The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
Menu
Admin Sign-In

Oliver M. Crosby: Danbury Origins, Horticultural Background, and 1925 Remarriage

Avon Park founder Oliver Marvin Crosby (1852–1932) has frequently appeared in local histories as an enigmatic promoter whose life before and after his Florida years was largely unrecorded[tampa-tribune-1923-03-11]. Research across Connecticut town histories, nineteenth-century agricultural reports, Florida marriage files, and contemporary newspapers establishes his family background in Danbury, his early career as an orchardist and United States Department of Agriculture crop reporter, the commercial origins of his financial backing, and the circumstances of his final years and second marriage in Pinellas County[bailey-danbury-1896][democratic-messenger-1882-08-19][hartford-courant-1931-02-06].

Danbury Origins and the Marvin Name

Crosby was born in Danbury, Fairfield County, Connecticut, on 12 January 1852, the son of Major Judah Paddock Crosby (1814–1871) and Catherine Stevens (1815–1898)[findagrave-judah-crosby][findagrave-catherine-crosby].

His middle name “Marvin” derived directly from his maternal ancestry. His maternal grandparents were James Stevens Jr. (1788–1860) and Catharine Marvin Stevens (1788–1873)[findagrave-catherine-crosby]. Two maternal uncles, Oliver Stevens (1818–1819) and Oliver M. Stevens (1820–1837), had died in infancy and youth; Judah and Catherine Crosby named their son in memory of this deceased uncle and his grandmother’s Marvin line[findagrave-catherine-crosby]. Oliver Marvin Crosby later bestowed the name upon his eldest daughter, Sara Marvin Crosby (1876–1935).

The Danbury Hatting Network and Hotel Verona

Crosby grew up at the center of Danbury’s signature nineteenth-century industry: hat manufacturing. His father, Judah P. Crosby, served as a Major in the Fifth Regiment of the Connecticut Militia and was a leading wool hat manufacturer[bailey-danbury-1896]. In 1848 Major Crosby established an office in the Crosby Block on Main Street in Danbury, operating the hat firm Wildman & Crosby from 1854 to 1856, and reorganizing in 1856 as Crosby, Hoyt & Co. with partners Henry T. Hoyt and William B. Wildman[bailey-danbury-1896][francis-hatting-1860].

This family background explains how Oliver M. Crosby secured northern capital when constructing the Hotel Verona in Avon Park in 1888–1889. When yellow fever quarantines disrupted his promotional revenue, Crosby obtained a $45,000 subscription pledge ($15,000 each) from Beckerle, Schuldice & Fay, one of Danbury’s largest fur hat manufacturing firms, operated by William Beckerle, James H. Shuldice, and Thomas F. Fay[bailey-danbury-1896][tampa-tribune-1923-03-11]. Although the firm withdrew after advancing $17,000 due to financial stringency, it was Crosby’s lifelong Danbury hatting ties that made the construction of Avon Park’s first tourist hotel possible[tampa-tribune-1923-03-11].

The Lake Kenosia Peach Orchard and USDA Reporting (1882)

Before moving to Florida in 1883, Crosby was an accomplished commercial orchardist. In August 1882 the New York World dispatched a reporter to examine Crosby’s farm, located two and a half miles west of Danbury village near Lake Kenosia[democratic-messenger-1882-08-19].

The contemporary profile revealed that Crosby had established one of the largest peach orchards in the State of Connecticut, comprising 1,500 trees planted ten feet apart on level, light loam soil[democratic-messenger-1882-08-19]. Crosby served as the official special reporter for Fairfield County of the Agricultural Department (USDA), tracking regional fruit yields, winter freezes, and pomological techniques[democratic-messenger-1882-08-19].

Notably, the 1882 interview documented Crosby’s keen observation of microclimates and frost lines: he stated that his ideal orchard site would always be a hilltop rather than low ground, specifically because of the lessened danger from winter frosts on elevated ridges[democratic-messenger-1882-08-19]. When Crosby arrived in Florida in 1883 and witnessed the disastrous statewide freeze of January 1886, he applied this exact principle, choosing the high sand ridges of Township 33 South, Range 28 East (Lake Wales Ridge) to protect prospective citrus groves from cold air drainage.

His Connecticut pomological credentials also provided the foundation for his editorial career in New York as horticultural editor of The South (1885–1887), his management of the Danbury citrus colony at Welshton in Marion County, and his appointment to standing committees of the Florida State Horticultural Society in 1893 and 1897.

Departure and Title Rectification (1897–1898)

Following the Great Freeze of 1894–1895 and the subsequent failure of the Bank of Avon Park and the Florida Development Company, Crosby was forced into liquidation under creditor judgments in January 1897[tampa-tribune-1923-03-11]. He departed Avon Park in the summer of 1897 with nominal funds, working in life insurance in New York and later as a sales and psychology instructor in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania[tampa-tribune-1923-03-11].

His wife, Mary Emma Miller Crosby (1853–1938), remained behind in Avon Park for roughly twenty months during 1897 and 1898[tampa-tribune-1923-03-11][tampa-tribune-1923-03-15]. As the on-site representative of O. M. Crosby, she negotiated with purchaser Abbie R. Dodge and cleared warranty deed titles for pioneer families who had purchased parcels on installment contracts, financed in part by money sent home by Crosby from his northern insurance work[tampa-tribune-1923-03-15]. Mary Emma Crosby subsequently relocated to Bellevue in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, to reside near their surviving daughter Sara Crosby Findlay, dying there on 15 June 1938 and receiving burial at Mount Royal Cemetery in Glenshaw, Pennsylvania.

The 1925 Remarriage in St. Petersburg

In the 1920s Crosby returned to Florida as a sales representative for the Scenic Highlands Development Company, eventually establishing residence in St. Petersburg, Pinellas County[tampa-tribune-1923-03-11][fl-marriage-crosby-1925].

On 24 September 1925, in St. Petersburg, Crosby remarried. His second wife was Mrs. Emma Louise (Perry) Peck (1851–1931), with the ceremony officiated by Congregational minister Rev. Lyman Mevis[fl-marriage-crosby-1925].

Emma Louise Perry was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in September 1851, the daughter of Valette DeChambre Perry and Mary Elizabeth Marble[findagrave-emma-louise]. She was the widow of Rial Strickland Peck (1847–1911), founder of the prominent Hartford commercial printing house R. S. Peck & Co.[hartford-courant-1931-02-06] (Her sister, Alice Mary Perry, was the wife of O. R. Thacher, an early Avon Park pioneer and Horticultural Society colleague of Crosby)[bailey-danbury-1896][findagrave-emma-louise].

Emma Louise Peck Crosby died at their St. Petersburg residence on 4 February 1931[hartford-courant-1931-02-06]. Her body was returned to Connecticut and interred in Spring Grove Cemetery in Hartford following funeral services conducted by Rev. Dr. Rockwell Harmon Potter, dean of the Hartford Theological Seminary[hartford-courant-1931-02-06].

Final Months and the “Ben Avon” Error

Following his second wife’s death in February 1931, the eighty-year-old Crosby was left in frail health without immediate family in Pinellas County. Within months he was admitted to the Pinellas County Home in Largo, Florida, where he resided until his death on 8 March 1932[tampa-tribune-1932-03-09].

In its national obituary dispatch, the Associated Press erroneously reported that “Avon Park [was] named after his home town, Ben Avon, Pa.”[tampa-tribune-1932-03-09] This was an error of conflation: Ben Avon was an Allegheny County borough where his daughter Sara Crosby Findlay lived and where Crosby himself had resided temporarily during the 1910s and 1920s while working in Pittsburgh, decades after Avon Park was platted and named in the 1880s[tampa-tribune-1932-03-10].

At the direction of his daughter in Pennsylvania, Crosby’s body was returned to Avon Park. On 12 March 1932, his body lay in state at the Union Congregational Church—which he had helped establish four decades earlier—and was laid to rest in Bougainvillea Cemetery, fulfilling the wish he had expressed during his 1923 homecoming to be buried in the cemetery he had platted for the town[tampa-tribune-1932-03-10][tampa-tribune-1932-03-12].

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. James Montgomery Bailey and Susan Benedict Hill, History of Danbury, Conn., 1684-1896 (1896) · book
  2. William H. Francis, History of the Hatting Trade in Danbury, Conn. (1860) · book
  3. The Democratic Messenger, The Democratic Messenger, Snow Hill, Maryland, 19 August 1882, page 4: Peach Culture in Connecticut (reprinting New York World) (1882) · newspaper
  4. The Hartford Courant, The Hartford Courant, 6 February 1931, page 4: Mrs. Emma L. Peck Crosby Obituary (1931) · newspaper
  5. The Tampa Tribune, The Tampa Tribune, 11 March 1923, page 47: Oliver Crosby Relates Story of Rise of Avon Park and First Fall (1923) · newspaper
  6. Ernest B. Simmons / The Tampa Tribune, The Tampa Tribune, 15 March 1923, page 15: Crosby's Return to Avon Park Inspires Laudatory Comments (1923) · newspaper
  7. Associated Press / The Tampa Tribune, The Tampa Tribune, 9 March 1932, page 2: O. M. Crosby, Founder Of Avon Park, Dies in St. Petersburg (1932) · newspaper
  8. Associated Press / The Tampa Tribune, The Tampa Tribune, 10 March 1932, page 2: Avon Park Founder To Be Buried in Cemetery There (1932) · newspaper
  9. Find a Grave contributors, Judah Paddock Crosby (1814–1871), Kenosia Cemetery, Danbury, Connecticut, Find a Grave memorial 7994041 (2026) · secondary
  10. Find a Grave contributors, Catherine Stevens Crosby (1815–1898), Kenosia Cemetery, Danbury, Connecticut, Find a Grave memorial 7994045 (2026) · secondary
  11. Find a Grave contributors, Emma Louise Perry Crosby (1851–1931), Spring Grove Cemetery, Hartford, Connecticut, Find a Grave memorial 140376264 (2026) · secondary
  12. State of Florida / Pinellas County, Florida Marriage Records, Pinellas County: Oliver M. Crosby and Emma Louise Peck, 24 September 1925 (1925) · official

Something here wrong, or incomplete? The Society would rather know. Tell a volunteer.

Have a question about this record?

← Back to collection

Ask A.P.

Ask the archive

    Try asking:

    0 / 500

    A.P. answers only from the Society's own archive and cites what it used. Questions are not linked to you; search history is stored on your device only (how it works).Ask a volunteer for anything it cannot answer.