The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Oliver Marvin Crosby

His middle name was Marvin, not Martin. The form “Oliver Martin Crosby” is used by Wikipedia and by tourism and local pages, and traces back to an uncited biographical sketch that propagated through regional web directories. His own 1887 book, his Find a Grave memorial, county marriage records, and library catalog records all give Marvin[crosby-1887-book][findagrave-crosby][fl-marriage-crosby-1925].

Life
Born 12 January 1852, Danbury, Fairfield County, Connecticut
Parents Major Judah Paddock Crosby (1814–1871) and Catherine Stevens Crosby (1815–1898)[findagrave-judah-crosby]
Married (1) Mary Emma Miller, 30 December 1874, Danbury (1853–1938); (2) Mrs. Emma Louise (Perry) Peck, 24 September 1925, St. Petersburg, Florida (1851–1931)
Children Sara Marvin Crosby, later Findlay (1876–1935); Catherine Ambler “Katie” Crosby (1877–1882)
Died 8 March 1932, Pinellas County Home, Largo, Florida, aged 80
Buried Bougainvillea Cemetery, Avon Park — a cemetery he had laid out himself

His middle name derived from his maternal ancestry in Fairfield County, Connecticut. His maternal grandparents were James Stevens Jr. (1788–1860) and Catharine Marvin Stevens (1788–1873)[findagrave-catherine-crosby]. Two maternal uncles, Oliver Stevens (1818–1819) and Oliver M. Stevens (1820–1837), died young; his parents named him after this deceased uncle and the Marvin family line[findagrave-catherine-crosby]. He passed the name to his eldest daughter, Sara Marvin Crosby[findagrave-mary-emma].

Title page of Common Sense about Florida, 1888

O. M. Crosby, Common Sense about Florida (New York: South Publishing Co., 1888), title page. Florida State Library copy, via Internet Archive. Public domain.[crosby-1888-pamphlet]

The Danbury Hatting Network and Hotel Verona

Crosby grew up in Danbury when it was known as the hat-making capital of America. His father, Judah P. Crosby, served as a Major in the Fifth Regiment of the Connecticut Militia and was a partner in wool hat manufacturing firms[bailey-danbury-1896]. Major Crosby opened an office in the Crosby Block on Main Street in Danbury in 1848, operating Wildman & Crosby from 1854 to 1856 and Crosby, Hoyt & Co. from 1856 into the Civil War[bailey-danbury-1896][francis-hatting-1860].

These Danbury manufacturing connections proved decisive when Crosby undertook the construction of Avon Park’s Hotel Verona in 1888–1889. Facing a collapse in promotional revenues during the 1888 yellow fever quarantines, Crosby secured a $45,000 subscription pledge ($15,000 each) from Beckerle, Schuldice & Fay, a Danbury fur hat manufacturing firm led by William Beckerle, James H. Shuldice, and Thomas F. Fay[bailey-danbury-1896][tampa-tribune-1923-03-11]. Although the hatters withdrew after paying in $17,000, their capital enabled Crosby to finish the thirty-five-room hotel by winter 1889[tampa-tribune-1923-03-11].

Pre-Florida Pomology: The Lake Kenosia Peach Orchard (1882)

Before coming south, Crosby was an active commercial fruit grower in Connecticut. In August 1882 the New York World profiled his orchard, situated two and a half miles west of Danbury village near Lake Kenosia[democratic-messenger-1882-08-19].

Crosby had planted 1,500 peach trees ten feet apart on level loam soil, making it one of the largest peach orchards in Connecticut[democratic-messenger-1882-08-19]. He served as the official special reporter for Fairfield County of the Agricultural Department (USDA), tracking local crop yields and winter hardiness[democratic-messenger-1882-08-19]. In that 1882 interview, Crosby emphasized that his ideal fruit-growing location would always be an elevated hilltop rather than a valley, citing the protection hilltops offered against cold air drainage and frost[democratic-messenger-1882-08-19]. That insight directly shaped his later choice of the Lake Wales Ridge in Florida.

How he came to found the town

By his own account, given to the Tampa Tribune in 1923, he first came to Florida in 1883, asked Hamilton Disston’s land agent Captain Adams for “the prettiest township,” was directed to Township 33, Range 28, and named Lake Tulane while he was there[tampa-tribune-1923-03-11].

The decision to settle this far south had a specific cause, and he stated it himself in print in 1888: “The great freeze of January, 1886, in the upper half of the State, taught us the advisability of getting FARTHER SOUTH than we would have done once.”[crosby-1888-pamphlet] Avon Park exists where it does because of a freeze.

The same pamphlet dates the settlement precisely. It says the place “was begun eighteen months ago,” which puts the founding in the first half of 1886, and it prints resident testimonials datelined “Avon Park, Manatee Co., Fla.” on 17 March and 27 September 1886, one of which recalls “I settled in Avon Park last February with my young wife.”[crosby-1888-pamphlet] This is the most precise contemporaneous dating of the founding yet found, and it agrees with the National Register nomination’s 1886[nrhp-avon-park-district].

He credited William King, whom he said he met on a trip from England, with “the honor of being the first real settler here.”[tampa-tribune-1923-03-11]

Before Avon Park: Jacksonville, The South, and the Danbury colony

Crosby arrived on the Lake Wales Ridge already in the business of selling Florida to northerners. The Florida State Gazetteer and Business Directory for 1886-87 lists him twice. In the Jacksonville section he is “CROSBY OLIVER M. PROF., horticultural editor and man. Florida dept. of The South” — a New York journal published from 85 Warren Street. And under Danbury, Marion County, a settlement of about fifty people seven miles from Ocala, the compiler writes that this “is not a post office, but a colony of settlers, mostly from Danbury, Conn.,” and that “Prof. O. M. Crosby, whose office is at Jacksonville… is also manager of this colony.” Land there sold at $10 an acre, and buyers were limited to ten-acre tracts[gaz-1886].

Every element of Avon Park was already present: a colony of people from one northern town, small tracts sold under a limit, fruit and vegetables as the promised living, a resident manager, and a journal in New York to advertise it.

It also gave him a courtesy title. He was styled “Prof.” — the nineteenth-century trade-press styling for an agricultural specialist — and later “Hon.” in the regional press as town founder and bank president. Neither title represented an academic faculty chair or elective political office.

The banker

The 1895 state directory’s table of Florida banks records the Bank of Avon Park, established 1894, with O. M. Crosby as president and C. C. Chollar as cashier, $20,000 of capital and $5,000 of deposits[gaz-1895]. Crosby founded a bank in his own town the year before the freeze destroyed him.

The promoter

Crosby was an inventive promoter. He operated a Bureau of Florida Information at 99 Franklin Street, New York — the northern headquarters of the Florida Development Company[pineapple][tampa-tribune-1923-03-11]. He edited and published his own promotional newspaper, the Florida Homeseeker, which he moved to Avon Park from Fort Meade and which reached a reported circulation of ten thousand[pineapple][tampa-tribune-1923-03-11]. He later established a second local paper, the Avon Park Idea, edited by Dr. Blue. He published at least two guidebooks of his own: Florida Facts, Both Bright and Blue (1887) and Common Sense About Florida (1888)[crosby-1887-book][crosby-1888-pamphlet]. In his 1887 book, which predated his focus on the Lake Wales Ridge, he included approximately fifty full-page plates depicting Florida scenes, but none depicted places within what became Highlands County; the closest geographic representations were four plates depicting Polk County, including Bartow, Fort Meade, a Polk County lake, and a Polk County grove after the freeze[crosby-1887-book]. In 1888 his office processed thirty to fifty letters of inquiry daily[crosby-1888-pamphlet]. He sold town and grove lots on installment plans of one dollar down and one dollar per month[tampa-tribune-1923-03-11].

Raising money in England, 1891

In September 1891, two months before the Florida Development Company was incorporated with a London office among its four, the Savannah paper reported Crosby abroad: “O. M. Crosby, the well known boomer of Avon Park, is now in London, and writes to a friend in Jacksonville that he has just sold 2,500 acres of land known as Welshton, a hotel and storehouse to an English company for $210,000 cash.”[savannah-1891-09-29] Welshton was his earlier colony in Marion County; the sale provided liquidity to reinvest on the Ridge.

In spring 1891 Danbury real-estate broker William J. Nichols of Bradley, Nichols & Sons returned from Florida and told the local press that Crosby, “formerly of Danbury, who, about five years ago, bought an entire township of about 20,000 acres, in the heart of Florida and has since been developing it.”[newtown-bee-1891-03-06]

The fall

The Florida Development Company, incorporated in November 1891 with nominal capital of $250,000, suffered catastrophic losses in the back-to-back freezes of December 1894 and February 1895[fdc-newspapers]. Citrus groves were killed to the ground, homeseekers halted payments on installment contracts, and depositors ran on the Bank of Avon Park[tampa-tribune-1923-03-11]. Crosby absorbed the bank’s liabilities personally, leaving him with $96,000 in uncollectible customer paper against $26,000 in immediate debt[tampa-tribune-1923-03-11].

Creditors sued in October 1895. In January 1897 the company’s real estate, including unsold portions of the Avon Park townsite, was auctioned at a sheriff’s sale in Arcadia to judgment-creditor Abbie R. Dodge of Jacksonville[fdc-newspapers]. In February 1897 its movable chattels—printing presses, sawmill machinery, and nursery stock—were sold under execution in Avon Park[pineapple]. Crosby remained through the spring, serving as a DeSoto County delegate on the Committee on Tropical Fruits at the Florida State Horticultural Society’s May 1897 meeting in Orlando, before leaving the state that summer “under the hammer” with only ten dollars in his pocket[fshs-1897][tampa-tribune-1923-03-11].

His wife remained behind. Mary Emma Miller Crosby stayed in Avon Park for roughly twenty months in 1897 and 1898, serving as her husband’s representative to examine unrecorded installment contracts and work alongside purchaser Abbie R. Dodge and county officials to clear warranty deed titles for early settlers[tampa-tribune-1923-03-11][tampa-tribune-1923-03-15].

Later career and remarriage (1897–1932)

Upon returning North in 1897, Crosby entered the life insurance industry in New York, writing for an insurance trade publication[tampa-tribune-1923-03-11]. A Pittsburgh firm subsequently engaged him to teach sales technique, and he later taught psychology in the Pittsburgh public school system[tampa-tribune-1923-03-11].

While living in the borough of Ben Avon near Pittsburgh with his daughter Sarah Crosby Findlay in 1919, Crosby authored his extensive serialized memoir, “Avon Park’s History: 1885 to 1896,” published in installments by editor George W. Adams in The Highlands Pilot[maxwell-1976]. Preserved in the Avon Park Historical Society archives through copies made by Dr. Dan Davis and Mary Garrett, this account documented his May 1885 expedition with the Disston company guide, his January 1886 contract for 20,000 acres at $50,000, his $25,000 advertising campaign, and his first-person recollection of the devastating 1894–1895 freezes[maxwell-1976].

In the early 1920s he returned to Florida as a sales representative for the Scenic Highlands Development Company, visiting Avon Park in March 1923 for a public homecoming celebration where he recounted the town’s origins and expressed his hope to spend his final years in the area and be buried in Bougainvillea Cemetery[tampa-tribune-1923-03-11].

On 24 September 1925, in St. Petersburg, Crosby remarried. His second wife was Mrs. Emma Louise (Perry) Peck (1851–1931), widow of Hartford printing magnate Rial Strickland Peck, with Congregational pastor Rev. Lyman Mevis officiating[fl-marriage-crosby-1925][hartford-courant-1931-02-06]. Emma Louise Crosby died in St. Petersburg on 4 February 1931 and was buried in Hartford, Connecticut[hartford-courant-1931-02-06][findagrave-emma-louise].

Following his second wife’s death, Crosby’s health failed. He was admitted to the Pinellas County Home in Largo, where he resided for several months before passing away on 8 March 1932, aged 80[tampa-tribune-1932-03-09]. At the request of his daughter Sara, his body was sent to Avon Park, lay in state at Union Congregational Church on 12 March, and was buried in Bougainvillea Cemetery[tampa-tribune-1932-03-10][tampa-tribune-1932-03-12].

His first wife, Mary Emma Miller Crosby, died six years later on 15 June 1938 at Bellevue, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and is buried in Mount Royal Cemetery in Glenshaw, Pennsylvania[findagrave-mary-emma].

The “Ben Avon” wire obituary error

In national wire coverage following his death, the Associated Press stated that “Avon Park was named after his home town, Ben Avon, Pa.”[tampa-tribune-1932-03-09] This was an error of geographical conflation: Ben Avon was an Allegheny County borough where his daughter lived and where Crosby lived during the 1910s and 1920s while working in Pittsburgh, decades after the founding of Avon Park in 1886[tampa-tribune-1932-03-10]. Crosby was born in Danbury, Connecticut, and never resided in Pennsylvania until after the collapse of the Florida Development Company.

References

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. Find a Grave contributors, Mary Emma Miller Crosby (1853–1938), Mount Royal Cemetery, Glenshaw, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Find a Grave memorial 140375422 (2026) · secondary
  2. Find a Grave contributors, Judah Paddock Crosby (1814–1871), Kenosia Cemetery, Danbury, Connecticut, Find a Grave memorial 7994041 (2026) · secondary
  3. Find a Grave contributors, Catherine Stevens Crosby (1815–1898), Kenosia Cemetery, Danbury, Connecticut, Find a Grave memorial 7994045 (2026) · secondary
  4. Find a Grave contributors, Emma Louise Perry Crosby (1851–1931), Spring Grove Cemetery, Hartford, Connecticut, Find a Grave memorial 140376264 (2026) · secondary
  5. The Morning News (Savannah, Ga.), The Morning News, Savannah, Georgia, 29 September 1891, page 6: O. M. Crosby in London, and the sale of Welshton (1891) · newspaper
  6. The Newtown Bee (Newtown, Conn.), The Newtown Bee, Newtown, Connecticut, 6 March 1891, page 6: William J. Nichols of Danbury on O. M. Crosby's Avon Park (1891) · newspaper
  7. The Democratic Messenger, The Democratic Messenger, Snow Hill, Maryland, 19 August 1882, page 4: Peach Culture in Connecticut (reprinting New York World) (1882) · newspaper
  8. The Hartford Courant, The Hartford Courant, 6 February 1931, page 4: Mrs. Emma L. Peck Crosby Obituary (1931) · newspaper
  9. James Montgomery Bailey and Susan Benedict Hill, History of Danbury, Conn., 1684-1896 (1896) · book
  10. William H. Francis, History of the Hatting Trade in Danbury, Conn. (1860) · book
  11. South Publishing Company, The Florida State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1886-87, s.v. Danbury (Marion County) and Jacksonville (1886) · book
  12. Belden Publishing Company, Florida Railroad Gazetteer and State Business Directory, 1895, s.v. Avon Park and table of Florida banks (1895) · book
  13. O. M. Crosby, Common Sense About Florida: Lake Forest and Avon Park (1888) · book
  14. Oliver Marvin Crosby, Florida Facts, Both Bright and Blue (1887) · book
  15. The Tampa Tribune, The Tampa Tribune, 11 March 1923, page 47: Oliver Crosby Relates Story of Rise of Avon Park and First Fall (1923) · newspaper
  16. Ernest B. Simmons / The Tampa Tribune, The Tampa Tribune, 15 March 1923, page 15: Crosby's Return to Avon Park Inspires Laudatory Comments (1923) · newspaper
  17. Associated Press / The Tampa Tribune, The Tampa Tribune, 9 March 1932, page 2: O. M. Crosby, Founder Of Avon Park, Dies in St. Petersburg (1932) · newspaper
  18. Associated Press / The Tampa Tribune, The Tampa Tribune, 10 March 1932, page 2: Avon Park Founder To Be Buried in Cemetery There (1932) · newspaper
  19. The Tampa Tribune, The Tampa Tribune, 12 March 1932, page 2: Avon Park Founder's Body Will Lie in State Today (1932) · newspaper
  20. State of Florida / Pinellas County, Florida Marriage Records, Pinellas County: Oliver M. Crosby and Emma Louise Peck, 24 September 1925 (1925) · official
  21. Find a Grave, Oliver Marvin Crosby memorial, Bougainvillea Cemetery, Avon Park, with transcribed Tampa Tribune articles 1923-1932 (2026) · secondary
  22. W. E. Pabor and E. A. Pabor, Pabor Lake Pineapple, October 1892 to September 1897 (1897) · newspaper
  23. Florida Bureau of Historic Preservation / National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Avon Park Historic District (ref. 90000486) (1990) · official
  24. contemporary Florida and Georgia newspapers, via digitised collections, Savannah Morning News and Weekly Floridian reports on the Florida Development Company, 1891-1897 (1897) · newspaper
  25. Florida State Horticultural Society, Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Florida State Horticultural Society (Orlando, 1897) (1897) · official
  26. Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida (the-first-hundred-years-of-avon-park_leoma-bradshaw-maxwell_1976.md) (1976) · book

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