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Pabor Lake Pineapple Real Estate Records and Early Settlers
Findings
An attempt to systematically harvest the “Real Estate Record” columns from the Pabor Lake Pineapple to compile a comprehensive list of early purchasers and residents failed due to technical limitations. The University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC) archival scans suffer from extreme OCR degradation—likely caused by the newspaper’s original faded pink paper stock—which renders the machine-read text largely illegible. The raw OCR data yields only fragmented, disconnected phrases such as “former resident,” “resident of Utah,” and “non-residents,” rather than usable names or lot numbers.[ufdc-pineapple]
Despite the inability to extract a systematic census from the machine text, secondary historiography analyzing the Pineapple establishes the colony’s baseline settlement numbers and founder William E. Pabor’s land sales philosophy.
Pabor adamantly opposed speculative land buying in favor of establishing a genuine community. In the November 1892 issue of the Pineapple, he declared:
“There will be no effort to ‘boom’ the place. One resident is worth twenty non-resident purchasers. One ten-acre tract cleared and set to fruit is of more account than twenty sold to Northern people who may desire them for speculative purposes.”[byrne-2016]
Despite this policy, actual settlement was slow. By January 1893, only 14 land contracts had been secured. Many early buyers either viewed the land strictly as an investment, hired the colony company to farm it for them, or delayed their relocation. The earliest documented permanent residents were Pabor’s own family; his wife Emma and daughter Pansy joined him and his son Edgar in November 1892, with his other sons arriving a few months later.[byrne-2016]
References
- ufdc-pineapple — W. E. Pabor and E. A. Pabor. Pabor Lake Pineapple, October 1892 to September 1897. 15 September 1897. University of Florida Digital Collections, Florida Digital Newspaper Library. pabor-lake-pineapple.md
- byrne-2016 — Jason Byrne. The Lost Colony of Pabor Lake. 22 March 2016 (modified 3 October 2024). Florida History Blog. https://floridahistoryblog.com/the-lost-colony-of-pabor-lake/
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