Crosby’s Common Sense About Florida, 1888
The founder’s own contemporaneous account of his town, written two years after he started it and while he was still selling it. It was located on Internet Archive, from a State Archives of Florida microfilm, and read in full.[crosby-1888-pamphlet]
O. M. Crosby, Common Sense about Florida (New York: South Publishing Co., 1888), title page. Florida State Library copy, via Internet Archive. Public domain.[crosby-1888-pamphlet]
This is the closest thing to a founding document that Avon Park has, and until this research it was not known to the project at all.
What it establishes
The founding date. The pamphlet says the settlement “was begun eighteen months ago by parties now interested in building Lake Forest,” which places it in the first half of 1886. It prints resident testimonials datelined “Avon Park, Manatee Co., Fla.” on 17 March 1886 and 27 September 1886, the later one recalling “I settled in Avon Park last February with my young wife.”[crosby-1888-pamphlet] So: February 1886, or very close to it.
Why here. Crosby states the reason plainly: “The great freeze of January, 1886, in the upper half of the State, taught us the advisability of getting FARTHER SOUTH than we would have done once.”[crosby-1888-pamphlet] The town’s location on the Lake Wales Ridge is a direct consequence of a freeze — and a freeze would destroy it nine years later.
Lake Forest and Avon Park are not rival names. The pamphlet’s own title pairs them, and its text places Lake Forest as a named plat inside Section 22 of Township 33, Range 28, “about the center” of a township called Avon Park.[crosby-1888-pamphlet] Local accounts that have the town “first called Lake Forest and then renamed Avon Park” are describing a plat and a township as though they were sequential town names.
The county. At the time of writing, this was still Manatee County. The pamphlet records the Florida legislature’s 1887 act creating DeSoto County, which moved Avon Park into it.[crosby-1888-pamphlet]
The size of the place. In 1888 Avon Park had one sawmill, about ten houses, and a store and hotel building under construction, and no railroad. Crosby says he was receiving thirty to fifty letters of inquiry a day.[crosby-1888-pamphlet]
How to read it
As advertising. Crosby was selling land, the pamphlet exists to sell it, and its descriptions of climate, soil and prospects should be read accordingly. Its value is in the incidental facts a promoter had no reason to invent — dates, acreage, the number of houses, the county, the name of the plat — and in the testimonials, which are dated and signed.
A companion volume
Crosby also published Florida Facts, Both Bright and Blue in 1887, also on Internet Archive and also read for this project. Despite being by the same man in the same period, it never mentions Avon Park.[crosby-1887-book] It is useful for his voice and his view of Florida, not for the town.
References
- crosby-1888-pamphlet — O. M. Crosby. Common Sense About Florida: Lake Forest and Avon Park. 1888. https://archive.org/details/commonsenseabout00cros
- crosby-1887-book — Oliver Marvin Crosby. Florida Facts, Both Bright and Blue. 1887. florida-facts-both-bright-and-blue_oliver-marvin-crosby_1887.md
Related
- Oliver Marvin Crosby
- Finding: Lake Forest was a plat name, not the town’s former name
- Report: the founding of Avon Park and its first decade
- Full scan of the pamphlet, held in this archive
- Full scan of Crosby’s 1887 book, Florida Facts, Both Bright and Blue
- Full text of the pamphlet, transcribed
- Full text and plates of Crosby’s 1887 book
Where this comes from
- Evidence
- single-source — One source. Treat as reported, not established.
- Review
- unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
- Rights
- society
Sources
- O. M. Crosby, Common Sense About Florida: Lake Forest and Avon Park (1888)
- Oliver Marvin Crosby, Florida Facts, Both Bright and Blue (1887)
Something here wrong, or incomplete? The Society would rather know. Tell a volunteer.
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