Todd’s canning factory was built, and was working by July 1896

In May 1896 the Florida Development Company donated ten acres at Avon Park to Henry H. Todd for a canning factory. Whether anything was ever built on the land had been an open question. It was.

The Florida Agriculturist of 29 July 1896 reports it in one sentence:

H. B. Todd, of Avon Park, has erected a canning factory and is now ready for guavas.[fa-1896-07-29]

Three months from the grant of land to a working factory.

Why it matters

It is the first manufacturing at Avon Park after the freeze, and the first attempt anywhere in the town’s history to add value to fruit rather than ship it raw. Twenty miles from a railway, with the citrus dead and the pineapples cut back, canning was the sensible answer: guavas grow readily on the ridge, they will not travel, and canned they will keep.

It shows the Florida Development Company still trying. The company was six months from the sheriff’s sale that ended it in January 1897, and it was still giving land away to get an industry started.

It connects to the town’s later canning. The Avon Park Idea was campaigning for canneries in the same months — “the urgent appeals that have been made for the establishment of canneries should begin to take effect” — and a cassava starch and flour factory was announced for the spring of 1898. Avon Park’s twentieth-century orange and grapefruit juice canning plant has a nineteenth-century ancestor.

Todd himself

The 1895 state business directory lists “Todd H B, tinsmith” among the town’s thirty-four businesses.[gaz-1895] The initials in the directory and in this report agree with each other and disagree with the “Henry H. Todd” of the company’s May 1896 deed. On the balance of evidence these are one man — a tinsmith is exactly the trade that would build and run a cannery, since the cans were made on the premises — but the middle initial needs settling against the deed itself.

References

• fa-1896-07-29 — The Florida Agriculturist (DeLand, Fla.). The Florida Agriculturist, 29 July 1896, page 4: H. B. Todd has erected a canning factory at Avon Park. 29 July 1896. florida-agriculturist.md
• gaz-1895 — Belden Publishing Company. Florida Railroad Gazetteer and State Business Directory, 1895, s.v. Avon Park. 1895. florida-business-directories.md

Related

• Florida Development Company
• Report: Avon Park in The Florida Agriculturist, 1890-1910
• Report: citrus, crates and cattle
• Report: the founding of Avon Park and its first decade

Where this comes from

Evidence

single-source — One source. Treat as reported, not established.

Review

unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.

Rights

society

Sources

1. The Florida Agriculturist (DeLand, Fla.), The Florida Agriculturist, 29 July 1896, page 4: H. B. Todd has erected a canning factory at Avon Park (1896)
2. Belden Publishing Company, Florida Railroad Gazetteer and State Business Directory, 1895, s.v. Avon Park (1895)

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