By Jeff Blakley

On March 25, 1904, the Miami Metropolis reprinted an essay that was written by an unidentified person for the Fernandina Star, a newspaper published in Fernandina, Nassau County, Florida. Entitled Perrine Land Grant, An Interesting Writeup of the Famous Cutler Region, the piece offered some interesting observations about agricultural activities taking place in that area.¹

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

In the article, the writer stated that tomato growers Thomas J. Peters and his brother William I. Peters owned 325 acres, the Easterling Bros. owned 200 and Joe and James Griffin owned 25. There were also fruit growers: Lucy C. Carnegie, Dr. J. D. Palmer and James A. Smith had small groves and Fred Kidder, “a large rice planter in North Carolina, has purchased 300 acres of prairie land and intends to put out 50 acres in grapefruit next winter and has eight acres in tomatoes now. If they are a success, he will plant 50 acres in tomatoes next year.”²

Frederic Kidder was born on January 12, 1847 in Wilmington, North Carolina, the son of Edward and Ann Kidder.³ His father, Edward W. Kidder, was a very wealthy wholesale lumber dealer, having real estate assets of $127,000 and a personal estate worth $246,000 in 1870. In 2023, those amounts are $2.9 and $5.8 million.⁴ Edward, who was born in New Hampshire,⁵ sent his sons Gilbert and Frederic to Harvard College, from which Frederic graduated in 1870.⁶

On February 2, 1882,⁷ Kidder purchased two rice plantations: Lilliput and Kendal, located on the west bank of the Cape Fear River just north of Southport.⁸ The biographical entry in the Harvard College publication for Kidder, published in 1888, was short: “Since graduation has been engaged in the lumber-business and rice-planting at Wilmington, N. C. (No Report)”⁹

The Kidder family was in the upper class and members of the family were frequently mentioned in the period of 1870 to 1910 in the Wilmington newspapers. In February of 1890, Kidder and Dr. George G. Thomas went to Cuba for unspecified reasons.¹⁰

There was no mention of any connection between Kidder and Florida until this appeared in The Wilmington Morning Star in 1903: “Mr. H. M. Flagler is the guest of Mr. Fred Kidder at Kendall plantation.”¹¹

William J. Krome, who was the chief engineer of the Key West Extension after Joseph C. Meredith died in 1909, made a note in his diary, dated May 1, 1904, that “Mr. Kidder, an old friend of Mr. Flagler’s,” visited Krome’s surveying “camp at Little Card Point some time ago.” The meeting between Flagler and Kidder was not a casual one, it seems.¹²

Work on the Cutler Extension of Flagler’s F.E.C. Railway started on the south bank of the Miami River in January of 1903. By October, the railroad tracks had been placed as far south as S.W. 136th St., south of the area now known as Kendall.¹³ The rails reached Perrine, south of Kendall, in late November of 1903.¹⁴

The first mention of Frederic Kidder in the Miami newspapers occurred on October 30, 1903, just five months after he and Flagler had discussed business, when Samuel H. Richmond reported that he had sold 200 acres of prairie and 40 acres of pine land to Mr. Kidder, of Wilmington, N. C.¹⁵

On May 7, 1904, William E. Raulerson and his wife sold Kidder the east half of lot 5 in block 115 of the town of Cutler for $150.^{16 17}Kidder may have had plans to live in Cutler, which was only three miles south of his land holdings, but that did not happen.

It is quite possible that Flagler, whose company was granted tens of thousands of acres of flood-prone lands by Florida’s Internal Improvement Fund, discussed rice cultivation with Frederic Kidder in 1903. In 1906, Samuel H. Richmond and John S. Frederick spent “two weeks in surveying a body of land in the Perrine grant now owned by a northern company for the purpose of experimenting in the culture of rice in that section. They have made their headquarters at camp Wonder, on the tract, where the land is of a marshy nature and the nearest fresh water three miles away. The land is to be ditched and drained and a thorough test of its rice growing qualities given by its northern owners.”¹⁹

The next mention of Kidder in Dade County came in September of 1904, when the Jacksonville Times-Union reported that J. E. Ingraham (the 3rd V-P of the F.E.C. and an officer of the Perrine Grant Land Co.) said that the Government had reserved land for an “experiment station in section 11 of the Perrine Grant. This tract joins that recently purchased by Fred Kidder and means much for that part of Cutler precinct. The railroad station at that point will be on or near Mr. Kidder’s property and will probably be named Kendal, after his plantation in North Carolina.”²⁰ It is not known if the “experiment station” was ever established. It likely wasn’t, as there was an existing tropical experiment station on Brickell Avenue close to downtown Miami.

By October of 1904, Kidder had hired a force of men to clear and plant 35 acres of his new property in grapefruit trees.²¹ By November, he had purchased more land and had “built three houses and a fine barn on the premises.”²² During this period of time, he was working with H. T. Carter and John J. Hinson²³ and by October of 1905, he had a grapefruit grove of over 100 acres at Kendal Station.²⁴

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

Perrine Land Grant Survey

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

Kidder Grove

Kendal Grove

The Kendal stop on the railroad was initially a flag stop, as shown in the above survey from 1909. A flag stop was just a platform – there was no building or station agent – where men would signal to the locomotive engineer to stop to pick up freight. The platform was on the east side of the railroad tracks but when the depot was built after 1930²⁵ The platform shown on the 1909 survey probably still existed as it served as a disembarking point for passengers. However, the existence of the spur meant that flat cars were left on the spur to be loaded with freight bound for points north or south. Southbound freight likely consisted of cross-ties harvested from the dense pine forests in the area. The railroad built a spur in Goulds, originally known as Gould’s siding, further south, for the same reason. Northbound freight was probably vegetables destined for Miami and points further distant. The location of the platform/depot was a little south of Johnson St., now SW 98th St.²⁶ The stop was an important one because the FEC did not spend the money to build spurs at their stops unless they were going to make a profit by doing so. No doubt, Kidder shipped grapefruit and oranges from his property, 200 yards away from the depot²⁷ but as settlers poured into the area, they also used the platform to ship their agricultural products to northern markets.

By early 1911, the County had built a new road, now known as U. S. 1, parallel to the railroad tracks between Flagler Grove and the depot.^{28 29}

John J. Hinson, who came to Dade County in 1891 before Miami was incorporated,³⁰ may have worked for John Sewell and John S. Frederick in laying out the Town of Miami in 1896³¹ and was the foreman of a gang of men building roads south of the Miami River.³² In December of 1902, Hison’s payroll amounted to $774.11, which was paid for by Dade County in January of 1903.³³ In 1903, he worked as a foreman on the Cutler Extension.³⁴ In 1904, he went to work for the Flagler interests as the foreman for the Flagler Grove, which was established on 80 acres in the SW 1/4 of 2-55-40. In 18 months, Hinson claimed to have cleared and planted 70 acres in grapefruit trees.³⁵ Hinson held that job until the property was sold to George E. Merrick in 1920.³⁶

In 1906, S. H. Richmond sold Hinson twenty acres “at Kenday (sic – Kendal) near the famous Kidder grove.”³⁷ Per the above survey, the SE corner of Hinson’s property, half of which included lot 6 of the SW quarter of 2-55-40, was the same point as the NE corner of Kidder’s property.

Jean Taylor, in her book The Villages of South Dade, wrote that Kendall was named for Henry John Boughton Kendall,³⁸ who managed the holdings of Sir Edward James Reed in South Dade County. Reed owned millions of acres of land in Florida in the late 19th century. Professional genealogists are very familiar with how amateur family historians, lacking documentation to prove their assertions, link their surname to that of someone famous with the same surname. Frederic Kidder was in the Kendal area for no more than 3 years and his presence was quickly forgotten. Kendal Station was named after Kidder’s Kendal Plantation in Brunswick County, NC, not for Henry J. B. Kendall.

The last mention of Frederic Kidder in the Miami newspapers came in June of 1906, when a small parcel he owned in section 26-55-40 in the Town of Cutler was included in a list of owners of parcels who were delinquent in paying their property taxes. That list was based on bills issued in 1905.³⁹

Kidder, who had battled rheumatic ailments in his younger years,⁴⁰ may have sold his properties and gone back to North Carolina. He died in a sanitarium in Litchfield, CT on October 27, 1908 and is buried in the family plot in the Oakdale Cemetery in Wilmington.

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

March 20, 2026: This article was extensively revised after the two included surveys were found by Ryan Tenner at HistoryMiami and provided to the author. While not conclusive legal proof that Flagler Grove was established, at least in part, on the property once owned by Frederic Kidder, they point to where historians should be looking. Ryan Tenner, an undergraduate student at the University of Florida in Gainesville, has a bright future ahead of him.
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1. Miami Metropolis, March 25, 1904, p. 4
2. Miami Weekly Metropolis, March 25, 1904, p. 4. This issue is not available on Newspapers.com, unfortunately.
3. Passport application dated January 28, 1898
4. 1870 census of Wilmington, NC for Edward Kidder
5. Death Certificate for Gilbert P. Kidder, 1846-1925
6. Harvard Class of 1870, Secretary’s Report No. 5, 1888, published in Cambridge by John Wilson and Son, University Press, 1888
7. Historical Overview of Lilliput Plantation
8. Ibid, p. 24
9. Harvard Class of 1870, Secretary’s Report No. 5, 1888, published in Cambridge by John Wilson and Son, University Press, 1888
10. The Wilmington Morning Star, Feb. 25, 1890, p. 1
11. The Wilmington Morning Star, May 12, 1903, p. 1. H. M. Flagler was Henry Morrison Flagler, the owner of the Florida East Coast Railway.
12. 1904 Krome Diary, Historic Homestead Town Hall Museum, Homestead, FL. “Little Card Point” was a temporary camp established by William Krome while he was surveying a new route for the railroad after the FEC rejected his suggestion that the railroad go to Cape Sable.
13. Miami Metropolis, November 27, 1903, p. 3
14. Miami Metropolis, November 27, 1903, p. 1
15. Miami Weekly Metropolis, October 30, 1903, 2nd section, p. 2
16. Miami Evening Record, May 7, 1904, p. 5
17. Miami Weekly Metropolis, May 13, 1904, p. 5. The plat showing this lot is in Book B, p. 37 and is available from the Miami-Dade County Clerk’s Office
19. Miami Evening Record, May 1, 1906, p. 4]note] In September of 1909, The Florida East Coast Homeseeker, a Flagler publication, reported that Mr. B. S. Hunter, of Black Point, planted his rice crop on June 8th and harvested it on September 23rd.¹⁸The Florida East Coast Homeseeker, September, 1909, p. 294
20. Miami Weekly Metropolis, Sept. 16, 1904, p. 1, reprinting an article from the Times-Union of an unknown date.
21. Miami Evening Record, Oct. 21, 1904, p. 5
22. Miami Weekly Metropolis, Nov. 4, 1904, p. 1
23. Miami Metropolis, Feb. 18, 1905, p. 5
24. Miami Evening Record, Oct. 6, 1905, p. 1
25. A 1930 FEC time table furnished by Bob Lowry, editor of The Speedway, the Official Publication of the Florida East Coast Railway Society, showed the stop with a triangle, which indicates that it was still a flag stop. By downloading and enlarging the two surveys, note the existence of the spur in the 1910 survey.
26. See Ahlman’s Business Addition to Kendal, plat book 22, page 8, available from the Miami-Dade Clerk of Courts website. The station is shown in the lower left corner of the little box in the upper right corner of the plat.
27. Miami Herald, Sept. 21, 1912, p. 5
28. Miami Herald, August 27, 1911, p. 9
29. Miami Herald, Sept. 21, 1912, p. 5
30. Homestead Enterprise (Homestead, FL), Sept. 19, 1918, p. 1
31. Miami Daily News, July 24, 1932, p. 19. Agnew Welsh, a writer for the Miami Metropolis, claimed that Sewell came to Miami in 1894. However, Casey Piket, an authority on early Miami history, stated that Agnew Welsh was incorrect. Sewell’s memoirs stated that he arrived in Miami on March 3, 1896.
32. Miami Weekly Metropolis, June 13, 1902, p. 7
33. Miami Weekly Metropolis, January 6, 1903, p. 3
34. Homestead Enterprise, September 19, 1918, p. 1
35. Homestead Enterprise, September 19, 1918, p. 1
36. Miami Daily Metropolis, Oct. 26, 1920, p. 1
37. Miami Daily Metropolis, May 25, 1906, p. 6
38. The Villages of South Dade, p. 39
39. Miami Metropolis, June 13, 1906, p. 13
40. The Wilmington Messenger, May 17, 1890, p. 8