The women at work in Avon Park, 1891–1900
Summary
The accounts Avon Park has written of its own founding are almost entirely accounts of men. The enumerator who walked the town’s precinct on 25 June 1900 was not writing an account of anything, and his columns give a different picture: among 232 people, eight women with an occupation entered against their own names, and three widows keeping households of their own.
What the census recorded
Evidence: single-source. The figures below come from a volunteer transcription of the schedule, not from the schedule itself; the transcriber’s own note calls it an interpretation, and several given names carry a question mark.[usgenweb-1900-avon-park]
| Name | Born | Occupation |
|---|---|---|
| Kathleen Cheape | July 1848, England | Horticulturist; widow, head of household |
| Isabell E. Bennett | December 1858 | Gardener; widow, head of household, five children |
| Janie Colwell | September 1839, Maine | Teacher; widow, head of household, boarding another teacher |
| Sarah E. Bangs | November 1856, Wisconsin | Teacher |
| Mrs. S. Sessions | August 1842, West Virginia | Teacher |
| Mary H. West | December 1875, England | Music teacher |
| Mary E. Hessler | November 1865, New Jersey | Milliner |
| Blanche Krauss | August 1840, Germany | Midwife |
Four of the eight taught. Two of the three household heads worked the land in their own right, one of them entered as a horticulturist — the same word the schedule uses for the men who grew citrus. The town’s midwife was a German-born woman of fifty-nine who had been married thirty-five years.
The schoolteachers of the 1890s
Three more women taught the town’s school in the decade before that census, and the town history names them: Miss Annie M. Hampton, who had eleven pupils in the autumn of 1891; Mrs. J. E. Thwaites, teaching in 1894 as the roll reached fifty-eight; and Miss Anna M. Lincoln, who taught with her brother Arthur through the autumn and winter of 1895–96, when there were sixty.[maxwell-1976]
How they are named
Most of the women of Avon Park’s first fifteen years reach the record only as a husband’s initials. The census is the exception, and that is why it carries most of what is known: it was the one document of the period that asked every adult in the town, separately, what she did.
Related
- Mary Emma (Miller) Crosby
- William and Mary King
- Abbie R. Dodge
- The Bunbury House on Lake Pythias
- Schools of Avon Park
References
- usgenweb-1900-avon-park — USGenWeb Archives. 1900 United States federal census, Avon Park, Precinct 14, DeSoto County, Florida, enumerated 25 June 1900 by Henry C. Evarts; transcription by Janine Rickner and Phyllis Borden for the USGenWeb Archives. 4 September 2025. https://web.archive.org/web/20250904061514if_/http://files.usgwarchives.net/fl/desoto/census/1900ap.txt
- maxwell-1976 — Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell. The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida: the town’s schoolteachers of the 1890s. 1976. the-first-hundred-years-of-avon-park_leoma-bradshaw-maxwell_1976.md
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
- USGenWeb Archives, 1900 United States federal census, Avon Park, Precinct 14, DeSoto County, Florida, enumerated 25 June 1900 by Henry C. Evarts; transcription by Janine Rickner and Phyllis Borden for the USGenWeb Archives (2025) · secondary
- Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida: the town's schoolteachers of the 1890s (references/the-first-hundred-years-of-avon-park_leoma-bradshaw-maxwell_1976.md) (1976) · book
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