What do a beach resort, a ballpark and a research library have in common?

February 15, 2012

African-American history.

It’s African-American History Month and Florida has a lot of history to offer.  VisitFlorida has compiled the following list for Floridians and non-Floridians alike to visit and learn. 

NORTH FLORIDA

  • American Beach, Amelia Island. Florida’s first black-owned beach resort, it still belongs in part to the founders’ descendants.
  • Julee Cottage Museum, Pensacola. Part of Historic Pensacola Village, this African-American history museum resides in the circa-1805 home of free black woman Julee Panton.
  • John G. Riley Center/Museum for African-American History & Culture, Tallahassee. Housed in the circa-1890 home of a local African-American citizen, it scans the history of black Tallahassee and the nation from Reconstruction through the Civil Rights movement. Its historic black neighborhood, known as Smoky Hollow, was home to cookie-maker “Famous (Wallace) Amos.”
  • Kingsley Plantation, Fort George (near Jacksonville). Past the row of haunting slave cabin ruins, Kingsley puts human faces to the horror of slave plantation life by introducing some of the African inhabitants, such as Anna Madegigine Jai, the owner’s freed African wife, and slaves Gullah Jack and Abraham Hanahan.
  • Lincolnville, St. Augustine. St. Augustine’s historic African-American district, originally named “Africa,” boasts the city’s largest concentration of Victorian homes. Here Martin Luther King stayed while supporting local civil rights movements. It was also home to the man who taught Ray Charles, a student at the local school for the deaf and blind, to read music in Braille.

CENTRAL FLORIDA

  • Jackie Robinson Ballpark, Daytona Beach. Robinson scored a home run for his people as the first African-American to join an all-white team. It happened here, where a sculpture and park commemorate the 1946 event.
  • Mary McLeod Bethune House, Daytona Beach. Dr. Bethune, a civil rights leader who advised presidents and fellow educators, lived here in the early 1900s. Visit her home (renovations were done in November 2010) to view her personal library, artifacts and photographs on Bethune-Cookman University, where some of the buildings are designated national historic landmarks.
  • Howard Thurman Home, Daytona Beach. Howard Thurman lived in this home until he moved to Jacksonville to attend the Florida Academy Baptist High School, the closest high school available to black Daytonans in the 1910s. Thurman is the author of over 20 books and provided spiritual guidance to prominent civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Parramore District, Orlando. A reviving downtown row of African-American shops and restaurants selling African wood carvings, caftans, masks, jewelry, reggae paraphernalia, barbecue, greens, roti, jerk and other African- and Caribbean-inspired food, art, clothing and gifts.
  • Wells’ Built Museum of African-American History & Culture, Orlando . Bo Diddley, B.B. King and Ella Fitzgerald were among the performers of “the Chitlin Circuit” who boarded here. The hotel has been restored to house a tribute to notable local and national African-Americans.
  • Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts, Eatonville.  Named for Eatonville’s famous Harlem Renaissance writer and folklorist, it exhibits the work of changing African-American artists and hosts an annual winter arts and humanities festival. Ask for a walking tour brochure of Eatonville’s historic sites.

SOUTH FLORIDA

  • African-American Research Library and Cultural Center, Fort Lauderdale. The ultimate word on black history, it contains an art gallery, research document collection and book and photograph libraries.
  • Bahama Village, Key West. In the Florida Keys, proximity to the Bahama Islands meant free interaction between the two lands. Bahama Village grew up after the Civil War as home to the “Conchs,” as the Bahamian immigrants came to be known. Today, Bahamian restaurants, roaming chickens, shops, an 1865 church and a park keep the neighborhood lively.
  • Old Dillard Museum, Fort Lauderdale. Once a segregated school for black children where saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley directed band, it traces the history of the city’s jazz scene and displays masks, musical instruments and other archival artifacts.
  • Overtown, Miami. Soul food restaurants, historic churches and the circa-1913
  • Lyric Theater mark the cultural importance of “ColoredTown,” as it was originally known. One of Miami’s oldest neighborhoods, it dates back to the 1890s.

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Florida Had Pioneers Too

February 1, 2012

Over the weekend I ventured into the past with the help of the best tour guides ever, my parents. We explored the Pioneer Settlement, located just west of Daytona Beach in Barberville. According to the self-tour literature, the Settlement contains a growing historical collection of 10,000+ objects.  Here are just a few of those objects that caught our attention.

At the sight of this old bottle capper, my Dad reminisced about how his mother used to make her own Root Beer then use one of these cappers to cap the bottles.

In the old Train Depot, my Dad attempted to remember the Morse Code he used back in World War II.

My Mom grew up on a farm, so it was easy for her to identify these plowing tools and explain what each was used for.

 

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Lilian, Lucille and Stephen Crane

January 18, 2012

While looking for a place to take my visiting parents this past Sunday, I remembered an article I had read in a local newspaper about Lilian Place, a historical home in Daytona Beach that had recently been restored and opened to the public.  Built in 1884, Lilian Place is the oldest house on Daytona’s beachside.

Its unique design is classified as Italianate High Victorian architecture. And that yellow and green paint? Apparently common colors during the Victorian age.  

Here are a few interesting things about the house’s history:

  • The house was built by Laurence and Mary Eliza Thompson, who moved to the area from Cincinnati, Ohio. Laurence was an early entrepreneur, first opening a General Store then later a real estate and insurance partnership. The Thompsons had three children, the youngest of which, Lilian, is the namesake of the property.
  • In 2002, the new owners turned the house into a Bed and Breakfast. After the wife died, the husband returned to New York and left the house to deteriorate. The Heritage Preservation Trust took it over in December 2009 and is continuing to restore it to its 1880s glory.
  • There have been several reports of ghostly encounters at Lilian Place, one concerning a young lady named Lucille. As far as anyone can tell, Lucille was a woman spurned by her fiancé, a former resident of Lilian Place.
  • Perhaps the property’s biggest claim to fame is its literary significance.  After his boat sank on December 31, 1896, Stephen Crane, author of The Red Badge of Courage, made it to shore and sought refuge for a few weeks at Lilian Place. As a result of his experience, he wrote his famous short story,  The Open Boat.

If only I had known about this place when it was still a Bed and Breakfast!  Old, quaint, and  potentially haunted. What a great combination.

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The First Thanksgiving

November 23, 2011

Another Thanksgiving is right around the corner and I’m thankfully heading to the mountains for my feast. Before heading out, however, I had to find a little Florida related history on this Fall celebration, and what I found surprised me. Apparently this holiday’s roots lay much deeper than the Plymouth Rock celebration.

It’s Florida, not Massachusetts, that has the right to claim the very first Thanksgiving.

History books agree that a thanksgiving feast was held in Florida on Sept. 8, 1565, a good 56 years before the feast at Plymouth Rock.

After Spanish Adm. Pedro Menendez de Aviles landed his ship in St. Augustine, soldiers, sailors, civilian families and the Timucuan Indians gathered and gave thanks at a makeshift altar before holding a feast of thanksgiving.  What was on the menu?  The Spanish brought garbanzo beans, olive oil, bread, pork and wine while the Timucuan Indians brought oysters and giant clams.

To get the word out, at least two books have been written.  The first, in 1965, is The Cross in the Sand by Michael Gannon who argues that this St. Augustine feast should be recognized as the first Thanksgiving.

In 2007 Florida school teacher Robyn Gioia came out with a children’s version of the story, America’s REAL First Thanksgiving, geared towards 9-12 year olds. Her book includes a recipe for a Spanish dish most likely served at the first thanksgiving called Cocida (pronounced “coSEEDo”). Here is that recipe:

  • 16 to 20 ounces garbanzo beans (canned)
  • 8 cups water
  • 1 medium onion, diced
  • 1 teaspoon pepper
  • 2 medium potatoes, diced
  • 1 teaspoon saffron
  • 1/2 head green cabbage, quartered
  • 1 large clove garlic, minced
  • 1/2 pound salt pork (or bacon, ham or pancetta), diced
  • 2 large carrots, thickly sliced
  • 1 leek, cut into short lengths
  • 1/2 pound sausage (or fresh chorizo), sliced

Drain beans, rinse, and put in large kettle.

Add water, spices, and garlic.

In skillet, fry salt pork and onion until brown. Drain then add to kettle. Simmer for 45 minutes.

Add remaining ingredients and simmer an additional 45 minutes or more depending on desired thickness. Salt to taste.

Serves 4 to 6 people.

Bacon, ham or pancetta may be substituted for salt pork. Regular sausage works nicely, but chorizo has a distinct flavor.

Can you imagine replacing your turkey with this?  Although Codica is undoubtedly good, I really like my turkey.

Will any of this change how I celebrate Thanksgiving this year?  No. But it’s just the kind of Florida trivia that amuses me, and a piece of history that educates me.

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Florida Needs A New Song

November 9, 2011

After tossing and turning for hours and hours last night, I finally gave up and made my way to the computer.  For some reason I started wondering about the Florida State Song.  So what better way to cure insomnia than with a little trivia.

In 1913, Florida My Florida was adopted as the state song. True, it befitted the times, with lyrics such as:

 The golden fruit the world outshines
Florida, my Florida,
Thy gardens and thy phosphate mines,
Florida, my Florida,

In country, town, or hills and dells,
Florida, my Florida,
The rythmic chimes of the school bells
Florida, my Florida,

Will call thy children day by day
To learn to walk the patriot’s way
Firmly to stand for thee for aye
Florida, my Florida.

Yet, digging a little deeper, you find that the melody of the song is taken from another state song, Maryland My Maryland.  This is hardly acceptable for an independent Florida.

In 1935 the Florida Congress, in its infinite wisdom, replaced Florida My Florida  with The Swanee River,  otherwise known as Old Folks at Home, as the state song.  I understand that the song’s composer, Stephen Foster, is a cultural icon of sorts, but the guy never even set foot in Florida, much less visited the Swanee River.  It’s even reported that the only reason he used Swanee in the song was because its cadence happened to fit nicely in the music he had already composed.  It was an afterthought, not an inspiration. I say our state politicians at the time were caught up more in celebrities than state patriotics.

Obviously it’s time for a change.  Florida needs a new song.

A quick look around netted three Florida-themed songs presently out there.

One, Florida by Patty Griffin, quickly falls out of contention when it starts with: 

A couple of young girls went sailing down A1A
Into the arms of Florida, sailing down the highway
Singing their heads off, protected by the holy ghost
Flying in from the ocean, driving with their eyes closed

The next find was that of a song entitled Moving to Florida by the very mature sounding group Butthole Surfers. Their brilliance starts out like this:

Well, well I been movin’ down to Florida.
And I’m gonna bowl me a perfect game.
Well I’m gonna cut off my leg down in Florida, child.
And I’m gonna dance one-legged off in the rain

I braved one more find, which was Florida by Mofra.  At least this one makes a statement, with lyrics like this:

Now skyscrapers and superhighways
Are carved through the heart of Florida
Building sub-divisions while the swamps are drained
Makin’ room for people and amusement parks

It’s like watchin’ someone you love die slow
Yeah, they’re killin’ her one piece at a time
I know some fools who think I should let go
But they never seen Florida through my eyes

Florida I know you’re out there hidin’ from me
You get harder and harder to find
Everyday she keeps slippin’ away
Florida, please don’t fade on me now

I’m hoping there’s something better out there. Or at least someone willing to step up and write something better.

Florida needs a new song.

And I need some sleep.

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At the MOSH

October 19, 2011

It took a delayed flight from Pittsburgh to Orlando to alert me to an exhibit at a Museum of Science & History right here in my home state.  While stuck at the Pittsburgh airport well into the night, I took up the airline’s magazine and read the happenings in each and every state in the union. Under Florida, an exhibit entitled “Savage Ancient Seas” snagged my attention enough for me to write it down in my planner. I then promptly forgot about it. Until this past weekend that is.

Jacksonville Museum of Science & History (MOSH)

Located in downtown Jacksonville, a stone’s throw away from the Stein Mart Corporate Building, the museum’s entrance enticed with an old piano set up out front for anyone to play (which Matt did). After paying the $10 entrance fee, and buying a ticket for a show in the museum’s planetarium for another $5, we headed in. Although we were specifically there to see the Savage Ancient Seas exhibit, we also wanted to see what else they had.

The Body Within exhibit at the MOSH

The first exhibit we ventured into was “The Body Within.” Here you guess at what you are touching or smelling (think tennis ball or root beer), manuever a prosthetic arm, examine actual body parts in jars, or watch a video of a knee replacement surgery or a colectomy.

We wandered around the remaining exhibits on the first floor, all in some way relating to Florida’s natural history, then headed upstairs. A top-notch local history exhibit occupied 1/3 of the second floor, along with the Ancient Savage Seas exhibit and the Planetarium.

 Savage Ancient Seas

This exhibit contains skeletons of creatures that swam the oceans during the time of the dinosaurs.

Savage Ancient Seas exhibit

My favorite skeleton was of the Xiphactinus audax.

Xiphactinus audax

The only disappointing part of the day was the show, Sea Monsters, in the Bryan-Gooding Planetarium.  Planetariums should leave these shows to IMAX theaters. This couldn’t even compete in the slightest. Definitely not worth the extra $5.

After the show, we wandered around the exhibit one last time. At the center was a sandbox of sorts. Earlier in the day, children would climb in, grab a brush and dust away, uncovering archaeological finds beneath. By the time we came out of the 4:00 show, it was near closing time and we were the only ones in the room.  I walked over to the sandbox and picked up a brush. As I dusted off the sand between bones, I imagined being an archeologist on a real dig (a brief interest of mine back in college) and daydreamed.  Museums can do that. They let you explore interests you have, ones you’ve forgotten you had, and ones you didn’t even know you had.

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Swamps, Surfers, Cheeseburgers and Politics

August 31, 2011

Labor Day weekend is always synonymous with the end of summer, although that’s highly debatable here in Florida.

So, what’s going on around the state  this holiday weekend? Here are a few events that caught my eye.

Swamp Walks:  Take a swamp walk into The Big Cypress Swamp with nature photographer Clyde Butcher.  The walk begins behind Butcher’s Big Cypress Gallery in the Everglades. All you have to bring with you is a pair of long pants, a hat, old shoes and a sense of adventure.  Oh, and be prepared to get wet.

Pioneer Florida Days Festival 2011:  Check out the celebration at the Pioneer Florida Museum in Dade City,where you can experience early Florida history.

26th Annual NKF Pro Am Surf Festival:  Cocoa Beach is the place, National Kidney Foundation is the cause.

Jimmy Buffet-Style Music in Jacksonville:  Throughout the Labor Day weekend, the “margarita-flavored tunes” of Jimmy Buffett can be heard at The Jacksonville Landing courtyard.  On Saturday, come “decked out like your favorite Buffet song.” (Cheeseburger in Paradise anyone?)

Flashback, the Classic Rock Experience:  Experience the re-creation of the classic performances of  Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and many more, by Mystic Orchestra, a group comprised of 14 rock musicians and singers, and an 11-piece string and horn section.

Spirit of the Suwannee River Music Park: Pull out the tent, or pack up the RV, and head to this music park just north of Live Oak for a weekend of musical celebration. Listen to Southern Ruckus on Friday and Honkeytonk Hitman on Saturday and Sunday.

Fight for Florida:  Apparently a new movement is organizing here in Florida and its called the Working Families Movement. The movement will be hosting Labor Day weekend events across the state, including ones in Palm Beach, Ft. Myers, Tampa, Orlando, Daytona, Ocala, Jacksonville, Tallahassee and Pensacola. If you’re looking for “a little fun, a little politics” and want to build the camaraderie needed for “the struggles that lie ahead,” check out one of these events.

It’s a great weekend to get out and do something a little different.

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Sweating for Sweetness

July 27, 2011

I’ve never equated Florida with agriculture, but as I’ve learned on several occasions now, I’m dead wrong about that.  And one crop in particular – sugar cane – has a dramatic history in this state.

A Sweet History: Sugar Mills in Florida

In the early 1800s people moved into Florida to try their hand at running sugar mills.  Florida was no cooler back then than it is now, so sweating away in a sugar mill wasn’t exactly pleasant.  And with all the effort they put into this endeavour, the end result for most of them climaxed with brutal attacks by Indians, leaving the mills, and the owners’ fortunes, in ruins.

New Smyrna Beach Ruins

Sugar Mill Ruins in New Smyrna Beach, also know as the Curger and DePeyster Sugar Mill,  is one such reminder of sugar cane’s history in Florida. Its final fate was decided during the Seminole Wars and only crumbling coquina walls remain today.

Sugar Mill Ruins in New Smyrna Beach, FL

Ruins, including a rusted sugar cane boiling vat

What remains...

Rusted boiling vats


How to Make Sugar

According to information panels placed at the site, the three-step process included:

Step 1:  Crush the sugar cane (by a motorized cane crusher).

 
 
 
Step 2:  Stir in vats and then transfer to cooling troughs.
(illustration on information display board at the New Smyrna Beach ruins)
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
Step 3: Store extracted cane sugar in barrels.
(illustration on information display board at the New Smyrna Beach ruins)
 
 
 
 
Sounds simple, but I’m sure it was anything but. 
 
I’ve wandered around three such ruins within 25 miles of my home now — each one bringing with it its own tale, but each one meeting its cruel demise in the same way.  A tragedy any way you look at it.

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Florida Archaeology Month

March 30, 2011

In honor of March being Florida Archaeology Month, I sought out archaeological sites to visit close to home. According to the Florida Public Archaeology Network website, there are over 29 such sites between Jacksonville and New Smyrna Beach alone! I chose the two closest to my neighborhood and headed out.

Dunlawton Plantation Sugar Mill Ruins (Port Orange)

The Dunlawton Plantation Sugar Mill Ruins site is described as “coquina and brick ruins of an 1830s sugar mill complex and assortment of sugar mill processing equipment.” After a short drive to its location, I entered the gates and found myself surrounded by a beautiful botanical garden.  To my surprise, the ruins were largely intact and amazingly preserved. 

According to a sign near the ruins,

In the late twentieth century, archaeologists began studying the factory site systemically. They discovered foundations, buried floors, machine objects, and discarded items of everyday life.” 

Kettles where extracted cane juice gradually thickened before being ladled into wooden cooling troughs.

Area where the Purgery stood. Crystallized sugar was packed in barrels and stored in the damp rooms for several weeks.

 

Samuel Butts Youth Archaeological Park (Daytona Beach)

I may never have known about the Samuel Butts Youth Archaeological Park if Florida Archaeology Month didn’t exist. 

I was stunned by the beauty of this park. And it’s all thanks to Daytona resident and amateur archaeologist Samuel Butts. Mr. Butts  found “copious spear points, bone tools and pottery fragments of the Timucuan Indians as well as skeletal material from a mastodon that roamed Central Florida during the Ice Ages” at this site.  He also found remains of a 1920s general store, complete with groceries, which had burned to the ground. Mr. Butts decided to make the 29-acre area a park, with panels interpreting the  prehistoric and historic sites in an effort to educate others.

Panel interpreting site where prehistoric shell tools and broken pottery were found.

Panel on the finding of a 1920s General Store which burned to the ground.

The pond was excavated in 2001. Butts found a "bone bed" over 10,000 years old containing the remains of prehistoric animals.

 

Thanks to the Florida Public Archaeology Network website, I have now found more explorations for my year ahead.  It looks like I will never run out of things to do here in Florida!

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Cross Creek

February 23, 2011

It is necessary to leave the impersonal highway, to step inside the rusty gate and close it behind.  One is now inside the orange grove, out of one world and in the mysterious heart of another.  And after long years of spiritual homelessness, of nostalgia,  here is that mystic loveliness of childhood again. Here is home.
–Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek, 1942–

Sign at the entrance to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park, Cross Creek

I’ve often thought those who visit the graves of people they have never met to be a bit odd, maybe even morbid. Now I have to question whether I myself fit that description after my adventures this past weekend. 

But let me start at the beginning. For years I have wanted to visit Cross Creek, the home of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling.  The sheer knowledge that Rawlings moved from New York to the backwoods of Florida, maintained an orange grove and lived off the land, while writing full-time, inspires me like few others have.  

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park (Cross Creek, FL)

Once inside the gate, I wandered around for an hour or so before the house tour began. The  tour group consisted of approximately ten people and I quickly learned that I was the only one, besides our tour guide, who had actually read Rawlings account of her life at Cross Creek. 

The tour guide then asked the group what prize Rawlings had won for her book The Yearling.  I knew the answer, which of course is the Pulitizer Prize, but kept quiet so someone else could show off their knowledge. No one said a word. For a brief moment I began to wonder why exactly these people were here if they knew nothing of the history of the place and the history of the author.  Just as quickly though, I  got over myself and moved on, wrapped up in the stories of life at Cross Creek.

The front porch is where Rawlings did most of her writing, including for The Yearling.

Rawlings also entertained quite often at Cross Creek, including serving dinner in this dining room to such guests as poet Robert Frost.

In her book Cross Creek, Rawlings details many of her cooking adventures on the old wood burning stove. One day she saw blackbirds and, remembering the line “4 and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie” from a nursery rhyme, she shot down the birds and secretly took them home to bake in a pie.

 

Antioch Cemetery

Now, for the odd, and possibly morbid part.  While waiting for the house tour to start, I perused through scrapbooks that had been left out for visitors.  I came across an untitled paragraph which contained directions to the cemetery where Rawlings is buried.  Before I knew what was happening, I was writing down the instructions in my notebook. When the house tour ended, I took out my notebook, turned to the page with the directions to Antioch Cemetery, and was on my way. 

Miraculously I was able to follow the directions and soon arrived at the cemetery out in the middle of practically nowhere. A peaceful place, on a dirt road, wide open to the sun and blue sky. Perfect.

As directed, I parked on the side of the road, got out and entered the second gate. I walked toward the utility shed, then turned left. The directions in the old scrapbook said I should look for the flat slab about four rows in. Well, I did just that, but with no success. So I began walking up and down rows 1-5, just in case I had missed something. Still no success.  I stopped and stared out across the field. As I shielded my eyes from the sun overhead, two flat slabs, a few rows ahead and to the right of me, came into view. One had three deer sculptures resting at its head. That’s when The Yearling came to mind. I walked over, and was rewarded (if that is truly what you call such a find). There lay Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, with her husband Norton Baskin at her side.

Norton and Marjorie

And on her grave, I read the following:

MARJORIE KINNAN RAWLINGS
1896-1953
Wife of  Norton Baskin

THROUGH HER WRITINGS SHE ENDEARED
HERSELF TO THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD

Indeed she did.

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