Avon Park in the out-of-town press, 1889–1900
Summary
Not one file of an Avon Park newspaper survives from the town’s first fifteen years. What does survive is the town’s news as other people’s papers printed it — in Savannah, in New York, in Connecticut and in Minnesota — and between them those papers preserve things no Florida source records at all, including the whole of Avon Park’s first municipal government.
Why the news traveled where it did
Every one of these papers had a reason to care.
Savannah. The Morning News ran a standing Florida column of short paragraphs gathered from around the state, the way a regional daily served readers with business south of it. Avon Park items appear in it through the 1890s — the Florida Development Company’s incorporation, its annual meetings, its failure, and the sheriff’s sale of the town in 1897 — and it is the fullest continuous record of the town in that decade.[savannah-1897-01-15][fdc-newspapers]
New York. The Florida Development Company kept an office at 99 Franklin Street, and bought advertising in the New York dailies, including a standing classified for its own newspaper, the Florida Home Seeker, which ran in The Sun from at least December 1891 to April 1893.[sun-1892-11-13]
Connecticut. Oliver M. Crosby was a Danbury man, and Connecticut papers followed their own people’s Florida ventures. So did the papers of the other towns his settlers came from.
Minnesota. Charles C. Chollar of Redwood Falls came south in 1894 to be the first cashier of the Bank of Avon Park. His home-town paper printed what he sent back, including, that December, a description of an issue of the Florida Home Seeker he had posted north.[redwood-1894-12-13]
What they carried
The most important single item is the Savannah paper’s notice of 15 January 1897, which names Avon Park’s first mayor, five councilmen, clerk and treasurer, and marshal — a town government otherwise unrecorded anywhere.[savannah-1897-01-15]
The timing is the part a reader should not miss. In the same weeks that the settlers were incorporating their town and choosing a mayor, the town itself was being sold at a sheriff’s sale at Arcadia to satisfy a judgment against the company that owned it.[savannah-1897-01-15][fdc-newspapers] The Savannah column carried both halves of that story, a fortnight apart, and no Florida newspaper carried either.
From Minnesota, in December 1894, comes the only first-hand description anyone has of an issue of the Florida Home Seeker — the paper Crosby published at Avon Park, of which no copy is known to survive.[redwood-1894-12-13]
Where else to look
Nothing about this seam is exhausted. The Savannah column runs for the whole decade; the Connecticut papers of Danbury, Salisbury, Newtown and New Haven follow Crosby and his settlers; the New York dailies carried the company’s advertising season by season; and the home-town papers of every other settler who came south are, in principle, the same kind of source. Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa and Massachusetts all have digitized files worth searching for the town by name.
One trap is worth naming: Bridgeport, Connecticut has a neighborhood of its own called Avon Park, and its papers of 1909 to 1915 produce a steady stream of false matches.
Related
- Newspapers of Avon Park
- The Florida Home Seeker, Avon Park’s own newspaper
- Avon Park incorporated in January 1897 and elected Clark D. Knapp its first mayor
- The Florida Development Company
- Abbie R. Dodge
- Avon Park’s banks, 1894 to 1929
References
- savannah-1897-01-15 — The Morning News (Savannah, Ga.). The Morning News, Savannah, Georgia, 15 January 1897, page 6, Florida column: the incorporation of Avon Park and the election of its officers. 15 January 1897. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn86063034/1897-01-15/ed-1/?sp=6
- fdc-newspapers — contemporary Florida and Georgia newspapers, via digitised collections. Savannah Morning News and Weekly Floridian reports on the Florida Development Company, 1891–1897. 6 February 1897. florida-development-company.md
- redwood-1894-12-13 — The Redwood Gazette (Redwood Falls, Minn.). The Redwood Gazette, Redwood Falls, Minnesota, 13 December 1894, page 5: a copy of the Florida Home Seeker sent from Avon Park. 13 December 1894. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn85025570/1894-12-13/ed-1/?sp=5
- sun-1892-11-13 — Florida Development Company, in The Sun (New York). The Sun, New York, 13 November 1892, page 11: classified advertisement headed The Florida Home Seeker, for the Florida Development Company. 13 November 1892. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83030272/1892-11-13/ed-1/?sp=11
Where this comes from
- Evidence
- corroborated — More than one independent source agrees.
- Review
- unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
- Rights
- society
Sources
- The Morning News (Savannah, Ga.), The Morning News, Savannah, Georgia, 15 January 1897, page 6, Florida column: the incorporation of Avon Park and the election of its officers (1897) · newspaper
- contemporary Florida and Georgia newspapers, via digitised collections, Savannah Morning News and Weekly Floridian reports on the Florida Development Company, 1891–1897 (entities/florida-development-company.md) (1897) · newspaper
- The Redwood Gazette (Redwood Falls, Minn.), The Redwood Gazette, Redwood Falls, Minnesota, 13 December 1894, page 5: a copy of the Florida Home Seeker sent from Avon Park (1894) · newspaper
- Florida Development Company, in The Sun (New York), The Sun, New York, 13 November 1892, page 11: classified advertisement headed The Florida Home Seeker, for the Florida Development Company (1892) · newspaper
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