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.

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