. A. Snider Preserve Co. had shut down the Goulds plant as part of its aggressive expansion plan. The company was a national firm which had its Florida headquarters in Delray and had processing plants in Florida City, Dania, Delray and other locations in Florida. The Florida City plant was managed by Edward Stiling, the initial promoter of the town and its mayor from 1918 – 1920.

Laban F. Lindley went back to Paoli at the end of the 1916-1917 farming season, where he managed the Tomato Products Co. plants in Marengo, not far from Paoli, and another plant in Hardinsburg, which is in Washington County, the county east of Orange County.27

The agricultural history of South Dade has unfortunately never been well-documented and is thus a very hard story to tell. The companies and people involved came and went quickly and it is only rarely that photographs of businesses like the Goulds tomato canning plant surface so that small parts of the story can be put together and told. Perhaps others, after reading this article, will be similarly inspired to share their photographs so that their stories can be told also.

_______________________________________________

Note: This article could not have been written if June Lindley had not reached out to the author and provided the photographs and family information that spurred the necessary research.

George W. Moody – Early Pioneer Tales

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In 1918, The Homestead Enterprise published a series of articles authored by pioneers of their reminiscences. There were to be twelve articles but only six were published. The influenza pandemic in the fall of 1918 interrupted the publication of the articles and, as far as I know, the remaining six were never published. I’ve transcribed and published the articles by Lilburn R. Nixon, Charles H. Gossman and Daniel M. Roberts previously. This article, by George Walter Moody, for whom Moody Drive (S. W. 268 St.) was named, was published on October 10, 1918.

TALES OF PIONEER DAYS IN SOUTH DADE’S EARLY HISTORY

Naranja’s First Storekeeper Describes Local Conditions

as He Found Them Twenty Years Ago

By Geo. W. Moody

“I was born and raised in southeast Georgia1 and moved from that state to Florida in 1882, first settling in Seville2 in St. Lucie county, where I engaged in general merchandise business. Here I remained for thirteen years, and then decided to go to Espaรฑola3 in St. Johns county, where I followed store keeping for two years. New Smyrna4 was our next home and here we stayed for one year only.

“Miami was our next move and as we had heard considerable about this promising little town, we decided to go there and look the situation over. This was in 1899, only a short time after the railroad5 had been completed to that point. Close inspection satisfied me that the town had a promising future, which was all we could ask for in those days. There were a few stores then, kept by the Sewells, Budge, Brady, Girtman and a few others whose names I do not recollect. But there was nothing in those early days to suggest what has happened in recent years. Few would have dared to predict a development such as we have today. St. Augustine, the oldest city in the United States, was then considered to be about the only place of any consequence on the east coast, south of Jacksonville, and anything below that ancient city was regarded as being beyond the pale of civilization.

“The first thing to do after arriving at our new home was to hunt a job of one kind or another, not the easiest thing to do in the world in a community where dollars were as scarce as hen’s teeth. In those days the store keepers kept everything they could think of and when they had a chance to hire out for a day or two at a time, they did it. But the longer we stayed the more satisfied we were with our choice. The next thing to do was to locate a homestead and then find a job which would keep us while waiting for the country to grow.

“Cutler, about 15 miles south of Miami, looked good to us as a place in which to start a store. If we located there we would be 15 miles nearer the South Dade trade6 than the Miami stores, and while this traffic was comparatively small it was growing, and we had hopes that the store would do a profitable business.

“The ‘road’ from Miami to Cutler passed Old Larkin,7 which was about seven miles from Miami. Trail would be a better word than ‘road.’ From Old Larkin to Cutler was about seven and a half miles. From Cutler to Black Point the journey was by road, trail and prairie – any old way that looked good. Prairies were good when the water was down. When the glades were flooded it was a case of sticking to the rock land, a journey that only the Studebaker and one other make of wagons was able to negotiate. If you want to know how rough it really was, just drive your farm wagon through the pineland in the rockiest section.

Brown Moody finished

The Brown & Moody Store in Cutler, ca. 1900

Photograph courtesy of the Historic Homestead Town Hall Museum

“While building at Cutler, we resided in Miami for three or four months, then moved to our new home. There were eight or ten houses in the Cutler tract at that time. About the same time we located our homestead in the Naranja section8 (at that time there was no one living anywhere near us) and began improvements by setting out a grove or grapefruit and orange trees, and began growing tomatoes on the glade9 land that formed part of our homestead. Subsequently I sold the homestead10 to Major Hugh Gordon11, son of General John B. Gordon, the famous Confederate general. Mr. Cope was also associated with Major Gordon in the purchase of my homestead.

“I kept store for four or five years at Cutler and then moved south to Perrine12 where I built another store. At that time, I was in partnership with D. C. Brown,13 who ran the Cutler store, while I managed the Perrine establishment. Mr. Brown, who is a brother of Postmaster Brown14 of Miami, has been commissioner of Duval county15 for a number of years and is a prominent man in that county.

“In 1903 I built the home on my homestead and lived there until the spring of 1904, when my wife had a paralytic stroke and we were compelled to move to Miami for medical treatment. About seven months later we returned to the homestead and the work of planting a grove and cropping began in earnest. Tomatoes, potatoes and sugar cane were grown successfully, the soil being exceptionally good. At a later date the store at Cutler was combined with the one at Perrine, with Mr. Brown16 in charge.

“While living on my homestead I started the store I now run at Naranja, in 1903.17 The old post office building was the first building in Naranja and my store the second. There has always been considerable activity among the packing houses in this section as it is the center of the grapefruit and tomato growing territory.

“The first packing house built in this section was made of logs and was demolished some time ago. Then came the Citrus Exchange packing house, and the houses run by Chase,18 Hickson,19 A. D. Fogel,20 and Hutton & Hutton.21

“The development of our public schools is quite interesting. First there was the log school house on the corner opposite to where Will Anderson’s store is now. This was taken down and a new school building, a two-story affair,22 put in its place — a community school edifice in which the citizens contributed labor, cash, material and anything else of value, to enable the school to open for business. As a local school this was quite a credit to the community, but when the fine new Farm Life School23 was built, Silver Palm, Redland, Naranja, Princeton and Modello united in a combination school that is considered one of the finest of its type in the country. The trailers employed by the school board to transport the pupils to and from school remove the greatest hardship which the children of the early days had to endure.

“Newcomers always ask questions about the Indians in those early days. Twenty years ago there were plenty of Indians in South Dade but not very many in the Naranja neighborhood. We did a big trade with the Indians at Cutler where they brought their otter furs and coon and alligator hides for barter. In those days many birds of beautiful plumage were shot by the Indians24 and sold to the traders. This was before the law forbidding this trade25 was passed. The Indians were pretty shrewd traders and generally got all that was coming to them. They were equally good neighbors and while we did not see a great many of them near our homestead, those we did see were quite friendly.

“Good roads have done more than anything else to build up South Dade. We who knew the country when the ‘alleged’ roads were merely trails; when the stores were few and far between; when neighbors were scarce and public improvements unknown — we know by experience what pioneer life was. Those who have come since the railroad made its advent26 may know what privations are, but can only imagine what real pioneer life is.

“Yet the singular thing is, all were happy and contented. At one time when we were on our homestead there wasn’t a white man, woman or child in all the territory south of the Perrine grant.27 While Mr. Brinsell,28 the Slavins,29 Mr. Poland30 and Dan Hardie31 had located claims prior to this, all of them had gone elsewhere to find employment. Of course they returned within the legal period, but while they were gone, like Robinson Crusoe, we ‘Were monarchs of all we surveyed.’

“In closing I want to give credit to our community for the peaceful spirit which has existed from the beginning. There has been no unnecessary disputation or litigation. We have been living like one big family, and it is the hope of the writer, that as the years go by, the same friendly spirit shall ever prevail.”

Detroit, Florida, in 1911

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

In the spring of 2018, Sheldon Cunningham, a grandson of one of the early settlers in Detroit, Florida (the name was changed to Florida City in 1914), contacted me seeking more information about his grandparent’s time here. We had a very productive collaboration that resulted in Sheldon writing and publishing the two booklets below. Sheldon supplied the photographs and the background on his family and I did most of the research, using newspaper articles and a lot of previous information I had gathered on the history of Detroit. I also provided documents to Sheldon that are owned by the Historic Homestead Town Hall Museum and contacted a member of the Shields family who kindly provided information about her family. Both booklets are copyrighted by Sheldon Cunningham. You may not use any of the information or photographs in the booklets without the express written permission of the author. Please contact me, Jeff Blakley, using the Contact tab on this website, for Sheldon’s contact information.

Detroit, in contrast to Homestead, which was platted by the Model Land Company, Flagler’s real estate holding company, was a community that was planned by the Tatum Brothers, one of whom, Bethel B., had come to Miami in 1900. They were relentless in their advertising, which gave many people the impression that Detroit was the closest place to Paradise to be found in Florida. The reality, as you will discover when you read Sheldon’s booklets, was somewhat different.

Detroit Pioneers

Courtesy of the Florida Pioneer Museum

This is a photograph of the first group of settlers, described in the newspaper article below, who arrived in Detroit in late October of 1910. There was no station at the time, just a platform stop.

The first book, The A. R. Cunningham Family Moving to Florida in 1911 to Grow Tomatoes, is the story of Sheldon’s grandparents and father as a young boy in Detroit. Arthur Cunningham was a pharmacist who, as the article that appeared in The Miami Metropolis below states, had no practical knowledge of farming. The booklet relates the time-line of the Cunningham family adventure and is a very interesting read. The Cunninghams, who arrived in early 1911, were not among the earliest settlers, who arrived in late October of 1910.

Download this booklet by clicking on this link: A.R.Cunningham Family in Detroit

The second book, Ella May Cunningham’s Photos of Life in Detroit, Florida in 1911, is a compilation of photographs taken by Sheldon’s grandmother with a Brownie box camera. Sheldon and I worked for quite some time, unearthing the background information about some of the people in the photographs. By providing wider access to this document, I hope that other people interested in early Detroit might be able to make some contributions also.

Download this booklet by clicking on this link: Ella May Cunningham’s Detroit Photographs

Here is an article about the first settlers in Detroit, Florida that appeared on page 1 of the October 29, 1910 issue of The Miami Metropolis:

FROM DETROIT, MICH., TO DETROIT, FLA., THE FIRST PULLMAN GOES
THROUGH SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT WITH THE RAILROAD COMPANY MIAMI REAL ESTATE FIRM GETS COMMISSION FOR TRAIN TO STOP AT COLONY

“The first through Pullman from Detroit, Mich., to Detroit, Fla., arrived in Miami yesterday morning and today continued to its destination, there having been a special permit granted by the railroad company for it to stop at the new town.

“In the party aboard the car, were twenty-two grown people and eight or ten children, all of whom are to live at Detroit. Yesterday morning, they were met at the Miami station by Mr. B.B. Tatum and entertained most pleasantly all day.

“The forenoon was spent on the beach and in the afternoon five automobiles took the party on a rapid ride over much of the country near Miami and over all parts of the city. This being the first visit to this section for most of the crowd, their expressions of surprise and their many questions were delightful to hear and at the close of the day, Dade county had about thirty more enthusiastic citizens.

“It is the intention of the party, all of whom own land near Detroit and town lots there, to build houses as speedily as possible and most of the ladies will probably return to Miami until the dwellings can be erected.

Already several shacks have been built and next week a saw mill is to be established in the town where lumber may be secured conveniently.

“The plans for their farming enterprises are very interesting. There is probably not a practical farmer in the party, most of the men being members of some profession who have spent most of their lives in city offices. The idea, however, is to farm on communal lines with a superintendent chosen for his knowledge of successful farming in this part of the world who will instruct the new comers in all the many details of South Florida trucking.

“A powerful ditching machine is enroute from the factory, which will be used in the Detroit territory and the planting of an immense tract of land will be begun at once.

“At the rate the new settlers for Detroit are arriving it will soon be one of the large towns of Dade county and with their ideas for improving and beautifying the place, it will soon be one of the prettiest settlements in South Florida.”
_____________________________________________________________________

Hupmobiles in Homestead

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

A friend recently posed a question to me about Glen Simmons that I could not answer so I set out to do so. Laura Ogden is the authority on Glen Simmons but I did not have ready access to her books, Gladesmen and Swamplife, both available through online booksellers. I started looking in the local newspapers for information about Glen and discovered that his father, James, was killed in an automobile accident in 1928 involving a Hupmobile driven by A. B. Cain. Algeron Benjamin Cain, Jr. was driving west at sundown on the East Glade Road (now known as East Mowry) in his Hupmobile and Glen’s father was a passenger in a truck driven by his 15-year-old son, Alvin, who was headed south on N. E. 2nd Road. Glen’s father was ejected from the truck in the accident and died of a broken neck.

I had known that Homestead had a Hupmobile dealership in the 1920s but knew nothing more about it. This post is about Hupmobiles, the owner of the dealership, M. E. Fletcher, and his relationship with the subject of my previous post, Stephen M. Alsobrook.

Mark Edward Fletcher was born on April 10, 1891 in Helena, Telfair County, Georgia, the son of James C. Fletcher and Martha B. Humphreys. In June of 1917, he was a flagman on the Georgia, Florida and Alabama Railway in Richland, Georgia. He and Annie Irene Alsobrook, the daughter of Stephen M. Alsobrook, were married in Silver Palm by the Rev. O. C. Seevers of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South on March 3, 1915.1 They moved back to Richland, where his first two children, Martha Corine and Milton Olynthus, were born. He then moved to Bainbridge, in Decatur County, Georgia, where his last two children, James Alsobrook and Thomas Stephen, were born. Thomas was born on February 21, 1922 so Mark did not come back to South Florida before then.

By 1922, Mark’s father-in-law, Stephen M. Alsobrook, had become quite wealthy through real estate speculation and had built the Alsobrook Filling Station, located on the southwest corner of Krome and N. 2nd Street in Homestead. Mark and his family apparently decided to move to Homestead to become rich like so many other people were doing. Shortly after he arrived in Homestead, his father-in-law set Mark up in business as a Hupmobile dealer.

On March 13, 1925, The Homestead Enterprise reported that “M. E. Fletcher has re-opened the garage building opposite the Enterprise office and is establishing his Hupmobile agency there. Mr. Fletcher announces that he will improve the building both inside and out.”

Hupmobile

Courtesy of the Florida Pioneer Museum

Fletcher’s Hupmobile agency was in the building at the left center in this photograph, the one that has the sign for J. I. Case Tractors on the side. This photograph was taken from the top of the Horne Building, a three-story building erected in 1923. The Bank of Homestead was enlarged in 1925, so this photograph was taken sometime between late 1925 and late 1926, when the ’26 hurricane caused significant damage to the Homestead business district. The Enterprise building is the tile-block building visible behind the Homestead Mercantile Co. building.

Mark only had a 9th grade education but with his father-in-law’s support, he became a member of the Redland Realty Board, with offices in the Alsobrook Arcade2 and established himself as a realtor.

It is uncertain how long Fletcher operated his dealership out of the garage building or if he did at all. A small advertisement in The Homestead Enterprise on April 23, 1926 gave the address of the Fletcher Motor Co. as 414 N. Krome Avenue.

On September 18, 1926, a severe hurricane struck Miami and also caused a lot of damage in Homestead. In October, Hupmobiles were being advertised by the Gordon Thompson Motor Co. at 103 N. Krome Avenue and by the Fletcher Motor Co., possibly because Fletcher’s business had been damaged by the storm.

The Fletcher Motor Co. was advertising the new Hupmobile Eight for $1945 to $2595 f.o.b. Detroit. Hupmobile had manufactured a 4 cylinder model from 1909 until 1925 and the eight cylinder model was new for the 1926 model year.

Hupmobile Eight

Hupmobile Eight

Courtesy of Sotheby’s Auction House

On November 2, 1926, Fletcher advertised the Hupmobile Six for $1385. The price for the sedan, coupe, and roadster were all the same and the touring car was slightly less expensive at $1325.

1929 Hupmobile 6

1929 Hupmobile Six

Courtesy of Dean H., Antique Automobile Club of America

The Citizens Bank of Homestead, which was next door to the Alsobrook Arcade, opened on October 6, 19203 and failed on July 2, 1926.4 But the Bank of Homestead was still in business, though it would also close on June 17, 1927.5 Fletcher did not advertise much in 1927, possibly because he had as much business as he could handle. On November 8, 1927, the Homestead Leader noted that he would be showing the new 1928 Hupmobile models in his showroom at 414 N. Krome Avenue.

Both banks in Homestead were struggling to reorganize and re-open but neither succeeded. They were both granted multiple extensions by the State Banking Board but neither was able to raise sufficient funds to re-open. By the middle of 1928, the hopes of businessmen and citizens had been dashed and without a bank, economic activity in Homestead started to decline. No mention of the Fletcher Motor Company was made by the local newspapers in 1928 but several mentions of Stephen Alsobrook and Mark Fletcher in 1929 indicate that they had moved back to Tifton, Georgia.

An interesting note appeared in the August 29, 1929 issue of the Homestead Leader which stated that William Nobles had been arrested on a charge of making moonshine at his house “three doors west of Sixth avenue on King’s Highway.” Nobles was the owner of the meat market in Homestead before Charles T. Fuchs purchased it in 1913 and he also platted Nobles Addition to Homestead in 1913. Times were tough.

On September 28, 1929, a Category 3 hurricane struck Tavernier in the Florida Keys, causing significant damage to business buildings in Homestead. “The garage and show room building of the Fletcher Motor Co., on North Krome avenue, between N. W. Fourth and Fifth streets, crumbled under the force of the winds …”6 and that put the finishing touches on the saga of the Hupmobile in Homestead. C. C. Cooper, formerly with Fletcher Motor, advertised that he was “at [his] old stand – Garage in rear of 15 N.W. 2nd Second St.”7 and then, on November 21, 1929, it was reported that “M. E. Fletcher arrived Saturday from Fitzgerald, Ga., to wind up his business affairs in order that he may make his future home in Fitzgerald.”

In 1931, the Homestead Rotary Club donated $25 towards the cost of clearing the wreckage of the Fletcher Motor Co. building and a tennis court was built on the site, which was was owned by Stephen M. Alsobrook.8 The tennis court was later demolished when Robert E. “Lefty” Sherard built his dry cleaning business there.

The history of Homestead is one of dynamism – people constantly coming and going, most of them leaving no trace of their stay here. The history that has been told in the past about this area is very biased towards the upper and middle-classes but we must remember that history is told by the victors, not by the defeated. One of my motivations in writing for this website is to tell the story of the “defeated.”