The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Avon Park’s crate mills belonged to the citrus growers

Summary

The two crate mills that stood south of Avon Park, and that employed most of the Black working town between the wars, were not private manufacturing firms. They were owned by the men whose fruit they boxed, through the Polk County Sub-Exchange of the Florida Citrus Exchange — the growers’ own co-operative. One general manager, J. A. Caldwell, ran both of them together from at least 1922 until his death in 1931, and the Sub-Exchange was still buying up rival plants at Avon Park in 1935.[palatka-1922-06-18][ocala-banner-1922-08-25][brooksville-1931-06-11][brooksville-1935-11-28]

Four companies, and when each began

Florida’s own charter ledgers date all of them precisely. The Highlands Crate Company was chartered first, at Bartow in Polk County — not at Avon Park — with a charter filed 25 May 1918 and letters patent issued 28 June, on a capital of $50,000. The Flint Lumber Company followed at Avon Park, filed 9 November 1918, letters patent 12 December, capital $75,000. The Mutual Crate Company was chartered at Avon Park on 28 April 1919, letters patent 2 June, capital $50,000, raised to $100,000 by May 1920. The Avon Manufacturing Company was chartered at Avon Park on 17 September 1919, letters patent 22 November, capital $75,000, raised to $200,000 by November 1920.[sos-charters]

Highlands Crate and Mutual Crate are two different corporations, with two different charter numbers and two different home towns. That matters, because the newspapers use both names for the crate business at Avon Park and the difference is easily lost.

Who owned them

The Palatka Daily News, describing the Avon Park crate mill in June 1922, set the ownership out plainly:

Until recently fifty percent of the Avon Manufacturing Company had been owned by the Highlands Crate Company and the other fifty percent by other interests. The Highlands Company is managed by the board of directors of the Polk county Sub-Exchange.[palatka-1922-06-18]

The same account gives the scale of the thing: about two million crates a year, some fifteen miles of logging railroad, and timber on more than fifty thousand acres “south of Avon Park and west of Sebring.”[palatka-1922-06-18]

Nine years later the arrangement had hardened into outright ownership of both. When the manager of the two companies died in 1931, the Brooksville Journal reported the succession and added, as a plain fact needing no explanation, that “the two companies are subsidiaries of the Polk County Sub-exchange.”[brooksville-1931-06-11]

It was still true in 1935. Under the headline “Avon Park Crate Plant Sold to Citrus Concern,” the same paper reported the sale of a fourth mill, the Ridge Crate Company of Avon Park, to the Highlands Crate Company for $40,000, noting that “the purchasing company is a subsidiary of the Polk County Sub-Exchange of the Florida Citrus exchange,” and that equipment for making wire-bound crates would be installed in the Ridge plant.[brooksville-1935-11-28]

The Tampa Tribune’s account of the Mutual Crate Company’s annual meeting in June 1924 describes the same kind of ownership from the inside: the company was “largely co-operative — its name, the Mutual, coming from the fact that practically its entire output was contracted for by the stockholders,” and it declared a dividend of twenty per cent. Its officers were citrus men from across the region — I. C. Smith of DeLand president, C. H. Walker of Bartow vice-president, A. V. Anderson of Avon Park secretary-treasurer, with J. J. Parrish of Titusville, A. G. Smith of Wauchula, C. E. Lanier and J. A. Caldwell of Avon Park as directors, and Neal Trent as general manager.[tampa-trib-1924-06-15]

Evidence: single-source for the 1924 meeting. Only one account of it survives, and the figures it gives — 975,000 crates, over $200,000 of business, a $12,000 monthly payroll at Mutual and a $20,000 monthly payroll at the other big mill — rest on that one report.

One man ran both mills

The Ocala Banner of 25 August 1922:

Preliminaries are being cleared away now for the opening of the big crate mills here — the Mutual Crate Company and the Avon Manufacturing Company — within the next twenty days, according to J. A. Caldwell, general manager for both. They probably will open Monday week. The two mills are being turned up to produce two and a half million crates, which will bring into Avon Park more than a half million dollars within the next ten months.[ocala-banner-1922-08-25]

Caldwell was still managing both nine years later, and the Brooksville Journal recorded his replacement:

W. H. Yates, who for several years was office manager of the Highlands Crate company and the Avon Manufacturing company, at Avon Park, has been elected manager of the two companies, to succeed the late J. A. Caldwell, whose death occurred recently.[brooksville-1931-06-11]

The two mills at Avon Park were therefore run as one business under one manager for at least the decade from 1922. As detailed in Mutual Crate Company, Highlands Crate Company, and Ridge Crate Company Corporate Succession, Highlands Crate Company was the Bartow-based Citrus Exchange subsidiary that owned Avon Manufacturing, while Mutual Crate Company was an adjacent grower cooperative on the same spur; following Mutual Crate’s 1930 receivership and 1933 sale, Highlands Crate continued operating Avon Manufacturing and acquired the Ridge Crate Company plant in November 1935.

How big, and how unsteady

The mills were the largest employer in the town and they did not run continuously. In September 1921 the Ocala Evening Star reported that “the Avon Manufacturing Co. at Avon Park resumed operations the past week with a full crew of workmen. They have been closed for ten months and give employment to about 850 men.”[ocala-star-1921-09-06]

The “ten-month closure” claim, however, was a journalistic transposition confusing the plant’s seasonal closure with its operating season. A typical crate mill operated for a ten-month season from September to June to supply the citrus packing houses, and closed over the summer.[taplines-mutual-crate] Florida Supreme Court records confirm that the Avon Manufacturing Company was operating and sawing lumber into crate material in August 1921, when an employee was injured by a gang saw as the plant ramped up for the new season.[herrin-v-avon-1924] The late August resumption aligns exactly with the Ocala Evening Star’s report published on September 6, 1921.

Eight hundred and fifty men is the largest workforce recorded at Avon Park in any source of the period, at a moment when the whole town counted about 1,200 people on the same Sanborn sheet.[ocala-star-1921-09-06][sanborn-1920] The mills drew their hands from far beyond the town, and the lettered houses the surveyors drew beside the plants are where many of them lived.

The timber runs out

The mills owned their own timber and then sold it. In August 1931 the Brooksville Journal reported:

Sale of approximately 10,000,000 feet of standing timber south of Avon Park to the Nocatee Crate Company, of Nocatee, has been consummated by the trustees for the Russ Lumber Company who bought the tract several years ago from the Avon Manufacturing Company and the Highlands Crate Company.[brooksville-1931-08-06]

The Russ Lumber Company was an Arcadia corporation, chartered 27 May 1920 on a capital of $225,000.[sos-charters] That the Avon Park mills had sold their standing timber to it “several years” before 1931, and that Russ was by then in the hands of trustees, is the clearest trace of how the pine behind the mills was used up. During its operations, Russ Lumber utilized significant heavy equipment, including a Baldwin 2-6-2 “Prairie” locomotive purchased in August 1924, and was involved in litigation over its logging practices; a 1930 Florida Supreme Court case revealed the company had been cutting trees an average of three feet above the ground, leaving a “useless stump” and wasting usable timber for which they were held financially liable.[russ-v-stuckey-1930] Following Russ Lumber’s collapse, trustees sold the remaining ten million feet of standing timber south of Avon Park, as well as equipment like the Baldwin locomotive, to the Nocatee Crate Company in August 1931.[brooksville-1931-08-06][historic-locomotive-rosters] The financial ties between these regional timber companies and local institutions continued into the Depression; in 1934, an individual was indicted for embezzling from the Highlands County Bank using property delivered by the Nocatee Crate Company.[skipper-v-state-1934]

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. Secretary of State of the State of Florida, Report of the Secretary of State of the State of Florida, lists of corporations chartered, 1917-1918 and 1919-1920: charters 8647, 8778, 8958, 9248 and 9729 (references/florida-secretary-of-state-corporation-charters.md) (1920) · official
  2. Palatka Daily News, Palatka Daily News, 18 June 1922, page 2: the crate mill at Avon Park, its timber, its railroad and its ownership (1922) · newspaper
  3. The Ocala Banner, The Ocala Banner, 25 August 1922, page 4: the opening of the big crate mills at Avon Park (1922) · newspaper
  4. The Ocala Evening Star, The Ocala Evening Star, 6 September 1921, page 1: the Avon Manufacturing Company resumes operations (1921) · newspaper
  5. The Brooksville Journal, The Brooksville Journal, 11 June 1931, page 13: W. H. Yates elected manager of the Highlands Crate and Avon Manufacturing companies (1931) · newspaper
  6. The Brooksville Journal, The Brooksville Journal, 6 August 1931, page 1: ten million feet of standing timber south of Avon Park sold to the Nocatee Crate Company (1931) · newspaper
  7. The Brooksville Journal, The Brooksville Journal, 28 November 1935, page 1: Avon Park crate plant sold to citrus concern (1935) · newspaper
  8. The Tampa Tribune, Mutual Crate Co., Enjoys Great Year, The Tampa Tribune, 15 June 1924, page 14, as reproduced in facsimile on taplines.net (1924) · newspaper
  9. Sanborn Map Company, Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Avon Park, November 1920, sheet 4 (references/sanborn-1920-avon-park.md) (1920) · archival
  10. Supreme Court of Florida, Russ Lumber Co. v. Stuckey, 100 Fla. 1513, 131 So. 392 (1930) · official
  11. Steamlocomotive.com, Historic Locomotive Rosters: Baldwin 2-6-2 Prairie (2026) · secondary
  12. Supreme Court of Florida, Skipper v. State, 114 Fla. 312, 153 So. 853 (1934) · official

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