The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Avon Park had 890 people in 1920, and 1,698 lived in its precinct

Summary

The figure everybody quotes for Avon Park in 1920 is 890. It is correct, and it is the smaller of two figures the Census Bureau printed on facing tables of the same volume. The other is 1,698, for the election precinct that carried the town’s name. The difference — 808 people — lived in the country round the town, outside the line the charter of 1913 had drawn, and that is where the mills, the mill houses and most of Black Avon Park were.

The two printed figures

Table 3 of the Florida volume, “Population of Incorporated Places,” gives Avon Park town 890. Table 2, “Population of Counties by Minor Civil Divisions,” gives “Precinct 14, Avon Park, including Avon Park town …. 1,698.” De Soto County as a whole held 25,434.[census-1920-fl]

Avon Park’s precinct was the largest in the country that became Highlands County the following year. Sebring’s precinct, including Sebring town, held 1,313; Venus 381; Lake Childs, later Lake Placid, 307; Bassenger 57.[census-1920-fl]

Why the town was so much smaller than its precinct

The charter of 1913 laid out a small town. Its boundary is a square a mile and a half on a side, drawn about the original townsite, which puts its edge roughly three-quarters of a mile from the post office.[lof-1913-6662] The Sanborn surveyors of November 1920 printed a single caption across the mill complex south-west of the platted grid: “Located 1¼ Miles S. of P.O.”[sanborn-1920] The mills, and the forty-four workers’ dwellings and boarding house drawn beside them, stood outside the town.

That is why the town’s 890 and the mills’ workforce cannot be made to agree. When the Avon Manufacturing Company reopened in September 1921 it employed “about 850 men” at one plant alone.[ocala-star-1921-09-06] Those men were never inside the 890. They were in the other 808, and in the woods camps beyond.

The manuscript agrees to the person

Enumeration district 23 is the precinct, and it was taken by Byrum Shockley between 6 January and 7 February 1920. Reading all thirty-eight page images shows that Shockley explicitly separated the incorporated town from the rural precinct, and that his three sections match the Census Bureau’s printed tables to the single person:[census-1920-ed23][census-1920-fl]

  1. The incorporated Town of Avon Park (Sheets 1A–9B, images 0439–0456, 6–17 January 1920): On every page from Sheet 1A through Sheet 9B, Shockley wrote Avon Park Town in the NAME OF INCORPORATED PLACE field and placed an X in WARD OF CITY. Sheets 1 through 8 are full 100-line sheets (800 people), and Sheet 9 (0455–0456) ends at line 90 (John Blake, Family 169/195), leaving lines 91 through 100 blank. Across line 97 of Sheet 9B (0456), Shockley wrote in his own hand: “Here ends the enumeration of Avon Park town.” Eight hundred plus ninety is 890 — the exact figure the Bureau printed in Table 3 for the incorporated town.[census-1920-ed23][census-1920-fl]
  2. Unincorporated Precinct 14 outside the town limits (Sheets 10A–18A, images 0457–0473, 19 January – 7 February 1920): Beginning on Sheet 10A (0457), where Shockley enumerated his own family’s fruit farm at the Bunbury House on Lake Pythias (lines 32–34), he left NAME OF INCORPORATED PLACE and WARD OF CITY blank on every page from Sheet 10A through Sheet 18A, writing only Avon Park Precinct 14 as the minor civil division. Eight full sheets of a hundred lines (Sheets 10 through 17) and an eighteenth carrying 8 lines (0473, ending at Family 502, Calvert C. Rimes, before Shockley wrote “Here ends the Enumeration” across line 12) make 808 people outside the corporate limits. Added to the 890 inside the town, that is 1,698 — the exact figure the Bureau printed in Table 2 for Precinct 14.[census-1920-ed23][census-1920-fl]
  3. Precinct 30, Ft. Bassenger addendum (Sheet 19A–19B, images 0475–0476, 7 February 1920): A separate addendum headed Ft. Bassenger Precinct 30, with NAME OF INCORPORATED PLACE left blank, carries 57 lines before ending with “Here ends the enumeration.” The Bureau printed Precinct 30, Bassenger: 57.[census-1920-ed23][census-1920-fl]

Four hundred and thirteen Black residents: 83 inside the town, 330 in the precinct

Reading the color column of every sheet gives an exact figure: 413 people are recorded “B” or “Mu” in enumeration district 23, in about 151 households. All 413 are in the Precinct 14 sheets; the Bassenger addendum has not one. Of the 413 the great majority are marked Black, with mulatto appearing regularly from the ninth sheet onward.[census-1920-ed23]

Because Shockley drew the line between the incorporated town and the unincorporated precinct at Sheet 9B line 90, the manuscript also supplies the exact racial breakdown that the Census Bureau omitted for places under 2,500 inhabitants:[census-1920-ed23][census-1920-fl]

  • Inside the incorporated Town of Avon Park (Sheets 1A–9B, total population 890): 83 Black and mulatto residents (9.3 percent of the town) and 807 White residents. Those 83 residents comprised 1 live-in servant on Sheet 1, 19 people on Sheet 6 (including railroad section hands on Railroad Ave and the hotel-worker household of Josiah Mitchell), 2 live-in servants on Sheet 7, 34 people on Sheet 8 (including Clergyman David Pete, crate-mill and sawmill workers, ice-plant fireman Richard Haywood, and turpentine-still laborer Plez Reynolds), and 27 people on Sheet 9 (including resin chipper Thomas Fulcher, a six-person millhand boarding house, and John Blake on line 90).[census-1920-ed23]
  • Outside the corporate limits in Precinct 14 (Sheets 10A–18A, total population 808): 330 Black and mulatto residents (40.8 percent of the rural precinct, and 79.9 percent of all 413 Black residents in Precinct 14) and 478 White residents. Those 330 residents comprised 19 people on Sheet 10, 49 on Sheet 11 (including the grove-labor cluster labeled Pittsburg), 18 on Sheet 12, 88 on Sheet 13 (recorded almost entirely as “Laborer, Turpentine f’m,” together with Sebring), 58 on Sheet 14 (including Crate Mill Road and the eleven-person crate-mill boarding house of Owen and Anna McClary), 31 on Sheet 15 (log-train and lumber-company workers), 54 on Sheet 16, and 13 on Sheet 17.[census-1920-ed23]

Against the precinct’s 1,698, the 413 Black residents were nearly one person in four across the precinct as a whole, and four out of every five of them lived outside the 1913 municipal boundary beside the mills, turpentine camps, and groves.[census-1920-ed23][census-1920-fl]

What Florida counted five years later

Florida took its own census in 1925, and it counted only the town. Avon Park had 1,534 people: 656 white men, 649 white women, 109 Black men and 120 Black women. The state’s table carries its own column for 1920, and the figure printed there is 890 — the Bureau’s, confirmed from a second direction.[florida-1925]

Between 1920 and 1925, the Black population living inside the corporate limits grew from 83 to 229, while the larger mill and turpentine settlements remained outside the municipal line.[census-1920-ed23][florida-1925]

References

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

  1. United States Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920, Population, Florida, Number of Inhabitants: Table 2, Population of Counties by Minor Civil Divisions, page 7, and Table 3, Population of Incorporated Places, page 13 (1921) · official
  2. United States Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920, population schedules, Florida, DeSoto County, enumeration district 23 (Precinct 14, Avon Park), NARA microfilm T625 roll 217, enumerated 6-25 January 1920, with the Precinct 30 addendum of 7 February (1920) · official
  3. Florida Department of Agriculture, The Fifth Census of the State of Florida Taken in the Year 1925: Table 18, Population of Cities, Towns and Villages by Race, page 71, and Table 19, Population of Cities, Towns and Villages by Counties, page 79 (1926) · official
  4. Florida State Legislature, Chapter 6662 (No. 242), Laws of Florida 1913: the boundary of the Town of Avon Park (references/laws-of-florida-chapter-6662-1913.md) (1913) · official
  5. The Ocala Evening Star, The Ocala Evening Star, 6 September 1921, page 1: the Avon Manufacturing Company resumes operations with about 850 men (1921) · newspaper
  6. Sanborn Map Company, Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Avon Park, November 1920, sheet 4 (references/sanborn-1920-avon-park.md) (1920) · archival

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