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.

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.

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.

Flippers in Paradise

Historic South Dade Posted on by

by Jeff Blakley

South Dade County has a rich and complex history that has not been explored as much as that of Miami or the Florida Keys. Jean Taylor, in her book The Villages of South Dade, did a lot of important work by gathering stories and photographs from pioneers and their descendants, but she was only able to relate a small part of the story. There is a lot more to the early history of South Dade County than what she was able to document. She devoted 12 years of her life to gathering information and stopped doing so in 1981 so that she could concentrate on writing her book. Taylor interviewed hundreds of people and wrote short biographies of them and their families. Gathering information in the 1970s, she was able to speak to pioneers and first-generation descendants about their experiences in the early years of the 20th century. That was important work and is a foundation for other historians to build upon. However, she did not have access to the resources that historians now do so she was unable to write anything about those who had left, leaving little trace of their presence.

There were many homesteaders who only stayed long enough to sell off their property at a tidy profit after receiving the patents on their property. They left no trace except in the documentary record. One, Dana Dorsey, Miami’s first African-American millionaire, homesteaded the quarter-section at the northeast corner of Krome Avenue and Bauer Drive.1 Two years after receiving his patent on August 22, 1910, he sold his homestead to Ernst Bitte.2 There were a number of other homesteaders who did the same. In this article, I’m going to focus on one man, William W. Culbertson, who claimed a homestead of 160 acres one-half mile northwest of where William Anderson later established his general merchandise store. He did not sell his property quickly after receiving his patent on it, but he, like Dana Dorsey, did not live in South Dade.

On April 20, 1897, William W. Culbertson paid $10 to file a claim for the NW 1/4 of 17-56-39. This quarter section is bounded by Hainlin Mill Drive on the north, Tennessee Road on the west, S.W. 224 St. on the south and Farmlife Road on the east. The other quarter-sections in 17 were patented by Charles W. Hill (the future father-in-law of William H. Cauley) in 1903, James S. Castellow in 1905 and Charles R. Ross, an early teacher at Silver Palm School, in 1909. Homesteaders had the option of making improvements on the property over a period of 5 years or they could obtain the land for $1.25 per acre after “a six-month residency and trivial improvements.”3 Culbertson elected to pay cash for the claim on September 1, 1901 and his patent on the property, signed by C. H. Brush, Recorder of the General Land Office, was issued on September 2, 1902.
Culbertson

Who was William Wirt Culbertson?

William W. Culbertson was born on September 23, 1835 in the little town of Belleville in Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, the oldest son of Samuel and Ann Kennedy Culbertson. He was baptized on August 7, 1836 in the West Kishacoquillas Presbyterian Church. His father, Samuel, was a merchant who moved to Adams County, Ohio when William was about 2 years old and then moved on to Washington County, Iowa, then to Greenup County, Kentucky in 1844 and finally to West Union, in Adams County, Ohio. William learned about business by clerking in his father’s stores, which were located in towns which grew up in areas where iron ore was mined and then smelted in blast furnaces into pig iron.4After attaining the age of majority, he became a store-keeper at Clinton Furnace in Scioto County, Ohio, the bookkeeper and assistant manager at Vinton Furnace in Vinton County, Ohio and lastly, clerk and manager of the Ohio Furnace in Scioto County.5 6

During the Civil War, Culbertson was the captain of Company F of the 27th Ohio Vounteer Infantry and fought in a number of battles.7 After mustering out in the spring of 1864, he took charge of the Pine Grove and Buena Vista Furnaces, both in Greenup County, Kentucky and became the treasurer of the firm of Culbertson, Means & Culbertson. He went on to become the president and secretary of the Ashland Foundry Company in Ashland, Kentucky. In February of 1865, he married Sarah Jane Means, the daughter of Thomas W. Means, who was the Means in Culbertson, Means & Culbertson.8 Their son, Thomas Means Culbertson, was born on November 13, 1870 in Hanging Rock, Lawrence County, Ohio.9 Sarah died, probably due to complications from giving birth, at the age of 25 in 1874. William then married Lucy O’Hara Hardie in 1880 in Frankfort, Kentucky.

Culbertson became quite wealthy and influential because of his business dealings and served as the mayor of Ashland, Kentucky, was a state representative in 1870, a state senator in 1873 and a U. S. Congressman from 1883 – 1885.

In 1887, William and Lucy Culbertson and their two children, William W., Jr. and Lucia H., moved to Coconut Grove, where William’s son by his first wife, Thomas Means Culbertson, became an early member of the Bay Biscayne Yacht Club, founded by Ralph M. Munroe that same year.10 They subsequently became the parents of five more children, Julia R., Henry H., Alex McKee, Wallace D. and John F. At the time he claimed his homestead in South Dade County, he was 62 years old.

In 1900, he was enumerated separately from his wife, Lucy. He lived near Frank and John Slaven and Charles Gossman, all early pioneers in South Dade. His wife, Lucy, lived on S. Bayshore not far from Caleb Trapp and his wife, Henrietta.11 12 The Trapps had also come to Coconut Grove in 1887 and Henrietta was the Coconut Grove school’s first teacher. William W. Culbertson, Sr. died in 1911, allegedly in Butler County, Ohio and was buried in Ashland, Kentucky. The gravestone shown on FindAGrave is for John J. Culbertson (1848 – 1870), not for William W. It is not known if John was related to William.

Since William was enumerated in Coconut Grove in 1900, this would indicate that he did not live on his homestead. On May 10, 1906, The Miami Metropolis reported that a Commissioner’s Deed had been issued for 160 acres in section 17, township 56 south, range 39 east. Fred S. Morse was the commissioner and Lucy H. Culbertson was guardian. The deed, for $1,900, was in favor of Gaston Drake, who established the Drake Lumber Company’s sawmill in Princeton in 1907. Frederick S. Morse was the land agent for the Model Land Company, Flagler’s real estate subsidiary and Lucy H. Culbertson was the wife of William Wirt Culbertson. A commissioner’s deed is issued when a property owner defaults on a mortgage and the mortgagee files a foreclosure suit against the mortgagor. In this case, what apparently happened is that William mortgaged his property to Gaston Drake and defaulted on the mortgage. Tracking the ownership of properties in Dade County is difficult and expensive but what is known is that the SW 1/4 of Culbertson’s property was owned by Frank J. Carey, who had “a nice grove already underway” in 191213 and that part of the SE 1/4 was owned by George J. Ross, who had established a grove before 1913.14 The 1912 Miami Metropolis map, which showed that the property was still owned by the Culbertsons, was in error. It is possible that the default was not satisfied and that Gaston Drake ended up with the property, cut down all the marketable pine trees and then sold off parcels of the land it to new arrivals, among them Carey and Ross.

Culbertson, because he was already wealthy and influential, did not really need to claim a homestead. He was already retired, after all. Perhaps he did so to teach his son, William, Jr., the ways of the world. William, Jr. went on to become the cashier of the First National Bank of Miami and Culbertson’s daughters married into the Matheson and Romfh families, both prominent Miami names. Julia married Malcom Matheson, a son of William J. and the brother of Hugh M., who donated the land for Crandon Park in exchange for the construction of the Rickenbacker Causeway. Lucia married George B. Romfh, Jr., the nephew of Edward C. Romfh, the president of the First National Bank of Miami.15 The bank was established in 1902 and Romfh employed William W. Culbertson, Jr. as the cashier.

Culbertson played a role in the history of South Dade County unlike the men and women featured in Jean Taylor’s book, who lived on their homesteads. Culbertson did not – he lived in Coconut Grove at 2461 S. Bayshore Drive, which was adjacent to the home of Thomas M. Culbertson, at 2425 S. Bayshore Drive.16 He claimed a homestead adjacent to Charles Ross, Charles W. Hill and James Castellow but did not live on it, did not attend church in the area nor did his children play a role in the history of South Dade. They all stayed in Miami. His story clearly illustrates the fact that men came here to make money, not to help create a community, a fact that is not mentioned at all in other histories of the area. Many homesteaders filed their claims, sold off the timber rights to sawmill operators, planted groves and sold their improved land for tidy profits as soon as they could. Those who sold quickly included Pinckney M. Bauknight, who donated the land for the Longview School; Arthur W. Chapman, who was one of the voters to approve the formation of the Town of Homestead; Junius T. Wigginton, a Miami real estate man who married the daughter of John S. Frederick, the civil engineer who laid out the Town of Homestead in 1904; Colonel O. Boaz, who, with Lilburn R. Nixon, kept William J. Krome’s men in supplies on Krome’s 1902 – 1903 Cape Sable Exploration; Henry H. Harrison, whose homesteaded included the land that became the community of Black Point at the intersection of Silver Palm Drive and U.S. 1; Claude Jenkins, who was a friend of Dan Roberts and a member of Krome’s Cape Sable Exploration crew; Minnie Lampher, Lyman B. Gould and William Johnson in Goulds; Joe Frankie Lofton, who homesteaded south of Leonard Mowry and Henry Brooker in Homestead and Elbert H. Ring in Detroit. There were many more. There were also many who did not homestead but purchased land from homesteaders and also only stayed long enough to make a good profit so they could leave for the proverbial greener pasture. Those who were not successful left the area. Those who became wealthy from land speculation often moved on also. A few successful arrivals elected to stay and those are the men and women whose stories have dominated the history of this area ever since.

There are two important and unexplored themes in the history of South Dade County: transient demographics and investments by men who did not live in the area. In the historical record, there are many mentions of community events and an equal number of mentions of people leaving their “many friends” in the area as they moved on. The demographics of this area have always been very fluid. The histories written about this area give an inaccurate picture of a stable community over time. What community existed was based in churches and civic organizations, as is true in many other parts of the country. Outside of those organizations, however, there was little commitment to anything larger. New residents arrived, joined a church or business organization and, when they learned of a greener pasture to graze, they left. Land speculation, now called “flipping,” was and still is the foundation of the economy in Dade County. Outside capital played a very important role in the development of this area. South Dade was not isolated from the larger Florida economy. While a fairly large and unquantified number of early pioneers came here from an area centered in Lake City, Florida, a lot of the money and the knowledge that it took to develop this area was furnished by men and women from all over the United States. Those include J. C. Baile, from Missouri; the Rutzkes and Berneckers, from Utah; Thomas Brewer, from Kentucky; Walter Peterson, from Wisconsin; Benjamin F. Forrest, from Illinois; W. O. Talbott, from Kansas; Gaston Drake, from Missouri; William Geronimo, from Connecticut via Arizona; Joseph L. Ishmael, from Kansas; Ike and Lilburn Nixon, from Missouri; Elbert Ring, from West Virginia; Andy Terburg, from Holland; Jim Tosto, from Italy; Frank Bartmes, from Illinois; Joseph Kahl, from North Dakota; William S. Burkhardt, from Ohio; Edward Stiling, from Michigan; Alexander C. Graw, from Philadelphia; James Powers, from Illinois; the Fredricks and Kufeldts, from Wisconsin; Richard Carney, from New Jersey; the Tatum brothers, from north Georgia; Karl Walton, from West Virginia and Col. Hugh Johnston, from Kentucky. And, as it always seems to be in the historical record, the role that women played in the development of this area has been badly neglected. Lily Lawrence Bow and Annie Mayhew Fitzpatrick are featured prominently in the historical record, but there were many others, single and married, including Isabelle Krome and Joe Frankie Lofton in Homestead and Martha Burden and Mary Barcus in Naranja. The role of women in the development of this area is a subject that needs to be addressed.

The Culbertson family, featured in this article, was just one family which owned property here but neither lived in South Dade nor worked to establish a viable community. The history of South Dade County as written so far has focused on the so-called Founding Fathers: Horne, Brooker, Burton, Fuchs, Caves, Bow, Free, Mowry and a few other families. There were others – lots of others. It is time for those others to receive some attention from historians also.
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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.

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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.