The Pabor Lake Post Office (1893–1900)

Summary

William E. Pabor’s colony four miles north of Avon Park had its own post office for seven years. The Post Office Department’s location paper, filled in by Pabor himself on 7 February 1893 and certified by Dorr D. Kinney, the Avon Park postmaster, describes a “village just started” of twenty-two inhabitants on the mail road from Fort Meade to Avon Park.[nara-m1126-roll92] The Department’s register of appointments records Pabor’s appointment as postmaster on 2 March 1893, Bellona Havens’s on 4 April 1898, and the office’s discontinuance, “to take effect at once,” on 30 July 1900, with its papers sent to Avon Park.[nara-m841-desoto] A modern postal-history compilation gives the office’s dates as 1893 to 1900, which the register confirms.[forte-postal]

The application of February 1893

William E. Pabor’s location paper for the Pabor Lake post office, February 1893. National Archives, Records of the Post Office Department, RG 28, Reports of Site Locations, M1126 roll 92, NAID 68261691. Public domain.[nara-m1126-roll92]

On 1 February 1893 the Fourth Assistant Postmaster General sent the location paper to “Wm. E. Pabor, care of the Postmaster of Avon Park.” Pabor’s answers place the proposed office in the north half of section 4, Township 33 South, Range 28 East, “part in Polk and part in De Soto,” on or very nearly on route 23299 from Fort Meade to Avon Park, over which the mail was already carried six times a week; if the site lay off the route, he wrote, “there cannot be much more than a mile difference.” The nearest office was Avon Park, four miles to the southeast; Midland lay about twelve miles to the northwest and Bowling Green eighteen miles west. There was no river within eighteen miles; the nearest creek was Arbuckle, about eight miles east; the nearest railroad “the Florida Southern in the Tampa and Key West system.” To the question how many people lived in the village he answered “village just started; twenty two,” and to the population the office would serve, “possibly one hundred in a radius west, north and east.” He signed on 7 February 1893, and Dorr D. Kinney, postmaster at Avon Park, certified the statement.[nara-m1126-roll92]

Pabor’s diagram of the site, received in Washington on 13 February 1893. National Archives, Records of the Post Office Department, RG 28, Reports of Site Locations, M1126 roll 92, NAID 68261691. Public domain.[nara-m1126-roll92]

His diagram, headed “De Soto and Polk” counties, draws the lake in section 4 with the proposed office beside it, the road coming down from Fort Meade and Midland along the west side of the lake, and Avon Park in section 22 at the bottom of the sheet.[nara-m1126-roll92] The diagram reached the Department on 13 February and the location paper on 23 February 1893.[nara-m1126-roll92]

Postmasters and closure

The register of appointments for De Soto County records the office in three entries: “Pabor Lake, Wm. E. Pabor, 2 Mch. ’93; Bellona Havens, 4 Apl. ’98”; and, in the margin, “Dis. To take effect at once. Ps. to Avon Park, 30 July 1900.”[nara-m841-desoto] Pabor’s own newspaper, the Pabor Lake Pineapple, entered the mails as second-class matter at the office on 25 July 1893.[pineapple] Who Bellona Havens was, and why the office closed in the summer of 1900, the register does not say.

The same pages record a second short-lived office in the neighborhood. An office called Peebranch was established with Dennis Jacobs appointed on 2 August 1901; he declined, and Dorr D. Kinney of Avon Park was appointed in his place on 24 October 1901, followed by Walter Hart on 17 January 1903. It was discontinued in the spring of 1906, “mail to Avon Park.”[nara-m841-desoto] Its site has not been identified. Neither Pabor Lake nor Peebranch has a site location file on the DeSoto County microfilm roll of the Post Office Department’s location reports; the Pabor Lake file survives instead on the Highlands County roll, though Highlands was not formed until 1921. No location paper for Peebranch has been found on either roll.[nara-m1126-roll92]

Related

• Pabor Lake Colony
• William E. Pabor
• Dorr D. Kinney
• Postal Service and Postmasters of Avon Park (1888–1962)

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), Pabor Lake file: location paper of 1–7 February 1893 and diagram received 13 February 1893. 23 February 1893. 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 56–59, Pabor Lake and Peebranch entries. 14 April 1906. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/78731856
• pineapple — W. E. Pabor and E. A. Pabor. Pabor Lake Pineapple, October 1892 to September 1897. 1 September 1897. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00020306
• forte-postal — Jim Forte Postal History. Post Offices by county, Florida. 31 August 2026. https://www.postalhistory.com/postoffices.asp

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), Pabor Lake file: location paper of 1–7 February 1893 and diagram received 13 February 1893 (1893) · 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 56–59, Pabor Lake and Peebranch entries (1906) · official
3. W. E. Pabor and E. A. Pabor, Pabor Lake Pineapple, October 1892 to September 1897 (1897) · newspaper
4. Jim Forte Postal History, Post Offices by county, Florida (2026) · secondary

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