The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Earliest Marked Graves of Bougainvillea Cemetery (1888–1901)

Bougainvillea Cemetery, founded in 1888 on ten acres dedicated by town founder Oliver Marvin Crosby, contains more than 5,000 interments.[maxwell-1976] A comprehensive chronological review of the cemetery’s earliest surviving headstones identifies the small cohort of pioneer burials that date between the town’s initial settlement in 1888 and the end of 1901. These surviving monuments provide physical evidence of the town’s earliest mortality patterns, resolve a long-standing transcription anomaly predating the town’s founding, and illustrate the kinship and business networks of Avon Park’s charter settlers.

The Resolution of Transcription Anomalies: Bartlett (1884) and Denmark (1892)

Online indexes of Bougainvillea Cemetery long catalogued two entries that appeared to disrupt the pioneer timeline: an “Ernest Bartlett” recorded with an 1884 death date predating the settlement of Avon Park, and a child, “Clayton A. Denmark,” recorded with dates 18 December 1883 to 29 November 1892 (aged 8).[fg-bartlett][fg-denmark]

Examination of the original field survey notes recorded by genealogist Grace Younglove Hudson in May 2009 demonstrates that the 1884 Bartlett date is an artifact of a severely eroded marker rather than historical fact.[fg-bartlett] Hudson’s field report recorded: “Ernest Bartlett died 1984 ? age 40 ? Believed John 3. 16. Gravesite Details: stone is difficult to read.” The Bartlett family settled in south-central Florida near the turn of the century; other members of the family buried in Bougainvillea include Arthur Henry Bartlett (1885–1970) and Mary Ann Bartlett (1858–1912). The badly weathered numerals on the stone represent an ambiguous modern or turn-of-the-century burial rather than a pre-settlement grave.

Similarly, photographic re-examination of Clayton A. Denmark’s headstone disproves the 1892 death date.[fg-denmark] The flush gray granite lawn-level marker clearly reads CLAYTON A. DENMARK / DEC 18 1883 [Latin Cross] NOV 29 1982. Hudson’s 2009 survey transposed or misread 1982 as 1892, leading software to calculate an eight-year-old child’s death. Clayton A. Denmark was not an 1892 pioneer casualty, but a prominent twentieth-century resident and longtime Atlantic Coast Line Railroad station agent in Avon Park who lived to age ninety-eight (1883–1982) and was interred beside his wife, Lulah Inez Denmark (d. 1952).

These clerical corrections explain why an early digital transcription project uploaded to the USGenWeb Archives in August 2003 by volunteer Joe Cercy was abandoned after transcribing only 31 modern graves spanning surnames A through C, leaving no digital record of the historic sections in state cemetery archives.[usgw-bougain-cercy]

The First Decade’s Surviving Markers (1888–1901)

Between October 1888 and December 1901, only six marked gravestones have survived to the present day. During the single winter of 1889–1890, thirteen individuals died in Avon Park—primarily consumptive health-seekers who had arrived in the town’s first seasons—and were buried in wooden coffins draped in black cloth.[maxwell-1976] These winter casualties rested in unmarked graves, leaving the surviving stones to document family homesteaders and long-term settlers.

Chronologically, the six earliest marked graves are:

  1. Hulda Stenstrom (13 July 1888 – 6 October 1888): The three-month-old infant daughter of Swedish settlers John C. and Augusta Stenstrom.[fg-stenstrom] Interred near an oak tree on the east side of Crosby’s original ten-acre dedication before the construction of the Hotel Verona was completed, she represents the first recorded burial in Avon Park.[maxwell-1976] The family later relocated west to Wauchula.
  2. Anna Daugherty (1 April 1819 – 3 December 1892): Dying at age 73, she is the earliest marked adult interment in Bougainvillea Cemetery and the second surviving marked grave overall.[fg-anna-daugherty] Her stone bears the inscription “It is well with her soul.” She was the wife of charter settler William F. Daugherty (1827–1904) and matriarch of one of Avon Park’s most influential founding families.[census-1900-desoto-ap]
  3. William F. Smith (10 January 1823 – 2 March 1893): Dying at age 70, he represents the earliest surviving marked adult male burial in the cemetery.[fg-smith] His family was closely allied with pioneer merchant George F. Smith and citrus grower Frederick M. Smith.[census-1900-desoto-ap]
  4. Sarah Wheeler Abbott (1826 – 1898): Matriarch of the pioneer Abbott citrus family, dying at age 72.[fg-abbott] Her descendants, including prominent citrus grove owner Ernest Charles Abbott (1888–1962), remained central to the town’s agricultural economy for over a century.
  5. Elizabeth Ross (12 May 1829 – 25 April 1899): Dying at age 69, Elizabeth Ross was the mother of Matilda “Maud” Ross Sargent and the mother-in-law of Arthur Winthrop Sargent (1853–1937).[fg-ross] Sargent was the builder of Sargent’s Hall (the community center housing the post office and early civic meetings) and editor-publisher of The Avon Park Idea from 1895 to 1898. Her grave is situated adjacent to the Sargent family plot.
  6. James W. Woodruff (22 March 1819 – 26 December 1901): Patriarch of the Woodruff household, dying at age 82.[fg-woodruff][woodruff-genealogy-1963] A former Green Bay, Wisconsin, lumberman, he was the husband of Almira Henshaw Daugherty Woodruff (sister of charter pioneer William F. Daugherty) and father of Herbert Eugene Woodruff, Florence Adell Woodruff Hendricks (2 May 1850 – 8 January 1909, wife of 1897 town councilman, notary, and model pineapple grower John T. Hendricks, 22 December 1851 – 20 November 1917), Walter Harold (“Harry”) Woodruff (1853–1936), and Allie May Woodruff, who won the young ladies’ footrace at William E. Pabor’s 1894 Fourth of July celebration.[pabor-lake-pineapple-1894-07][woodruff-genealogy-1963]

Kinship Networks and the 1900 Federal Census

The physical proximity of these early markers in Bougainvillea Cemetery reflects the residential and familial clustering documented in the 1900 Federal Census for Avon Park (Precinct 11, De Soto County).[census-1900-desoto-ap]

The Daugherty and Woodruff families occupied contiguous homesteads in the settlement. In the 1900 census, household 373/374 was headed by 72-year-old widower William F. Daugherty (whose wife Anna had died in 1892 and who would join her in Bougainvillea in 1904). Household 386/387 was occupied by 81-year-old James W. Woodruff, his 73-year-old wife Almira (sister to William F. Daugherty), and their 24-year-old daughter Allie May Woodruff. Immediately adjacent in household 387/388 lived daughter Florence Adell Hendricks with her son Laird Woodruff Hendricks (1887–1923, enumerated as “Louis W.”) and daughter Ruth M. Hendricks (1890–1936); Laird Woodruff Hendricks and his wife Bernice were the parents of First Lieutenant Laird Woodruff Hendricks Jr. (1916–1941), the B-17 pilot for whom Highlands County’s wartime Hendricks Army Airfield was named.[census-1900-desoto-ap][woodruff-genealogy-1963] By November 1905, John T. Hendricks had relocated to Orlando while returning to Avon Park to tend his groves, and winter arrivals H. Dilley and his family from Benton Harbor, Michigan, were occupying “Mrs. A. H. Woodruff’s place for the winter.”[dsc-1905-11-17] Household 388/389 was headed by Connecticut-born farmer Joseph Shipboy Bell (1829–1906), who was interred nearby in 1906.

Similarly, Arthur W. Sargent and his wife Maud Ross Sargent resided at household 396/397, having buried Maud’s mother, Elizabeth Ross, in Bougainvillea in 1899. Merchant George F. Smith and his son Frederick M. Smith resided at household 401/402, carrying forward the mercantile business associated with William F. Smith’s 1893 burial.

The Turn-of-the-Century Transition (1902–1907)

Immediately following the 1901 interment of James W. Woodruff, a distinct cohort of community leaders died during the town’s transitional era leading up to the 1906 formation of the Avon Park Cemetery Association:

  • Clark Darwin Knapp (1850 – 1902): Charter settler from Connecticut, vice president of the Avon Park Transportation Company (which built the 1895 wooden tramway toward Frostproof), and charter trustee of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer.[fg-knapp]
  • Melvin E. Mann (1857 – 1902): Early commercial farmer and tradesman.
  • Anna “Annie” Faragher Mallory (1842 – 1903): Early English-born settler family.
  • Elizabeth J. Bibbins Goodell (1852 – 1903): Pioneer resident and wife of rural mail carrier M. O. Goodell.
  • William F. Daugherty (1827 – 1904): Charter pioneer, widower of Anna Daugherty, and father of charter 1913 town alderman William H. Daugherty (1868–1960).
  • Sarah Ann England Parker (1828 – 1905): Early homesteader matriarch.
  • Joseph Shipboy Bell (1829 – 1906): Early homesteader whose 1906 funeral was attended by nearly the entire township. The Avon Park department of The De Soto County News carried his obituary: born at Westfield, Chautauqua County, New York, on 24 August 1829, married in Wisconsin, a merchant for twenty years in his native county, he died of a cancer of the lip and throat on Wednesday 24 January 1906 in his seventy-seventh year, leaving his widow Eunice (St. John) Bell, married fifty-one years, and three daughters in New York, Oregon and California; the Rev. S. J. Townsend conducted the funeral at the house on 25 January, “and the interment was in the Avon Park cemetery,” with “nearly all our people” attending.[dsc-1906-02-02-bell]
  • Stuart Gibson Donaldson (1850 – 1907): Pioneer citrus grower and father of town historian and councilman Charles S. Donaldson.

The survival of headstones for elderly matriarchs and patriarchs, contrasted with the single surviving infant stone for Hulda Stenstrom, demonstrates both the vulnerability of fragile wooden or temporary markers erected during the first two decades and the deliberate investment by established pioneer families in enduring stone monuments to anchor their lineage in Avon Park.

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. 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
  2. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 2 February 1906, page 4: In Memoriam and Joseph Bell Is Dead, Department of The South Florida Sun (1906) · newspaper
  3. Find a Grave contributors, Hulda Stenstrom (13 Jul 1888 - 6 Oct 1888), Bougainvillea Cemetery, Find a Grave memorial 13490655 (2006) · secondary
  4. Find a Grave contributors, Clayton A. Denmark (18 Dec 1883 - 29 Nov 1982), Bougainvillea Cemetery, Find a Grave memorial 35726262 (2009) · secondary
  5. Find a Grave contributors, Anna Daugherty (1 Apr 1819 - 3 Dec 1892), Bougainvillea Cemetery, Find a Grave memorial 34560596 (2009) · secondary
  6. Find a Grave contributors, William F. Smith (10 Jan 1823 - 2 Mar 1893), Bougainvillea Cemetery, Find a Grave memorial 34559959 (2009) · secondary
  7. Find a Grave contributors, Sarah Wheeler Abbott (1826 - 1898), Bougainvillea Cemetery, Find a Grave memorial 37221367 (2009) · secondary
  8. Find a Grave contributors, Elizabeth Ross (12 May 1829 - 25 Apr 1899), Bougainvillea Cemetery, Find a Grave memorial 34619969 (2009) · secondary
  9. Find a Grave contributors, James W. Woodruff (22 Mar 1819 - 26 Dec 1901), Bougainvillea Cemetery, Find a Grave memorial 34560394 (2009) · secondary
  10. Find a Grave contributors, Clark Darwin Knapp (1850 - 1902), Bougainvillea Cemetery, Find a Grave memorial 37221779 (2009) · secondary
  11. Find a Grave contributors, field survey by Grace Younglove Hudson, Ernest Bartlett, Bougainvillea Cemetery, Find a Grave memorial 36833003 (2009) · secondary
  12. United States Census Bureau / USGenWeb Archives transcription, 1900 Federal Census, Precinct 11, Avon Park, De Soto County, Florida (2003) · official
  13. Joe Cercy, USGenWeb Archives, Bougainvillea Cemetery partial transcription, Avon Park, Highlands County, Florida (2003) · secondary
  14. William E. Pabor, Fourth of July at Pabor Lake, Pabor Lake Pineapple, Vol. 2, No. 10, July 1894 (University of Florida Digital Collections, Pabor Lake Pineapple) (1894) · newspaper
  15. Susan Woodruff Abbott, Woodruff Genealogy: Descendants of Mathew Woodruff of Farmington, Connecticut, entries 669 and 1077 (James W. Woodruff and Florence Adell Woodruff Hendricks) (1963) · book
  16. O. R. Thacher, in The De Soto County News (Arcadia, Fla.), The De Soto County News, 17 November 1905, page 8: Department of The South Florida Sun (J. T. Hendricks of Orlando and Mrs. A. H. Woodruff's place) (1905) · newspaper

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