The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Avon Park was a dry town by design, and in 1895 it hanged its minister in effigy for smoking

Whether Avon Park’s deeds carried a prohibitory liquor clause, the way W. E. Pabor’s Colorado deeds at Fruita had, is not settled, but the fact behind the question is: at Avon Park in 1895, liquor could not be sold, and a newspaper a state away explained why in eight words.

The story

The Dawson News of Dawson, Georgia, 3 April 1895, under the heading “THE FILTHY WEED — A FLORIDA PASTOR HUNG IN EFFIGY BECAUSE HE SMOKED. Liquor Cannot Be Sold in the Place and Lately There Has Been Mutterings About Tobacco”:

An Avon Park, Florida, special says: When the Rev. Mr. Robinson, pastor of the Congregational church at this place, stepped out into the front yard this morning he saw an effigy of himself hanging from the limb of a tree. It had a placard bearing the inscription “So may all ministers be served who use tobacco.”

Avon Park was intended by its founder to be a moral town. Liquor cannot be sold in the place, and lately there have been mutterings about the use of tobacco. Sunday night the matter came to an issue in the church. During the debate it developed that a majority of the congregation were in favour of expelling every man and woman who used tobacco in any form. Pastor Robinson confessed that he himself used tobacco in his study. The pastor hurried from the church, accompanied by such of the congregation as agreed with him. During the night the indignation of the anti-tobacco faction increased to such a pitch that they hanged the [effigy] …[dawson-1895-04-03]

The despatch as reprinted runs out there. It is a syndicated “special,” so other papers carried it. The Scio Weekly Press of Oregon printed an abridged version a month later (10 May 1895), confirming the opening but cutting off before the Sunday night church debate, and substituting the phrase “model town” for “moral town.”[scio-1895-05-10] The full conclusion of the Dawson News printing, and Rev. Robinson’s first name, remain unrecovered.

What it establishes

Avon Park was dry, and dry on purpose. “Avon Park was intended by its founder to be a moral town. Liquor cannot be sold in the place.” Whether that was done by deed covenant, by town ordinance, or by the simple fact that nobody would sell a lot to a saloon-keeper, the despatch does not say — but the condition was well enough known outside Florida to be stated as background in a Georgia paper.

It fits what the founder was advertising. The 1939 WPA guide quotes what it calls an early editorial from Crosby’s own Florida Home Seeker: “Mischief makers are not welcome; and above all, do not come to Avon Park if you must have strong drink or questionable entertainment. Do not come to sober up, or reform!”[wpa-1939] The despatch of 1895 is that policy in practice, eight or nine years on.

And it puts a name and a date to the Congregational church. The Rev. Mr. Robinson was its pastor in the spring of 1895. This project had the Congregational church at Avon Park from the state directories of 1907 and 1911 and from the Sanborn map, but not a minister’s name from the 1890s.

Read it carefully

It is a comic story and it was printed as one — “The Filthy Weed” is a joke headline. But three serious things are inside it.

The congregation was seriously proposing to expel every member who used tobacco, and a majority was for it. That is not eccentricity; it is the temperance movement at full strength in a colony town of Northern settlers, in the same years that Crosby was selling the place as a refuge from strong drink.

The town split. The pastor “hurried from the church accompanied by such of the congregation as agreed with him.” A congregation of a few dozen people in a village of a few hundred divided into factions over it, and one faction went out at night to hang an effigy.

And it happened in April 1895 — three months after the freeze of December 1894 and two months after the freeze of February 1895 that destroyed the groves and emptied the town. Whatever else was going on in Avon Park that spring, this was.

References

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

  1. The Dawson News (Dawson, Ga.), from an Avon Park special despatch, The Filthy Weed — A Florida Pastor Hung in Effigy Because He Smoked, The Dawson News (Dawson, Ga.), 3 April 1895, page 6 (1895)
  2. Unattributed, Historic Oregon Newspapers, Scio weekly press., May 10, 1895, Image 3 (1895)
  3. Federal Writers' Project, Work Projects Administration for the State of Florida, Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State, Federal Writers' Project, 1939, page 499, quoting an early editorial in the Florida Home Seeker (1939)

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