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

Postal Service and Postmasters of Avon Park (1888–1962)

Summary

The Avon Park post office began with a form. On 8 May 1888 the First Assistant Postmaster General in Washington sent William King, in care of the postmaster at Fort Meade, a location paper asking where the proposed office would stand and how it would get its mail; King answered it on 11 May, the Fort Meade postmaster certified it, and the Department received his sketch of the site on 14 May.[nara-m1126-roll92] King’s appointment as postmaster followed on 22 May 1888, the first entry for Avon Park in the Department’s register of appointments.[nara-m841-desoto] The same register, kept first under De Soto County and from 1921 under Highlands County, records every postmaster after him down to Robert D. Young in 1962, and the dates it gives are the ones the town history prints.[nara-m841-desoto][nara-m841-highlands][maxwell-1976]

The application of 1888

Location paper for the proposed Avon Park post office, May 1888

William King’s location paper for the Avon Park post office, May 1888. National Archives, Records of the Post Office Department, RG 28, Reports of Site Locations, M1126 roll 92, NAID 68261691. Public domain.[nara-m1126-roll92]

King’s answers on the location paper are the earliest official description of the settlement. The office would stand in the northwest quarter of section 23, Township 33 South, Range 28 East, in De Soto County, ten miles east of the mail route from Fort Meade to Crewsville, on which C. W. Kitchen carried the mail once a week; the mail for Avon Park would leave that route at Midland, eighteen miles to the northwest, and Crewsville lay twenty miles to the southwest, Wauchula twenty miles west by the most direct road. The nearest railroad was the Florida Southern, the most prominent river the Peace, nineteen miles away, and the nearest creek Charlie Apopka, eight miles off. Asked the population the office would serve, King wrote seventy. He signed on 11 May 1888 and F. F. Hendry, postmaster at Fort Meade, certified the statement.[nara-m1126-roll92]

Diagram of the site of the Avon Park post office, 1888

King’s diagram of the site, received in Washington on 14 May 1888. National Archives, Records of the Post Office Department, RG 28, Reports of Site Locations, M1126 roll 92, NAID 68261691. Public domain.[nara-m1126-roll92]

The diagram that went with it plots the township’s thirty-six sections, marks the office in section 23, and draws the single road that connected it to the world, running northwest to Midland and southwest to Crewsville.[nara-m1126-roll92] The register of appointments then records, under De Soto County, “formed from Manatee County,” the line “Avon Park, William King, 22 May 88,” with Arthur W. Dickson’s appointment written beside it on 3 October 1889.[nara-m841-desoto] The town history gives the same two dates, and adds that King’s first quarter’s receipts came to about six dollars.[maxwell-1976]

The move of 1894

Application to change the site of the Avon Park post office, June 1894

Dorr D. Kinney’s application to move the office, 16 June 1894, certified by William E. Pabor. National Archives, Records of the Post Office Department, RG 28, Reports of Site Locations, M1126 roll 92, NAID 68261691. Public domain.[nara-m1126-roll92]

Six years later the office had moved into the townsite. On 16 June 1894 postmaster Dorr D. Kinney reported a change of site to the southeast quarter of section 22, about half a mile from the old position, on route 23355 from Bowling Green, over which the mail now came daily; the nearest office not on the route was Pabor Lake, four miles north, and the village had a hundred inhabitants with three hundred people to be supplied. The certifying neighbor was William E. Pabor, postmaster at Pabor Lake.[nara-m1126-roll92] The register shows the office made a money-order office on 11 June 1892 and Kinney’s appointment on 29 July 1891.[nara-m841-desoto] Kinney had bought out the Tobe Hendry store on East Main Street and kept the office at its counter for five years.[maxwell-1976][gaz-1895]

Pioneer Postmasters and Storefront Locations (1888–1910)

The register of appointments and the town history agree on the succession:[nara-m841-desoto][maxwell-1976]

  1. William King (appointed 22 May 1888): Operated the initial postal counter from his residence and grove headquarters.[nara-m841-desoto][maxwell-1976]
  2. Arthur W. Dickson (appointed 3 October 1889): Handled expanding mail volume during the townsite’s early promotion by Oliver M. Crosby.[nara-m841-desoto][maxwell-1976]
  3. Edward W. Dawson (appointed 13 November 1890): Managed postal service during the initial chartering of the Florida Development Company.[nara-m841-desoto][maxwell-1976]
  4. Dorr D. Kinney (appointed 29 July 1891): Bought out the Tobe Hendry store on East Main Street and operated the post office from the mercantile counter for five years.[nara-m841-desoto][maxwell-1976][gaz-1895]
  5. Benjamin F. West (appointed 10 September 1896): Purchased the Kinney building following the 1894–1895 freeze, maintaining postal distribution alongside B. F. West & Son general store and safe banking operations for four years.[nara-m841-desoto][maxwell-1976]
  6. Stephen E. Roberts (appointed 20 August 1900): Guided operations at the turn of the century.[nara-m841-desoto][maxwell-1976]
  7. Gabriel Skipper (appointed 22 August 1903): Pioneer cattleman and merchant of the prominent Skipper family, serving during the post-freeze resettlement period.[nara-m841-desoto][maxwell-1976][dsc-1905-10-13]
  8. Marion W. Sargent (appointed 14 November 1904): By late 1905, postal operations occupied a dedicated post office building on East Main Street, in which A. W. Sargent operated a notions and fancy goods counter.[nara-m841-desoto][dsc-1905-11-10]
  9. May J. Dilley (appointed 13 August 1909): Managed the office prior to the construction of the permanent Spinks Building.[nara-m841-desoto][maxwell-1976]

The Spinks Building and Modern Facilities (1910–1962)

On 31 October 1910, Fannie P. Reeves (later Mrs. Glen Spinks) was appointed postmaster, beginning a seventeen-year administration.[nara-m841-desoto][maxwell-1976] On 1 January 1917 Avon Park became a presidential office, one whose postmaster was nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and Reeves was reappointed on those terms on 31 January 1918 and again on 11 September 1922; beside that last entry the register notes the office “changed into Highlands County.”[nara-m841-desoto] The post office was housed in the historic two-story frame Spinks Building on East Main Street, which served as the community’s primary civic and commercial distribution point through the arrival of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (1912) and the Florida land boom.[maxwell-1976]

The Highlands County register carries the succession from there:[nara-m841-highlands][maxwell-1976]

  • Leslie D. Roberts, acting postmaster from 16 March 1927.
  • Ruth Skipper, acting postmaster from 10 April 1928.
  • Mrs. Ola L. Head, confirmed 14 February 1931, who resigned on 31 December 1935.
  • Douglass G. (“Doc”) Perry, acting postmaster from 3 January 1936, who took charge on 16 January 1936, was nominated on 20 January, confirmed on 30 January and commissioned on 27 February 1936, was renominated and confirmed in March 1940, and retired on 31 July 1960 after twenty-four years spanning World War II and the postwar population surge.[nara-m841-highlands][maxwell-1976] The 1940 census found him at forty-four in his own house in Avon Park, “postmaster, post office,” a government employee who had worked fifty-two weeks of 1939 for $2,450.[census-1940-perry]
  • Edward F. Singleton, acting postmaster from 31 July 1960, whose term ended on 14 April 1961.
  • Robert D. Young, acting postmaster from 14 April 1961, when the office was recorded as first class; nominated on 15 June 1962, confirmed on 12 July and commissioned on 25 July, he took charge under his commission on 3 August 1962.[nara-m841-highlands]

On 25 March 1925 postmaster Fannie P. Reeves reported the office’s position for the Department’s maps as the southeast quarter of section 22, with the Peace River twenty miles west, Sebring ten miles south, Frostproof twelve miles north, Wauchula twenty miles west, and the new Seaboard Air Line track 1,818 feet to the east.[nara-m1126-roll92] In January 1942 Perry reported the office’s position again: 18 East Main Street, in the southeast quarter of section 22, ten feet south of the state highway, 1,310 feet by road east of the Atlantic Coast Line station, with Lake Lotela a mile and a half to the southeast and the Kissimmee River twenty-two miles east.[nara-m1126-roll92] A year later, on 18 January 1943, he answered the Department’s request for the location of the post office at the Bombing Range branch, reporting from the engineers’ office that it stood in section 30, Township 32 South, Range 30 East, in Polk County, off the Highlands County map.[nara-m1126-roll92]

The former Spinks post office building was subsequently acquired by the City of Avon Park for use by the Chamber of Commerce.[maxwell-1976]

References

  • nara-m1126-roll92 — United States Post Office Department, Records of the Post Office Department (Record Group 28), National Archives. Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950, Florida: Highlands–Jackson (Microfilm Publication M1126, roll 92), Avon Park file: location paper and diagram of May 1888, change-of-site statement of 16 June 1894, report of 25 March 1925, report of 12 January 1942, and letter of 18 January 1943. 18 January 1943. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/68261691
  • nara-m841-desoto — United States Post Office Department, Records of the Post Office Department (Record Group 28), National Archives. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–1971, Postmaster Appointments for DeSoto County, Florida (Microfilm Publication M841), pages 196 and 54–55, Avon Park entries 1888–1922. 11 September 1922. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/78731856
  • nara-m841-highlands — United States Post Office Department, Records of the Post Office Department (Record Group 28), National Archives. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–1971, Postmaster Appointments for Highlands County, Florida (Microfilm Publication M841), pages 424 and Avon Park sheet, entries 1927–1962. 3 August 1962. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/78732017
  • census-1940-perry — United States Bureau of the Census. 1940 Census Population Schedules, Florida, Highlands County, Avon Park, Enumeration District 28-3B, sheet 7B, lines 69–70 (image m-t0627-00589-00752). 23 April 1940. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/126246125
  • maxwell-1976 — Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell. The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida. 1976. the-first-hundred-years-of-avon-park_leoma-bradshaw-maxwell_1976.md
  • gaz-1895 — Belden Publishing Company. Florida Railroad Gazetteer and State Business Directory, 1895. 1895. https://archive.org/details/floridarailroadg1895beld
  • dsc-1905-10-13 — The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla. The De Soto County News, 13 October 1905: Avon Park notes. 13 October 1905. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn95026908/1905-10-13/ed-1/?sp=7
  • dsc-1905-11-10 — The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla. The De Soto County News, 10 November 1905: Avon Park notes. 10 November 1905. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn95026908/1905-11-10/ed-1/?sp=5

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 Post Office Department, Records of the Post Office Department (Record Group 28), National Archives, Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950, Florida: Highlands–Jackson (Microfilm Publication M1126, roll 92), Avon Park file: location paper and diagram of May 1888, change-of-site statement of 16 June 1894, report of 25 March 1925, report of 12 January 1942, and letter of 18 January 1943 (1943) · official
  2. United States Post Office Department, Records of the Post Office Department (Record Group 28), National Archives, Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–1971, Postmaster Appointments for DeSoto County, Florida (Microfilm Publication M841), pages 196 and 54–55, Avon Park entries 1888–1922 (1922) · official
  3. United States Post Office Department, Records of the Post Office Department (Record Group 28), National Archives, Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–1971, Postmaster Appointments for Highlands County, Florida (Microfilm Publication M841), pages 424 and Avon Park sheet, entries 1927–1962 (1962) · official
  4. United States Bureau of the Census, 1940 Census Population Schedules, Florida, Highlands County, Avon Park, Enumeration District 28-3B, sheet 7B, lines 69–70 (image m-t0627-00589-00752) (1940) · official
  5. Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida (references/the-first-hundred-years-of-avon-park_leoma-bradshaw-maxwell_1976.md) (1976) · book
  6. Belden Publishing Company, Florida Railroad Gazetteer and State Business Directory, 1895 (1895) · book
  7. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 13 October 1905: Avon Park notes (1905) · newspaper
  8. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 10 November 1905: Avon Park notes (1905) · newspaper

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.