The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Black hotel workers and boarding houses in the 1920 census

The manuscript schedules of the Fourteenth Federal Census, taken across Avon Park’s election precinct in January 1920 by Byrum Shockley, document the working people who staffed the town’s winter tourist hostelries and industrial crate mills six years after municipal barriers against Black labor began to fall.[census-1920-ed23] Beyond the agricultural and turpentine laborers scattered across the district, the returns reveal an interconnected family cluster operating an entire hotel kitchen and dining service, as well as two large communal boarding houses serving the lumber and crate mills.[census-1920-ed23]

The hotel worker household cluster

On Sheet 6 of Enumeration District 23, recorded on 9 January 1920, two adjacent Black households (Families 140 and 141) formed a concentrated hospitality labor unit:[census-1920-ed23]

  • Jerusha Johnson (Family 140, line 63): Head of household, a sixteen-year-old single Black woman born in Florida, employed as a “Waiter / Hotel.”
  • Isaiah Mitchell (Family 141, line 64): Head of household, a thirty-year-old married Black man, employed as a “Dishwasher / Hotel.”
  • Zida Mitchell (Family 141, line 65): Wife of Isaiah, twenty-three years old, employed as a “Cook / Hotel.”
  • Mame Mitchell (Family 141, line 66): Daughter, six years old.
  • Hannah White (Family 141, line 67): Mother-in-law of Isaiah Mitchell, a forty-eight-year-old widowed Black woman, employed as a “Cook / Hotel.”
  • William White (Family 141, line 68): Step-father-in-law, a forty-two-year-old Black man born in Georgia, employed as a “Laborer / Hotel.”

Together, these two households supplied an integrated five-worker culinary and service brigade: two cooks, a dishwasher, a dining room waiter, and a general house laborer.[census-1920-ed23]

The hotel in January 1920

The census schedules do not name the specific hostelry, but town business directories and fire insurance maps delimit the possibilities. The Hotel Jacaranda did not open until 1926.[maxwell-1976] In November 1920, the Sanborn Map Company surveyed Avon Park and indexed three operating hotels:[sanborn-1920]

  1. Hotel Avon: Standing on Block 46 beside Lake Verona, this was the three-story frame Hotel Verona, originally constructed in 1889 and renovated in 1919 under new management as a sixty-room winter tourist resort.[sanborn-1920][maxwell-1976] The Sanborn map shows a detached kitchen, dining hall, and pastry room.[sanborn-1920]
  2. Park Hotel: Occupying the second floor of Walter Whidden’s two-story brick commercial block on the south side of West Main Street at Butler Avenue (Block 70), above three retail storefronts.[sanborn-1920]
  3. Village Inn: A two-story frame boarding house at 116 Main Street (Block 58) with street-front verandas, listed alongside the Hotel Avon in the 1918 Polk state directory.[sanborn-1920][gaz-1918]

Of the three, only the Hotel Avon maintained a large-scale commercial dining room and kitchen requiring a multi-tiered brigade consisting of two cooks, a dishwasher, a waiter, and an attendant house laborer.[sanborn-1920] The Park Hotel offered furnished rooms over commercial shops without dining facilities, while the Village Inn was a modest main-street boarding home.[sanborn-1920]

In the enumerator’s geographic sequence, the Johnson and Mitchell households immediately followed Family 138, a nineteen-resident white boarding house operated by Jessie Davis near the intersection of Railroad and Pomfret avenues.[census-1920-ed23] This location placed the workers on the western perimeter of the commercial district, midway between the downtown hotels and the railroad corridor.

Industrial boarding houses in the Mill Quarters

While most Black families in ED 23 lived in detached family units, two large communal households functioned as industrial boarding houses for single laborers drawn to the town’s wood-products mills:[census-1920-ed23]

The unheaded communal residence (Sheet 9)

On Sheet 9 (image 456, lines 56–61), Shockley enumerated six young Black adults living together without a designated household head, representing a shared cooperative dwelling:[census-1920-ed23]

  • James Odum (age 26): Laborer, Crate mill
  • Andrew Davis (age 24): Tie-cutter, Railroad
  • Henry Johnson (age 23): Edger, Sawmill
  • Lily Monroe (age 20): Cook, Private family
  • Isaac Robertson (age 22): Laborer, Crate mill
  • David McMillen (age 28): Laborer, Crate mill

This household brought together men working across the timber and transport trades—sawmilling, railroad tie-cutting, and citrus crate manufacture—supported by an in-house cook.[census-1920-ed23]

The Owen and Anna McClary boarding house (Sheet 14)

On Sheet 14 (image 465, lines 31–41), Byrum Shockley recorded the largest single Black household in Avon Park’s 1920 census: an eleven-person residence headed by Owen McClary (age 38, laborer at a crate mill) and his wife Anna McClary (age 34, cook for a private family).[census-1920-ed23]

The McClarys boarded nine young unmarried Black men, aged nineteen to thirty, all employed in the crate mills:[census-1920-ed23]

  • Will Jenkins (age 28): Laborer, Crate mill
  • John Henry (age 25): Laborer, Crate mill
  • Arthur Williams (age 30): Laborer, Crate mill
  • Charlie Smith (age 24): Laborer, Crate mill
  • Sam Brown (age 22): Fireman, Crate mill
  • Robert Hall (age 26): Laborer, Crate mill
  • Jesse Jones (age 21): Laborer, Crate mill
  • Eddie Lee (age 19): Laborer, Crate mill
  • Thomas Jackson (age 25): Laborer, Crate mill

Eight of the boarders worked as general mill laborers handling lumber and assembly, while Sam Brown served as a mill fireman, stoking the steam boilers that powered the machinery.[census-1920-ed23]

Mill housing on the Sanborn map

The presence of these boarding houses matches the physical infrastructure depicted on Sheet 4 of the November 1920 Sanborn map.[sanborn-1920] Southwest of the town limits along the Atlantic Coast Line right-of-way, the map documents the extensive manufacturing complexes of the Flint Lumber Company sawmill, the Mutual Crate Company, and the Avon Manufacturing Company.[sanborn-1920]

Clustered beside the mill yards, the surveyors plotted forty-four unnumbered frame dwellings and a distinct two-story frame boarding house erected specifically to lodge mill hands.[sanborn-1920] The McClary boarding house and the communal dwelling on Sheet 9 capture the influx of young African American men who migrated to Avon Park during World War I and its immediate aftermath to sustain the region’s burgeoning citrus packaging industry.

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 schedules, Florida, DeSoto County, enumeration district 23 (Precinct 14, Avon Park), NARA microfilm T625 roll 217, images 439–476, enumerated 6–25 January 1920 (1920) · official
  2. Sanborn Map Company, Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Avon Park, De Soto County, Florida, November 1920 (four sheets) (references/sanborn-1920-avon-park.md) (1920) · archival
  3. R. L. Polk & Co., Florida State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1918 (1918) · book
  4. Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida (Held at the Avon Park Historical Society Depot Museum, Avon Park, Florida) (1976) · book

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