THE SETTLING OF SARASOTA (15th in a series)

The last issue of the Settling of Sarasota described the three weekly visits of the Steamship Mistletoe to pick up fish for the Tampa market. With the Mistletoe in regular operation, more fishermen moved here and the industry grew.

The following is J. W. Walden’s description of a trip he made in 1896 in the fishing boat Sea Turtle: “as we approached Sarasota Pass with the incoming tide we met a school of mullet. They darted to and fro in the sea green water. They bumped against the boat and leaped over the rudder.. I captured two six-pounders with my dip net while they were leaping through the air. The school was more than a mile long. It was a sight I shall never forget.”

None of these fishermen became wealthy however; they considered themselves lucky to be paid one dollar for one hundred pounds of fish.

During the Spanish-American War (1898) nearly 40,000 troops were stationed at Tampa for months awaiting transport to Cuba. The demand for fish soared, prices rose, the fishermen made enough money to buy better equipment, and the industry grew.

The war also brought prosperity to the cattlemen in the area. Thousands of cattle were driven to slaughterhouses at the edge of Tampa to supply meat for the soldiers and the booming town. “Cattle money” didn’t help Sarasota, however, because it was deposited or spent in Tampa

Fewer than a dozen families lived in the unincorporated town. Sarasota was in a depression.

On June 1, 1899, C.V.S. Wilson and his wife moved his newspaper plant from Bradenton to Sarasota after having heard a report that it was enjoying a boom. The ‘boom’ consisted of the sale of the DeSoto Hotel and 200 feet of waterfront land for $1,500 and the sale of the Sarasota House and all it’s considerable land for $500.

Soon after arriving in Sarasota, Wilson published the first issue of the Sarasota Times. There were a total of 300 people in the entire area. Wilson never missed an issue for twenty-two years, at which time it was sold.

Three partners, Highsmith, Turner and Prime bought an abandoned store that sold everything from diapers to caskets, groceries, hardware, feed and hay, plows and stoves. In one year they sold almost $100,000 worth of goods without receiving $1,000 in cash. Taken in trade were alligator hide and cow hides, furs, sweet potatoes, chickens, et al. These goods were shipped to Tampa for whatever cash remained after transportation and handling costs were taken.

Also mentioned in the last issue was Harry lee Higel’s purchase of the dock at the foot of Main Street. He was also the agent for the steamship “Mistletoe,” and bought the steamship “Vandalia” which filled in on those days that the “Mistletoe” didn’t stop at Sarasota. He became a major contributor to the growth of Sarasota.

Listed below are some of the Harry Higel’s accomplishments: He
· Installed gasoline and kerosene tanks on the pier.
· Donated the land for the First Methodists Church.
· Built the post office/telephone building
· Developed Sarasota Key which later became Siesta Key and
· Arranged with Gulf Coast Telephone Company to string wires from Bradentown to · · Sarasota using pine trees as telephone pole.

One telephone was installed in the post office and a second one in Higel’s office on the pier. The phone crackled and jangled; a person “needed ears as sharp as a village gossip and deep concentration to comprehend what was being said.”

To be continued..

Copyright © Leland G. Desmon. The information on this page may not be reproduced or republished on another webpage, website, or other printed material. Please LINK TO US instead.

Photo credit: Sarasota County Historical Resources

THE SETTLING OF SARASOTA (14th in a series)

In the last installment, you read about Sarasota’s first train, the “Slow and Wobbly”. This link between Bradentown (now Bradenton) and Sarasota was Sir John Gillespie’s attempt to assure Sarasota’s survival.

After less than three years of spasmodic trips, the Slow and Wobbly was retired. Construction had stopped, the workers had gone and there was little money to spend. The engine and flat cars were left to rust. Gillespie’s problems were multiplying.

His wife Mary was a cantankerous woman who enjoyed frequent nips of scotch or bourbon or rum often resulting in, shall we say, embarrassing situations. Sir John, an ardent Episcopalian was serving as a lay reader at church services one Sunday and Mrs. Gillespie strolled in after services had begun and took a seat close to the pulpit. She opened a large red parasol and held it over her head until services ended. She then stood up, closed the parasol and said “nice going darlin” and left the building, weaving down the wooden sidewalk towards the De Soto Hotel (inset).

Some months later, in an effort to get a church in Sarasota, Gillespie invited an Episcopalian bishop to be his guest at the DeSoto Hotel. The bishop arrived accompanied by a large group of church dignitaries. While he was seated in the dining room Mrs. Gillespie entered, lurched into a waiter who spilled the entire contents of a soup tureen on the bishop’s lap. The bishop rose, said nothing, left the dining room and the DeSoto Hotel the next morning. Sarasota did not get its Episcopalian church that year.

As a result of Mary Gillespie’s shenanigans, the couple he had hired to manage the DeSoto Hotel left it in 1891 and built their own fancy hotel; the guests moved and soon the DeSoto closed.

Sir John and Mary moved to Bradentown for a short time, after which they returned to Scotland for a visit. When Gillespie returned to Sarasota a few years later he was alone.

The winter of 1894-95 was the coldest in the state’s history. Temperatures fell to 17 degrees, killing the vegetable crop and ruining the season’s citrus crop. As a result, in 1895, fishing was the only economic stimulus remaining and Sarasota was referred to as a fishing village. Fortunately the trees in the groves escaped being killed by the frost; citrus growers from farther north in Florida moved to the area and started new groves.

Until then, fish caught in the Sarasota area were gutted and salted for transportation to other areas. Beginning in 1884, the demand for salted fish declined because fresh fish shipped in ice had become available. Ice plants were being built in Tampa but economical transportation of ice and fish did not yet exist. In 1895, channels were cut in Sarasota Bay that allowed steamers to take the inland waterway from Tampa directly to the dock at Sarasota. The bill from the U.S. Swanee Dredge was $9,998.43.

Harry Lee Higel came to Sarasota in the early 1890’s and bought the dock at the end of Main Street that was built by the defunct Scottish Colony. He became the agent for the Tampa line whose steamship, “Mistletoe”, made its maiden trip on Monday, October 7, 1895, to pick up fresh fish. The scheduled stop developed into three visits per week.

On each trip the captain blew the whistle as the ship was coming down the bay and many of the town’s residents turned out to see if new tourists were aboard.

The community now had a dependable connection with the outside world. Sarasotans could sell their vegetables and fruit in Tampa and buy goods in the “big stores” there with the proceeds.

To be continued..

Copyright © Leland G. Desmon. The information on this page may not be reproduced or republished on another webpage, website, or other printed material. Please LINK TO US instead.

Photo credit: Sarasota County Historical Resources

THE SETTLING OF SARASOTA (13th in a series)

This is a story about Sarasota’s first railroad.

The first train was called the ‘Slow and Wobbly’ by the local residents. It ran from the county seat in "Bradentown" to Sarasota; the inaugural run took place on May 16, 1892, the venture lasted for 3 years.

Little if any ballast had been used when the tracks were laid and, as a result, the train always wobbled and staggered along, appearing every moment as though it would topple. And it often did! One time the engine rolled over when it reached the water tower just outside Bradentown and the tower collapsed. After that the engineer siphoned the water needed out of ponds along the right of way.

The engine was a dilapidated Civil War, wood burner with a huge firebox and a towering smokestack that poured forth soot and sparks. The ‘train’ consisted of two flat cars, one of which was covered with a canvas canopy to protect the passengers from the sun, rain and smoke. This car, which had uncovered plank seats, was dignified by the name “the day coach.”

There was no station; one had to climb a stepladder to get to the platform and the entrance to the ‘white folks’ passenger car. The other car was used for ‘colored’ people, mail and freight. The schedule of this, the first railway in all of Manatee County, was timed by the arrival of the steamer “Margaret” of the Plant Steamship Line, from Port Tampa, and the steamer “Manatee”, of the Independent line, also from Tampa. They had the mail contract filling-in the gap between the Tampa railroad terminal and Bradentown in Manatee County.

The train started on the judgment of the conductor in charge; at any rate, he ran the train to suit himself, usually starting when the mailbags were delivered to him. The black smoke from the fat pine fuel made it hard to tell that the engineer was a ‘white’ man. The Negro fireman was so black that the smut kind of left a white mark on him. These three made up the crew of the train. One trip made along with an early passenger, his wife, his sister, and her husband, is a fair example of this innovation in the mail service, carried before this time by buggy or on horseback.
The following is his description of the trip.
“When the conductor was ready, and steam was up to the desired pressure, indicated mostly by the leaky cylinder glands, he signaled the engineer to start going, a sign for a prolonged blowing of the whistle and ringing of the bell, thus notifying the public they were off once more. Lou Duckwall, the conductor, brought his dinner pail aboard and left it on the floor under the bench seat near the door opening. Pretty soon the train was weaving through the woods, rattling and squeaking its winding way, between ditches that had been excavated to raise the narrow gauge track above the ordinary level of the woods.

The track had settled in many places, making it rough riding, so much so, that the conductor’s lard can dinner pail worked its way back on the floor and fell out. He just noticed it and made a grab, but missed it, leaned out making frantic efforts to call engineer James Nichols’ attention to stop the train. Being so informed, Nichols stopped and backed slowly, all hands and passengers watching to find the lost pail. After going back for about a mile someone shouted, “there it is” pointing to the dry ditch. Our conductor hopped out and secured it, the contents still in the dinner pail and apparently all right. He climbed up the iron steps, working himself back into the car, laughingly placed the wayward pail in a more secure place, not much worried about this event. Time seemingly was no object. It appeared funny enough to us, and we all had a good laugh over the incident.

While the train was puffing and snorting along, the engineer tooting the whistle at every cow or cow’s husband he passed in the woods, the steam vapor sifted its way through the canvas, making our ride ever more uncomfortable.

Along about Oneco we stopped to take on wood where it was stacked in cords on a platform. All hands helped to put it aboard the tender, bantering in the meantime with Simmy, an old Cracker who had the job of keeping the engine in fuel. He was unloading his rickety wagon pulled by a cow and a bull.

Once more we started off, shouting “so long” to Simmy, through the piney woods, getting all shaken up on the primitive road when the smell of something burning arrested our attention. Everybody looked around to see if their clothes were afire, when the discovery was made that a spark had filtered through a hole in the canvas and got into the sister’s parasol. The breeze fanned it into a blaze. The parasol was thrown out of the car, a complete loss.

The fare for this eventful trip, two dollars each, that brought us to Sarasota where we alighted onto a platform at the front of a one room shack in the woods.” The station crew often “forgot” to transfer the fares to Gillespie, the railroad’s train manager.

ALAS!

To be continued..

Copyright © Leland G. Desmon. The information on this page may not be reproduced or republished on another webpage, website, or other printed material. Please LINK TO US instead.

Photo Credit: Sarasota County Historical Resources

THE SETTLING OF SARASOTA (12th in a series)

Anna and Sue Whitcomb, who had been educated in northern schools, were the first teachers at the one room 16 x 25 foot school where they served without pay in 1886. The children sat on homemade benches and there was no school during the winter because the school had no stove.

The Whitcomb girls taught for just one year as their thoughts were occupied with other matters. Both sisters were married on the same day in the first double wedding held in Sarasota. The entire community joined in the shivaee*.

Sir John Gillespie, the on-site official of the Scotch Development Company (FMIC) wanted to prove to skeptics that the 40-acre plots deeded to the colonists were fertile. He selected one of the plots on Fruitville Road on which tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, orange trees and more were planted. Gillespie knew nothing about farming and the plot he selected was the most sterile in the area. Nothing grew and the farm was a failure. That became a ‘serendipity’**.

Gillespie contracted with Jesse Tucker to supply 100 barrels of lime to be used as fertilizer at $1 per barrel. Tucker gathered his neighbors together, went to White Beach where they gathered heaps of (oyster) shells. They felled pine trees, cut them in 15-foot lengths and built two lime kilns by stacking logs and shells in alternate layers 8 feet high and setting the piles on fire. A picnic lunch was served while the piles began to burn. When the residue cooled, the ashes provided the needed lime. Gillespie paid the $100, and Tucker used it to build the Fruitville Missionary Baptist Church (June 1887). Soon after building the church, all construction was completed and work at the failed experimental farm ended; it was 1887 and paying jobs ended. The stream of money went dry. Workers left. Ships no longer stopped at Sarasota’s piers (inset).

No one would pay the Florida Mortgage and Investment Company’s price of $10 per acre for property in Sarasota.

* A noisy celebration
** An unexpected accident of good fortune

Gillespie realized that getting a railroad built from Tampa or at least from Bradenton was a must for Sarasota’s survival. He had a plan whereby the British companies would give every alternate section of land along the right-of-way to the railroad company. After the trains began running the land could be sold, and the profit used to repay the British companies. The Manatee and Sarasota Railway and Drainage Company was incorporated on April 12, 1890 for $50,000. Gillespie was made president.

Stay tuned to learn about some speculative Shenigans.

Copyright © Leland G. Desmon. The information on this page may not be reproduced or republished on another webpage, website, or other printed material. Please LINK TO US instead.