by Jeff Blakley

The reader is excused for thinking that this article is about a man. Almost always referred to as “Miss Frankie Lofton” or “Joe Frankie,” Joe Frank Lofton was a woman, not a man. Then and now, parents, for some reason, occasionally choose to give their children names usually associated with the opposite gender of the child being named. It is very unlikely that we will ever know why Joe Frankie Lofton’s parents chose to give her names usually associated with boys.

The reader might also rightfully ask why this article was researched, written and published. There are two reasons: First, the stories of women in the history of this area are woefully few and second, there is a myth that South Dade was founded and developed by the men in the families featured prominently in Jean Taylor’s book, The Villages of South Dade. People from all over the country and the world helped develop this area. Their stories have largely been ignored. It is my hope that this article, along with my previous articles on Ethel C. Booe, A. J. Poplin, Willie King, Benjamin F. Pherigo and William Wirt Culbertson, will represent the beginning of a more balanced picture of how South Dade developed.

This article is about one of the many unrecognized female pioneers in South Dade. Out of over 700 homestead claims filed in South Dade, a total of 50 were filed by women: 22 patents, 7 cash purchases, 9 relinquishments and 12 cancellations. When Joe Frankie filed her claim in section 13, township 57S, range 38E, where Homestead is located, on February 15, 1904 she was the first woman to do so. Roan L. Hall, who filed in section 2, township 57S, range 38E on June 4, 1903, was the first man to do so. Out of eighteeen women who filed claims in the 36 sections of that township, only nine received patents. She was one of those nine. Nothing of substance has been published about the homestead claims of men whose surnames were not Caves, Sullivan, Brooker or Horne and the same applies to women whose names were not Francis Lewis, Anna B. Longaker, Bodil Kosel, Ulrica Martin, Maria Gazzam, or Lily Lawrence Bow. I have published articles on the four men and one woman previously noted but many more need to be written to present a clearer picture of how South Dade developed over time.

Joe Frankie was born on February 12, 1876¹ in Hogansville, which is in Troup County, Georgia, half-way between Atlanta and Columbus. She was the daughter of Joel Jack Lofton and Leah Jane Cannon and she had three siblings: Beatrice V., born October 8, 1862; Wakie Rose, born April 30, 1864; and Wilbur Allen, born November 12, 1872.

Joe Frankie’s father, Joel Jack, was a farmer, like virtually everyone in the South during that era. He was also a small-time slave-owner. The 1860 census reported that he had real estate worth $3,000 and a personal estate valued at $6,300. The 1870 census reported that his real estate was still worth $3,000 but that his personal estate had declined to just $800. That decline of $5,500 in the value of his personal estate was likely the result of the freeing of the slaves in the South after the Civil War. By 1880, Joel and his family had moved to Harrisonville, a larger community about 5 miles east of Hogansville.³

At some point after 1880, Joel, Leah and their children moved to the Ocala, Florida area where the children attended the Ocala public schoolsl. Joe’s sister Beatrice married John James Rutland, a substantial farmer and cattleman from Rutland⁴ in about 1890 and started a family.⁵ By 1900, they had two sons, Joel Robert and Macon, and two daughters, Mabel and Rowena. Joel “Joe” Robert moved to Homestead in about 1918. Wakie Rose married John Manson Giles on December 28, 1897 at the home of her parents, which was four miles south of Ocala.⁶ She developed tuberculosis and died at the former home of Dr. Cowart, which was north of Tampa, on March 20, 1904.^{7 8}

At the age of about 26, Wilbur Allen moved to Miami and opened an “all-around repair shop” on 12th St. east of Avenue C in 1898.⁹ On February 4, 1900, he married Bertha Fox, the daughter of Charles J. Fox, at the home of Caleb L. Trapp in Cocoanut Grove.¹⁰ Charles’ brother, Samuel J., was a member of the Canadian Parliament and visited his sister in 1911, shortly before he died.¹¹ Wilbur opened one of the first bicycle shops in Miami, the Miami Cycle Shop, before 1901.¹² In June of 1902, his wife visited with Mrs. Joseph A. McDonald,¹³ whose husband was the head of the construction division of the Florida East Coast Railway.¹⁴ Wilbur was an energetic businessman and by 1902, he was quite prosperous, as evidenced by the fact that he was robbed of $175, his receipts for the day, while he slept in his bedroom.¹⁵ In late 1902, L. S. Johnson, from Tampa, purchased a 1/2 interest in Wilbur’s business and it was renamed Johnson & Lofton. The two men then purchased a motorcycle which attracted “much attention, being the first one in use in the city.”¹⁶ Continuing to prosper, he was able to send his wife and children on a two-month vacation to Georgia in 1903.¹⁷ Then, in January of 1904, he and his family moved into their new home at the corner of Avenue D and 20th St.,¹⁸ near the two-story home of one of the Brickell men.¹⁹ In August of 1905, Lofton purchased the large launch Ellowaha from Edward C. Romfh²⁰ and in November, Lofton, with his partners Robert B. Einig and M. K. Whitten, launched a jitney service between Miami and West Palm Beach using “large Reo touring cars.”²¹ In December, it was noted that Mrs. Lofton had enrolled her young son in the Miami Conservatory to “attend the musical kindergarten and violin classes.”²²

Wilbur Loftin and his wife were part of the same social circle that the Brickells, MacDonalds and Romfhs moved in. The Brickells need no introduction but the reader is probably not familiar with names Joseph A. MacDonald and Edward C. Romfh. Romfh was the cashier²³ and later president of the First National Bank of Miami, established on June 10, 1892. The bank building was at the corner of 12th St. and Avenue C,²⁴ a short distance away from Lofton’s bicycle shop. Frankie’s homestead claim in Homestead bordered, south of Mowry, that of George B. Romfh, a brother of Edward Coleman Romfh. Joseph A. McDonald, the son-in-law of John B. Reilly, the first Mayor of Miami, was elected to the first board of Councilmen of the City of Miami in 1896.²⁵ McDonald had arrived in Miami on February 15, 1896²⁶ to supervise the work involved in bringing the F.E.C. Railway into Miami. It is likely that McDonald Street in Coconut Grove is named for Joseph A. McDonald.

After graduating from high school in Ocala in about 1894,²⁷ Joe Frankie became a school teacher, which often happened in that era. She taught in the Greenwood Normal School in Ocala until 1898, when she resigned.²⁸ In June of 1900, she was enumerated in her hometown of Hogansville, Georgia, working as a school teacher and living in the household of Richard and Julia Netting.²⁹ By December of that year, she was visiting her brother Wilbur in Miami. The newspaper said she was from Macon, where she had moved after leaving Hogansville.³⁰ She apparently liked Miami, because in 1901, she taught at the Cocoanut Grove school, where she worked with William A. H. Hobbs.³¹ Hobbs was a graduate of the Edinburg Teachers College in Edinburg, Pennsylvania³² and from 1913 to 1915 operated a sawmill in the Silver Palm area.³³ At the end of the school year, she went back to Macon.³⁴

Nothing more is known about her whereabouts until she paid $10 to file a claim for a homestead in what is now the City of Homestead on February 15, 1904. Her claim was for 120 acres bounded by Mowry on the north, 6th Avenue on the east, Lucy St. on the south and Redland Rd. and 10th Ave. on the west. It is not known if Joe Frankie actually came to Homestead to look over the land prior to filing her claim. She may not have, for George B. Romfh, the brother of Edward C. Romfh, filed a claim on February 10, 1904 which was partially adjacent to Frankie’s claim. George’s claim was for 120 acres, bounded by 6th Ave. on the west, Campbell Dr. on the north, 2nd Ave. on the east and 4th St. on the south.

The friendly relationship between Wilbur A. Lofton and the Romfhs very likely motivated Joe Frankie to file her own claim. That may also have led her to decide to get into the real estate game at the young age of 28. George Romfh did not put a lot of effort into establishing his claim to his land, preferring instead to court Lucia H. Culbertson, the daughter of William Wirt Culbertson. They were married in Frankfort, Kentucky on August 3, 1904. Two months later, on October 13, 1904, the Receiver and Recorder of the Land Office cancelled George’s claim. That probably came about because James B. Clopton, prospecting for a claim, discovered that George had done nothing to improve his claim and asked the Land Office to cancel it. They did and James filed for it on the same day. Clopton’s claim was cancelled in 1906, picked up by two other men who sequentially relinquished their claims and finally patented by Leonard S. Mowry in 1911.

The next mention of Joe Frankie appeared in July of 1904, when she was among the celebrants at a 4th of July party thrown by Colonel O. Boaz and his wife Nidia. Boaz, who was the steward for William J. Krome’s Cape Sable Exploration Survey from October of 1902 to June of 1903, had filed his claim in June of 1900 and started building a a 5-room house on it in 1901.³⁵ Boaz’ claim ran for a mile along the north side of Silver Palm Dr., from Krome Avenue on the east to Redland Rd. on the west. Parts of it extended for 1/2 mile north, to SW 208th St. Those attending the party were Harry LeForest Hill and his wife, Alice Frederick, the sister of John S. Frederick, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Gossman, Mr. and Mrs. Charles R. Ross, for whom the Ross Hammock, part of Castellow Hammock Park, is named; Miss Maria Gazzam, George W. Kosel, Mr. and Mrs. John S. Frederick and children, Samuel H. Richmond, James Castellow, Joseph H. Bond, Mr. and Mrs. Frank H. Kanen, Mr. Moerson and Mr. Bergden. In September of that year, Joe Frankie was in Miami, where she won a prize for having “the most original old-fashioned costume” at a “most successful and pleasant meeting” of the Literary Improvement Society, held at the home of Mr. and Mrs. R. H. Whitnall on 5th St.^{36 37} In early 1905, Miss Lofton accepted a position as a stenographer in the office of Charles C. Chllingworth, the first attorney for the new town of West Palm Beach³⁸ but didn’t stay in that job for long as she accepted a job as a stenographer for the Island City Bank in Key West in November of 1905.³⁹ Her supervisor there gave her a lot of freedom, as she traveled back and forth between Miami and Key West for the better part of 1906.⁴⁰ In November, she left Key West to visit her brother in Miami and then finally resigned her position in February of 1907.⁴¹

In her book The Villages of South Dade, Jean Taylor wrote, without citing a source, that Joe Robert Rutland, one of Joe Frankie’s nephews (the son of John James Rutland and Beatrice V. Lofton, Joe Frankie’s sister), had come to Homestead in 1907 “to visit his aunt and spent the winter”⁴² there. This is corroborated by mentions of Joe Frankie being in Homestead in the Miami newspapers from February of 1907 to December of 1908.⁴³ She advertised for proof of her homestead in August of 1908⁴⁴ but apparently because she was busy, had money and little patience for complying with the requirements for a homestead claim, paid cash for it on December 18, 1908. She was issued a patent for her property on July 6, 1909. Between August and December of 1908, she worked for W. Emley Walton, who owned an insurance company in Miami. In January of 1909, she left Miami for a job with the Dade County State Bank in West Palm Beach⁴⁵ and then, in 1910, visited her brother in Miami.⁴⁶ In April of 1910, she went down to Homestead, where she was the guest of Joe Paul King,⁴⁷ a daughter of William A. King, for whom King’s Highway in Homestead is named.

Later in the year, Miss Lofton traveled to Ocala to visit her neice, May Belle Rutland McAteer and her sister, Beatrice V. Rutland.⁴⁸ Lofton’s first documented sale of property was 5 acres in 13-57-38 and 20 acres in 18-57-39 in October of 1910 to Reno McClung,⁴⁹ who was one of the protesters objecting to the F.E.C.’s treatment of striking firemen in Homestead in January of 1912. At some point, Frankie quit her job with the Dade County State Bank and hired on as a bookkeeper with the Biscayne Laundry in Miami in 1911.⁵⁰ That only lasted a few months before she went back to her old job with W. Emley Walton.⁵¹

After securing title to her homestead claim in 1909, Frankie, now with a good amount of business experience, seems to have gone out on her own, buying and selling real estate. She also made the society pages a number of times,⁵² attended dances at the Dade County Fair building,⁵³ went on a sailing trip out to Cape Florida,⁵⁴ and met with friends who had money to spend. In early September, 1912, she resigned her position with the W. Emley Walton Insurance Co.⁵⁵ so that she could spend a couple of months on vacation “on her farm west of town”⁵⁶ with her friend, Mrs. Florence Smith.⁵⁷ Frankie had sold 40 acres of her homestead to John B. Kassebaum in 1912.⁵⁸ This sale was for the 40 acres bounded by SW 4th St. on the north, SW 6th Ave. on the east, Lucy St. on the south, and SW 10th Avenue on the west, leaving her with 80 acres fronting on Mowry.⁵⁹ Kassebaum was associated with the Waskey-Kassebaum Wholesale Produce Company in Pittsburg, Kansas and he and his family spent a couple of weeks at the Worlds’ Fair in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1904.⁶⁰ He came to South Dade and purchased hundreds of acres of land, starting in 1912, but then disappeared from the Redland area by 1916. In 1918, Lofton owed $104 in property taxes to the Town of Homestead for the 40 acres bounded by SW 4th St. on the south, 6th Avenue on the east, Mowry on the north and 10th Ave. on the west. The assessed value of the property was $8,000, indicating that it was developed – it wasn’t pine rockland.⁶¹

Joe Frankie was doing very well in the real estate business as she was able to afford a long vacation, beginning on July 10, 1913 with a visit to Hot Springs, Arkansas.⁶² Hot Springs was a popular destination for those seeking to improve their health by bathing in the waters there. She then toured “Texas, Kansas, Tennessee and other points in the west and north,” returning on October 6.⁶³ Later, in November, Lofton sold a small parcel of land, 50′ x 85′, to the City of Miami for over $16,000 in 2025 dollars. The parcel was needed for the extension of Avenue B, which is now Biscayne Blvd.⁶⁴ Frankie had time for a trip to Detroit (now Florida City) in November of 1914, when she registered at the Hotel Detroit.⁶⁵ In 1915, she started working for the Realty Securities Company, a big real estate firm in Miami⁶⁶ and by 1916, she was a member of the Business Woman’s League of Miami.⁶⁷

In November of that year, she was one of a party of 9 women and 7 men who sailed to Cape Florida for a picnic.⁶⁸ One of the women was Mrs. Brondgeest, whose maiden name was Lida Eliza Trapp, the daughter of Caleb L. Trapp and Henrietta Rhodes. Henrietta was a sister of Samuel, who platted New Biscayne along the shores of Biscayne Bay, starting at 27th Ave. and running north to Kirk St.⁶⁹ That area was the home of a number of wealthy and influential figures in early Cocoanut Grove, including W. W. Culbertson and Kirk Monroe, whose property was one hundred feet south of Kirk St.

Another woman in the party was Edith Hand Branning, the wife of Judge H. Pierre Branning. who was the first attorney for the criminal court of record of Dade County and was appointed to the 11th Circuit Court of Florida in 1914 by Gov. Park Trammell.⁷¹ Yet another woman was Frankie’s friend Florence Smith. One of the men present was Reiner B. Schallern, an attorney who first came to Miami in 1911 but moved to Homestead by 1914. In Homestead, he was a charter member of the Rotary Club organized there,⁷² acted as the attorney for the Charter of the Homestead Women’s Club ⁷³ and was among the charter members of the Homestead Chamber of Commerce.⁷⁴ Two other men, Joseph V. Dillon and his brother Raymond, were also on the trip. Joseph was an attorney who served in the Florida House of Representatives. It is apparent that Frankie Lofton counted among her friends a number of influential men and women who, no doubt, assisted her in her real estate dealings.

Lofton’s successful real estate dealings allowed her to take an extended vacation, starting in late June of 1917, when she left to visit her niece, Maybelle Rutland McAteer, in Ocala. From there, she travelled on to Asheville, where she spent the rest of the summer.⁷⁵ After her return in early September, she attended a wedding party for her friend Emilie Kemmer, who was to be married to John J. Mauser of Sanford. The party featured a blackface performance by Harry Steele and Mark Yeadaker, who, “transformed with a little burnt cork and woman’s (sic) apparel” appeared as “two realistic ‘nigger washwomen’ bearing between them a basket of Miss Emilie’s washin’.” Frankie “carried off the honors, a small ‘nigger’ doll.”⁷⁶ In early 1918, Frankie set off on another vacation, again visiting her niece in Ocala. She spent six weeks in Ocala, returning to Miami on April 1.⁷⁷

In early 1920, Lofton entered into a partnership with Benjamin Cowl, of New York City, establishing the firm of Lofton & Cowl, Inc. They occupied an office in the Halcyon Hotel on Avenue B and sold real estate and insurance.⁷⁸ On July 1, 1921, she left Miami on board the Clyde Line steamship Mohawk for New York to embark on a tour of Europe. While en route, she organized a party to celebrate the 4th of July.⁷⁹ On July 17, she left New York City, joining Mrs. John Bridges Phelps, Mrs. J. E. Lummus, Mrs. Mitchell Price and other notable socialites to go on the European tour popular at that time. She visited all the principal cities, attended the famous Passion Day play in Oberammergau, Germany and returned to Miami on September 21.⁸⁰ On her return, she stayed at the Commodore Hotel in New York City until the end of September.⁸¹

In the summer of 1923, she spent two months in Colorado Springs, returning on October 9.⁸² This may have been Frances’ first attempt to recover from what was likely latent tuberculosis. Colorado Springs and, to a lesser extent, Denver, were well-known treatment centers for tubercular patients in that era.⁸³

By 1925, Lofton was on easy street, having sold two lots at the northwest corner of S.W. 8th St. and Brickell for $22,000.⁸⁴ She likely celebrated by going to Asheville, North Carolina to attend the Grand Opera Week, where the San Carol Grand Opera Company began a week’s engagement under the auspices of the Asheville Music Festival Association on August 10.⁸⁵ The Miami Tribune, in its announcement that Joe Frances Lofton, along with Mr. and Mrs. Frank Smathers⁸⁶ and Mrs. J. M. Bercegeay,⁸⁷ would attend the Grand Opera Week, erred in stating that the location was in Waynesville, North Carolina.⁸⁸ The Smathers house was in Waynesville; the opera was in Asheville.

In early 1926, Frances Lofton and Ethel Seymour, the ex-wife of Benjamin Seymour, who was a wealthy Ocala businessman and real estate speculator, attended a dinner/dance held at the Tea Deck Garden of the Hollywood Hotel. Over four hundred guests were in attendance.⁸⁹ Benjamin was a first cousin of Robert Seymour, a well-known Miami attorney. Ethel and her daughter Louise lived at 1013 Brickell Avenue.⁹⁰ The real estate speculation bubble was beginning to lose air, though, and after Miami was struck by a Category 4 hurricane on September 18 of that year,⁹¹ the market crashed. Frankie, who lived at 1036 W. Flagler in 1928, visited with her nephew, Joel “Joe” Robert Rutland and his wife in Homestead in January of 1929.⁹² In 1930, she filed for personal bankruptcy, listing assets of $2,000 in real estate and two past-due notes for $3,000 each. She stated that her liabilities were $24,339.61 plus $453.61 in disputed Federal income tax for 1925.⁹³

Times were very difficult for everyone – this was in the depths of the Great Depression. On May 21, 1929, she married John Jacob Wood, a retired building contractor from Lawrence, Long Island, New York, in Everglades City. He may have owned the house at 796 NE 85th St. in Miami, the address Frankie gave on her bankruptcy petition. He was 20 years older than she was and died just 21 months later, on February 27, 1931. Joe Frankie, whose latent tuberculosis may have become more serious, moved in with her nephew and his wife in Homestead sometime after her husband died. In July of 1934, she went to Denver, Colorado to seek relief from “a long illness”⁹⁴ and died, at the age of 57, in the Porter Sanitarium on September 14, 1934.⁹⁵ The funeral was held at her nephew’s house in Homestead and she was buried in Miami Memorial Park.⁹⁶ The obituary published in the Miami Daily News, which claimed that she had lived alone on her homestead for many years⁹⁷ was very wrong, as proven by this article.

Her will, entered into probate on October 12, 1934, told a very different story from what she stated in her bankruptcy petition in 1930. She left her brother Wilbur, who died in 1952, a trust fund that was to pay him $100/month for the rest of his life, her jewelry went to her grand-niece Frances Rutland of Homestead and her personal effects to her niece May Belle McAteer of Ocala.⁹⁸ The attorney who filed the case, Stanley Milledge, born in 1896, grew up in the Redlands on Coconut Palm Drive west of Redland Rd.

Joe Frank Lofton was a fiercely independent woman who lived her life according to her own rules. She was on the move for most of her life, living in hotels and boarding houses and not living in a house until late in her life. She achieved great wealth, descended into near-poverty, and died of tuberculosis at an early age in a sanitarium thousands of miles away from Florida. She was a remarkable woman who deserves at least as much credit as the high-society men and women she associated herself with. Hopefully, this article will help educate those interested in the history of women in South Florida. There were women whose stories deserve respect other than those so often mentioned in the few papers and books written on the subject.
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1. Lofton’s passport application, dated June 7, 1922, gives the year as 1887. That was not true. The 1900 census gives her month and year as February of 1877. A note in the Miami Metropolis, June 18, 1910, p. 5, reprinting an article from the Ocala Star stated that “Miss Lofton attended the high school here when Prof. Streater taught, seventeen years ago.” That would have been in 1893. If she was born in 1887, she must have been a genius to be 5 years old and in high school!
2. Photo from her 1922 passport application
3. U.S. census of Harrisonville, GA, 1880
4. Ocala Evening Star, Sept. 24, 1907, p. 3
5. 1910 census of Rutland, Sumter, FL
6. The Ocala Evening Star, Dec. 29, 1897, p. 1
7. The Tampa Tribune, March 22, 1904, p. 5
8. Find A Grave memorial #61906107
9. Miami Metropolis, Sept. 30, 1898, p. 7. This location is now E. Flagler St. and 1st Ave.
10. Miami Metropolis, Feb. 9, 1900, p. 7
11. Miami Metropolis, Feb. 13, 1911, p. 1
12. Miami Metropolis, February 1, 1901, p. 1
13. Miami Metropolis, June 20, 1902, p. 5
14. Miami and Dade County, Florida: Its Settlement, Progress and Achievement, E.V. Blackmun, Victor Rainbolt, Washington, D. C., 1921, p. 21
15. Miami Metropolis, July 25, 1902, p. 1. $175 in 1902 is the equivalent of $6,444 in 2024.
16. Miami Metropolis, Oct. 3, 1902, p. 3
17. Miami Metropolis, October 9, 1903
18. Miami Metropolis, January 7, 1904, p. 8. Avenue D is now Miami Avenue and 20th St. was in Southside, so named because it was south of the Miami River, where many wealthy people had homes.
19. Miami Evening Record, June 25, 1904, p. 8
20. Miami Metropolis, August 12, 1905, p. 5
21. Miami Metropolis, December 8, 1905, p. 5
22. Miami Metropolis, Dec. 11, 1905, p. 4
23. Bank cashiers in 1900 held the position of what is now known as the Chief Operations Officer. They were members of the Board of Directors.
24. Miami and Dade County, Florida: Its Settlement, Progress and Achievement, E.V. Blackmun, Victor Rainbolt, Washington, D. C., 1921, pp. 47 and 112
25. Ibid., p. 55
26. Ibid., p. 21
27. Miami Metropolis, June 18, 1910, p. 5
28. Ocala Evening Star, January 11, 1898, p. 1
29. U.S. census of Hogansville, GA, June 25, 1900
30. Miami Metropolis, December 7, 1900, p. 5
31. Miami Metropolis, July 5, 1901, p. 4 – Housekeepers Club Column
32. Miami Herald, May 8, 1948, p. 9-A
33. Miami Metropolis, September 10, 1915, p. 5
34. Miami Metropolis, July 19, 1901, p. 5
35. Miami Metropolis, July 12, 1901, p. 4
36. Miami Metropolis, September 6, 1904, p. 5
37. Richard H. Whitnall (1862-1926) was the chief clerk for the Pacific & Orient Steamship Co., a Flagler company, with an office on the terminal dock.
38. Miami Metropolis, April 15, 1905, p. 5
39. Miami Metropolis Key West bureau dispatch, November 23, 1905, p. 9
40. Miami Metropolis, May 18, May 31 and June 7, 1906.
41. Miami Metropolis, February 13, 1907, p. 5
42. The Villages of South Dade, Byron Kennedy and Co., St. Petersburg, FL, 1984, p. 166
43. Miami Metropolis, February 13, April 4 and July 12, 1907 and January 3, April 25, August 4, August 28 and December 7, 1908
44. Miami Metropolis, August 4, 1908, p. 5
45. Miami Metropolis, January 18, 1909, p. 1
46. Miami Metropolis, April 5, 1910, p. 8
47. Miami Metropolis, April 20, 1910, p. 1
48. Miami Metropolis, June 18, 1910, p. 5
49. Miami Metropolis, November 3, 1910, p. 3
50. Miami Metropolis, January 31, 1911, p. 1
51. Miami Metropolis, May 24, 1911, p. 3
52. Miami Metropolis, August 17, 1911 and March 23 and May 14, 1912
53. Miami Metropolis, October 3, 28 and November 2, 1911
54. Miami Metropolis, Oct. 2, 1911, p. 5
55. Miami Herald, September 7, 1912, p. 4
56. South Florida Banner, September 13, 1912, p. 3
57. South Florida Banner, Sept. 20, 1912, p. 3
58. Miami Metropolis, November 2, 1912, p. 23
59. Miami Metropolis, May 15, 1916, p. 4
60. The Pittsburg Daily Headlight, September 19, 1904, p. 2
61. Homestead Enterprise, Sept. 5, 1918, p. 7
62. Miami Metropolis, July 10, 1913, p. 5
63. Miami Metropolis, October 6, 1913, p. 5
64. Miami Metropolis, March 11, 1914, p. 2
65. Miami Metropolis, November 20, 1914, p. 5
66. Miami Metropolis, April 9, 1915, p. 5
67. Miami Metropolis, March 8, 1916, p. 5
68. Miami Metropolis, Nov. 13, 1916, p. 5
69. Miami-Dade Clerk of Courts, Plat Book B, p. 16
70. Available from the Miami-Dade County Clerk of Courts website. Enter Book 2000, Page 16 when searching for this plat
71. Miami and Dade County, Florida: Its Settlement, Progress and Achievement, E.V. Blackmun, Victor Rainbolt, Washington, D. C., 1921. p. 116
72. Rotary Club of Homestead, 1924-1992, Historic Homestead Town Hall Museum, February 22, 1955
73. Homestead Enterprise, January 20, 1916, p. 2
74. Homestead Enterprise, July 15, 1915, p. 1
75. Miami Metropolis, June 20, 1917, p. 5
76. Miami Metropolis, Sept. 21, 1917, p. 7
77. Ocala Evening Star, April 2, 1918, p. 3
78. Miami Herald, January 2, 1920, p. 4
79. Miami Herald, July 9, 1922, p. 5
80. Miami Herald, August 28, 1922, p. 3 and September 21, 1922, p. 13
81. Miami Herald, July 2, 1922, p. 3
82. Miami Herald, October 9, 1923, p. 5
83. Wikipedia: Tuberculosis Treatment in Colorado Springs
84. Miami Herald, Feb. 24, 1925, p. 30. In 2025 dollars, this is $401,132.
85. The Asheville Times, August 9, 1925, p. 15
86. Frank was the father of United States Senator George Smathers, who owned the Four Fillies Farm at Red Road and Old Cutler.
87. Effie Thompson Bercegeay’s husband was the assistant secretary of the Tatum Bros. Real Estate and Investment Co.
88. Miami Tribune, August 8, 1925, p. 4
89. Miami Herald, June 17, 1926, p. 6
90. Miami Tribune, May 17, 1926, p. 5.
91. The center of the hurricane passed over Perrine
92. Miami Metropolis, Homestead column, Jan. 26, 1929, p. 5
93. Miami Herald, Oct. 17, 1930, p. 7
94. Homestead Leader-Enterprise, Sept. 21, 1934, p. 8
95. The Porter Sanitarium, founded by the Seventh Day Adventist Henry Porter, is still in existence and is now known as AdventHealth Porter, located at 2525 S. Downing St. in Denver.
96. Miami Metropolis, Sept. 17, 1934, p. 11
97. Miami Daily News, Sept. 18, 1934, p. 13
98. Miami Herald, Oct. 13, 1934, p. 4