This is a draft. It is published so it can be read and corrected, not because it is finished.

Identification of the lake in Crosby’s 1888 frontispiece

The lake shown in the uncaptioned frontispiece plate of Oliver M. Crosby’s 1888 promotional pamphlet, Common Sense About Florida…, cannot be geographically identified as a specific body of water in Avon Park or Lake Forest.

The image is a dark lithograph depicting a lake seen through longleaf pines hung with Spanish moss, a small sailboat, and two figures on the shore. However, three factors establish that the plate does not document a specific local topography:

1. Lack of specific captioning: The plate carries no identifying text, and the book’s narrative does not refer to it.
2. Promotional stock usage: The publisher, South Publishing Co. of New York, operated as “Printers and Engravers” who frequently supplied generic or stock lithographs of Florida wetlands and piney woods for Northern promotional literature.
3. Absence of academic consensus: Exhaustive index searches across the Library of Congress, Florida Memory, and academic databases yield no authoritative identification of the lake as Lake Verona, Lake Lotela, Lake Damon, or Lake Pythias.

While the pamphlet’s text explicitly promotes the lakefronts of the Avon Park Township—particularly Lakes Damon and Pythias in Section 2—the frontispiece illustration served to represent the idealized lake scenes of these “model South Florida enterprises” rather than offering a documented photograph of a specific shore.

The frontispiece plate. O. M. Crosby, Common Sense about Florida (New York: South Publishing Co., 1888), frontispiece. Florida State Library copy, via Internet Archive. Public domain. [crosby-1888-pamphlet]

References

• O. M. Crosby, Common Sense about Florida and information regarding Lake Forest and Avon Park, model south Florida enterprises (New York: South Pub. Co., 1888?), 4. State Library and Archives of Florida copy, via Internet Archive.

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

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