The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Avon Park in the county paper, 1905-1916

The De Soto County News of Arcadia is digitized for four years only — 1905, 1906, 1915 and 1916. All 196 pages that mention Avon Park have now been read in full. The result is two snapshots of the town a decade apart, and the difference between them is the railway.

1905-06: a village with a post office and a school library

In these years the paper carried a whole Avon Park page most weeks, the “Department of The South Florida Sun,” conducted by O. R. Thacher. What it shows is a settlement of a few hundred people that had survived the freezes and was doing ordinary small things.

Dengue fever and the sick list. A transcribed sick list from the 6 October 1905 issue records illnesses in the town: Walter Graham was recovering from dengue fever before a trip to New York, and Mrs. E. E. Bryant was “very sick” in San Diego, California. T. B. King of Arcadia, a member of the State Board of Control, was also kept from a Gainesville meeting by an attack of dengue fever, showing the disease was widespread in the county that autumn.[dsc-1905-10-06]

The first named store. On 10 November 1905:

“Mr. A. W. Sargent has opened a little store in the post office building. He has a license for a general merchandise store but at present he keeps chiefly fancy goods and notions.”[dsc-1905-11-10]

Two things at once: a post office building existed at Avon Park in 1905, and a general merchandise license was being taken out in it.

A named postmaster of the resettlement era. The column of 13 October 1905 mentions in passing that “Gabriel Skipper, a former postmaster of Avon Park, was in the Park last Saturday night for a while.”[dsc-1905-10-13] Skipper had served as postmaster from August 1903 following Stephen E. Roberts — representing the prominent Skipper family that also gave the town an alderman in 1913, municipal bankers, and early merchants.

The town’s isolation, in one sentence. From the same column:

“Little Fanny Bennett, who was born at Avon Park ten years ago, had never seen a railroad or a train of cars until she was at Winter Haven two weeks ago.”[dsc-1905-10-13]

A child born in the town in about 1895 who reached the age of ten without seeing a train. The rails were still seven years away.

A school library. In the same issue as Sargent’s store: “The new school library of sixty volumes is here and every book is covered with a neat and durable heavy manila cover.”[dsc-1905-11-10] Three months later an entertainment raised money for it — Miss Burke took ten dollars above expenses as her share and “the Avon Park school library has something over four dollars as its share.”[dsc-1906-02-09] Sixty books, and a fundraiser that netted the library four dollars.

Two Sunday schools by Christmas 1905. A Christmas service was held at the Episcopal church at half past ten on the Monday, followed by Holy Communion, and “both Avon Park Sunday schools held their Christmas trees and Christmas exercises on Monday night … and both were well attended.”[dsc-1905-12-29] Two — the Episcopal and the Congregational, the town’s two churches of that date.

A business by name. Under “Business Locals,” February 1906: “STOVE WOOD FOR SALE — William Krause & Son are now ready to book orders for stove wood cut to any length desired.”[dsc-1906-02-09] The Krause name comes back below.

1915-16: a town with a council, a light plant and a high school

In 1915 the paper still ran an Avon Park page, now headed “Avon Park Department, S. F. Tucker, Editor,” with the town’s assessor as its correspondent, and beside it the traffic of an incorporated municipality — council minutes, tax notices, election notices, school board business — and advertisements from Avon Park merchants.[dsc-1915-02-04]

The column of 4 February 1915. Tucker’s column that week reported the death of William Krause (“Krouse”) on Saturday evening, 30 January, of apoplexy: born in Germany in 1840, he had come from New York to the Park in 1888, “engaged in many different enterprises here, and was well acquainted with the history of the Park, and had much to do with the making of it,” and left a wife, five sons and two daughters of his sixteen children; the Rev. Stock conducted the funeral and “the interment was in Avon Park cemetery.” The ladies of the Civic League had met in the council room on 29 January, “assisting in improvements on sidewalks and streets,” and met there every two weeks. The officers of the newly incorporated Lake Denton Development Company were Lester Windsor, J. H. Ross, R. I. Harris and H. W. Snell. Poinciana Lodge No. 227, F. & A. M., had held a regular communication with work in the first and second degrees, the ladies of the Eastern Star serving refreshments; the Ladies’ Guild of the Church of the Redeemer announced a bazaar at Gray’s Hall for 11 February, and the ladies of the Episcopal church had taken fifteen dollars at a dime social. Mrs. C. Lanier and Mrs. Sheffield gave a Japanese tea, the ladies in kimonos; Prof. E. M. Hyde spent Sunday at the Park; Contractor Parker bought a Ford car of Agent Skipper of Zolfo; Mr. and Mrs. Charles Madison and Mrs. Maynard rented N. Smith’s cottage on Lake Isis for the season; the infant son of Mr. and Mrs. G. L. Blum died on 28 January; and W. King’s government weather report for January gave a maximum of 78 degrees, a minimum of 40, a mean of 60.83 and 6.73 inches of rain. The editor closed with a homily on door-yards, naming Mr. Kelly’s, Mr. Seaverns’s, the Darts’ and Mr. Dougherty’s on Lake Doe as the ones to copy and praising Mr. Roberts’s new row of trees, and beneath the column William King advertised as real estate agent.[dsc-1915-02-04]

The town council at work. Tucker’s column of 7 January 1915 reported that “the town council met January 4th, and the following bills were ordered paid: J. Lancashire $2; Light Company, $61.50; H. B. Crosby $45; Albert Raulerson $4; Byron Burbage $1.50; Lee Crews $1.50; J. Thomas $5.50; L. M. Brazier $14.40; R. Cutter $2; S. F. Tinker $1.90; J. R. Bennett $2; J. H. Armstrong $2.”[dsc-1915-01-07] The same column had Poinciana Lodge’s officers installed by District Deputy Grand Master W. Scott and Grand Marshal J. G. Harbaugh before more than a hundred people, the Eastern Star ladies serving supper; Bishop Cameron Mann conducting the Episcopal service; the Rev. Buck’s revival at the Baptist church and the Rev. Stock’s Congregational service, at which two persons united with the church; and the guests of the Village Inn from Taunton, Jacksonville, Fort Meade, Toledo, Louisville and Orlando.[dsc-1915-01-07]

The column of 11 February 1915. The Guild’s annual pancake bake would be held on Shrove Tuesday at Fred Prior’s; at the annual meeting of the Avon Park Cemetery Association the officers elected were H. Seaverns, president, T. F. Tucker, secretary, F. B. West, treasurer, and Mrs. H. Seaverns and Mrs. E. D. Richardson, executive committee; C. Nichols and C. Smith shot a six-foot alligator in Lake Damon; “streets are being cleaned and foundations for a number of buildings are started,” Contractors Smith & Pabor “putting in the foundation for the Whidden block on Main street” and Contractor Parker having “the school building finished, the furniture will soon be in and the building occupied”; Henry Smith married Jessie Jacobs at Shady Grove church and Walter Winegard married Veda Drawdy; George Smith was making cane syrup; the ladies of the Episcopal church had taken $35 at an entertainment in Krauss hall; and “Langston & Etheridge are busy laying out the new town of DeSoto, five and a half miles south of Sebring.” “All lines of business here are sharing in the quiet times,” the editor admitted: “fruit sales are slow, labor in all lines unsteady, tourists not coming as expected. We may be slowing down, but are going ahead just the same.”[dsc-1915-02-11] At the regular meeting of 2 March 1915 “the report of the committees were received, bills ordered paid, and the council was held by miscellaneous business until 12 o’clock,” and the paper reminded “Citizens of Avon Park” that it was “the last month to pay your taxes.”[dsc-1915-03-04]

An H. B. Crosby was still in the town in 1915, twenty-nine years after the founding and eighteen after the sheriff’s sale; who he was is not known.

An electric light station with its own well. The council was paying a Light Company in January 1915, and in March the paper reports work at “the Avon Park electric light station … sinking [a] well 400 feet.”[dsc-1915-03-11] The town generated its own power and pumped its own water.

A high school, and who ran the polls in it. The election notice for 1915 gives the polling place for the Avon Park district as Avon Park High School, with S. F. Tucker, W. E. Dougherty and O. T. Kellogg as inspectors and G. F. Smith as clerk.[dsc-1915-02-18]

Three of those four names answer to the town’s 1913 charter: S. F. Tucker was the first assessor, and the charter’s aldermen include a W. H. Daugherty and a G. F. Kellogg — spelt “Dougherty” here, and with a different first initial for Kellogg, so the Kellogg identification is probable rather than certain. G. F. Smith, the clerk, is not in the charter. Much the same handful of men were still running the town two years on. And the existence of an Avon Park High School building by February 1915 is the earliest firm date known for the school.

The school district. In January 1915 the DeSoto County Board of Public Instruction received and accepted the resignation of a trustee of the Avon Park Special Tax School District; the board at that date was F. H. McClelland (chairman), S. R. Hogan and A. Ware, with Superintendent Hinckley.[dsc-1915-01-14]

Public health and a water supply. In March 1915 the town council “decided to request an officer of the state board of health to visit the Park for the purpose of inspecting and testing the water … and from the city water supply and wells and sanitary conditions,” and a Dr. Charles W. Bartlett of the Tampa health board was involved.[dsc-1915-03-18]

A road, at last. The same issue: “The county road force has cleared the track to the Park. A sixty-foot road to the town line and forty feet on to Zolfo is clear of trees and brush.”[dsc-1915-03-18]

The Board of Trade, on holiday. The column of 11 March 1915 also carries the earliest mention of an Avon Park Board of Trade found in the county paper, in a sardonic aside: one reason orders did not come was that “the Avon Park Board of Trade is taking a vacation.” The same column had the mayor holding court “pretty regularly for a week,” Apostolic meetings in a large tent with a camp meeting to begin on the 15th, a Mr. W. Speer of Bridgeport at the Hotel Verona arranging to build a home, and the citizens’ meeting of 6 March that nominated H. Dilley, W. O. Skipper and J. P. Canfield as school trustees and proposed a three-mill school tax.[dsc-1915-03-11] A week later the paper reported that “there was no election held in the Park for school trustees Saturday,” that the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union had met on 16 March, and that the Guild would give a silver tea at Mrs. H. Seaverns’s on 17 March for painting the Episcopal church.[dsc-1915-03-18]

A theater. In March 1915 “all the churches have a number of notices” and there was “a tent minstrel show three evenings at the Kraus theater, closing the week.”[dsc-1915-03-18] A theater at Avon Park twenty years before Heim’s Park Theater, and presumably the same Krause family that sold stove wood in 1906. The entertainment it hosted was a minstrel show — the standard racial entertainment of the segregated South, and it belongs in the record as plainly as anything else.

1916: the “Avon Park” columns

Evidence: single-source.

By the spring of 1916 the boxed department had gone and Avon Park’s news ran as a plain “AVON PARK” column among the paper’s country correspondence. Three full correspondence columns survive from the spring of 1916.

The column of 23 March 1916 opened with the weather: “Forest fires happen every day now. Some damage has been done to orchards, bridges and fences. Lakes have been lowered in this section by the dry weather nearly a foot.” Whidden & Christopher were building a 25-foot power boat with a 50-horsepower engine, “They intend to run it on Lake Okeechobee,” detailed in Whidden & Christopher’s Lake Okeechobee Power Boat; the Rev. York was “organizing a Methodist church here and will soon have regular services every Sunday”; the Village Inn had guests from Highland Park, Illinois, Philadelphia and Atlanta; a Boraff “surprised everyone by being married Saturday at Arcadia,” the bride a Mrs. Nancy White of Ohio; W. King bought two lots on Lake Lotella from Harry Leigh of New Haven, Connecticut; town taxes became delinquent after 1 April; Mrs. C. A. Stark and Jasper Hu[nt] of Sycamore, Illinois, left the Park in Mrs. Stark’s automobile; Mr. and Mrs. G. W. Ricker arrived from Rochester, New York; and William Dart bought a pair of mules “for his orchard and development work.”[dsc-1916-03-23]

The column of 6 April 1916 chronicled domestic arrivals and municipal works: Joseph Harper and wife, of Worcester, Massachusetts, spent the week visiting their cousin, Judge A. W. Sargent, and having inspected local groves returned north on Monday; Harry Leigh of New Haven, Connecticut, arrived to assist in moving a house from Lakeview Avenue to Main Street; A. Shockley shipped his steam sawmill to Lake Wales under a timber contract; all were “very grateful for the almost shower Sunday evening”; Contractor Brazier was grading the school yard and preparing to build an iron fence around the school grounds; Dr. Landers’ house was nearly completed; Poinciana Lodge No. 227, F. & A. M., met on Tuesday evening; Judge A. W. Sargent held court on Monday; and the town council met in regular session Monday evening, accepting the monthly reports of town officers.[dsc-1916-04-06]

The column of 20 April 1916 recorded Mrs. N. Smith, Mrs. J. P. Canfield and Mrs. D. F. Canfield leaving for the state chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star at Jacksonville, W. F. Allerton for Honduras, Mrs. J. C. Burleigh and son for St. Louis and G. Langford for Tampa; the W.C.T.U. meeting at Mrs. Clark’s; the Rev. G. H. York’s tent meetings beginning Sunday 23 April with the evangelist E. D. Hobson; a visit from “a number of our county officials”; Leigh Chapter No. 85, Order of the Eastern Star, meeting in the Masonic hall on the Friday evening; the council’s extension of the time for collecting taxes to 1 May (“No escape from death or taxes”); Professor Gross preparing the school’s closing exercises, Wednesday to Friday; and the rumor of “a railroad line coming through town from Fort Meade, with the extension of the Sebring branch, and a hard road building to Zolfo.” William King “may not be preparing for war, but he is riding one of the finest saddle horses in town, and has another that has seen service, in reserve”; Hon. Pete Ruhl, “who is responsible for the birth of the Avon Park Press, has left it in the care of others, and accepted a promising proposition at Sebring”; Judge A. W. Sargent and his wife were at Kissimmee, where the judge attended the editors’ convention; and representatives of the Avon Park Board of Trade accepted an invitation to visit Crooked Lake.[dsc-1916-04-20] The Ruhl item is the earliest mention in the county paper of a newspaper published at Avon Park itself.

1916: civic dispatches, schools, law enforcement and roads

Evidence: single-source.

Outside the dedicated correspondence columns, the 1916 issues of The De Soto County News preserve county-level records of Avon Park’s governance, schools, roads, and law enforcement.

Compulsory school attendance, January 1916. On 1 January 1916 DeSoto County held an election under Florida’s 1915 local option compulsory school attendance law. County Superintendent Jas. O. Bickley reported the district returns in the paper of 6 January 1916: Avon Park voted 17 for and 1 against, joining Arcadia (134 to 1), Punta Gorda (34 to 1), and Zolfo (21 to 1) in overwhelmingly endorsing compulsory education for children between eight and fourteen.[dsc-1916-01-06-p10]

The teaching faculty. In the winter and spring of 1916, the county paper repeatedly noticed Miss Martha Livingston of Arcadia, who was “teaching school this year at Avon Park” alongside Principal A. J. Gross. In February 1916 she returned to Arcadia for the weekend accompanied by one of her pupils, Miss Irene Clark; in April she resumed her classroom duties in Avon Park following another visit with her parents Mr. and Mrs. John T. Livingston.[dsc-1916-02-03][dsc-1916-04-06-p8] In January 1916 another Avon Park teacher, Miss Laura Chapman, visited Arcadia as a guest of Mrs. John Livingston, well before her teaching notice of December 1917 in the Polk County press.

Mayor Swearingen at the county seat. On 13 April 1916 the paper recorded that R. W. Swearingen, mayor of Avon Park, was in Arcadia on combined municipal business and pleasure.[dsc-1916-04-13] Swearingen had been elected mayor in June 1915; this item confirms his continued tenure in 1916. In the same issue Harry Leigh of New Haven was in town paying county taxes on his Avon Park property, while C. E. Lanier, cashier of the Bank of Avon Park, transacted banking business at the courthouse.[dsc-1916-04-13] Lanier returned on banking business in May and October 1916.[dsc-1916-05-18][dsc-1916-10-26]

Deputy Sheriff Love Cash and liquor enforcement. On 11 May 1916 the county commissioners appointed the election officers for Avon Park Precinct No. 14: George F. Kellogg, J. C. Skipper, and John Wilson as inspectors, M. T. Whidden as clerk, and Love Cash as Deputy Sheriff.[dsc-1916-05-11] Two months later, on 6 July 1916, the paper reported that on the previous Saturday, Deputy Sheriffs Thad Carlton and W. T. Garner of Arcadia, “aided by Deputy Cash of Avon Park,” arrested three Black men — Dan Maynor, Amos Purifoy and Eugene Dukes — on a charge of selling liquor. Purifoy and Dukes were tried in county court that Thursday morning and each received a sentence of six months on the county road; Maynor’s case was postponed to Friday. The paper noted that since the first of June eleven liquor-selling cases had been tried in the county, with convictions in all of them, detailed in Deputy Sheriff Love Cash, Avon Park Precinct No. 14, 1916.[dsc-1916-07-06]

Roads to Zolfo, Crewsville, and the county line. On 4 May 1916 the county commissioners accepted the report of a committee appointed to view and mark a new public road extending from the north corporation line of Avon Park on the half-section line of Section 10 north to the Polk County line.[dsc-1916-05-04] A week later, on 11 May 1916, the board granted the petition of H. W. Smith and twenty-four others to alter the road leading from Crewsville to the Zolfo–Avon Park road near the southeast corner of Van Hoosen’s place.[dsc-1916-05-11] On 14 September 1916 the county heard a petition to open a public connecting road along the Atlantic Coast Line railroad line linking Wauchula, Zolfo, Buchanan, Avon Park, and Sebring.[dsc-1916-09-14]

The school bonds and county depositories. The county school board’s minutes printed on 19 October 1916 fixed the 1917 assessment for the Avon Park Special Tax School District bonds at “two mills for interest and three mills for sinking fund,” and, on a resolution moved by Mr. Hogan and seconded by Mr. Ware, accepted the First National Bank of Avon Park as depository for the district’s bond and sinking fund, the bank having presented bond No. 21 of District No. 3, for $1,000, “for the privilege of acting as depository.”[dsc-1916-10-19] On 21 December 1916 the Board of County Commissioners designated four official county depositories across DeSoto County: the First National Bank of Arcadia, the Carlton National Bank of Wauchula, the First National Bank of Avon Park, and the Punta Gorda Bank.[dsc-1916-12-21]

The advertisements

Two Avon Park businesses bought space in the county paper through 1915, and they are worth setting down in full.

Herbert Seaverns, Avon Park — building materials (plaster board, mastic wall board, shingle stain, roofing, galvanized sheet, lime, cement, brick, plaster of Paris, crushed rock, eaves trough) together with fertilizers, insecticides, ground limestone, poultry supplies and beef scraps.[dsc-1915-01-07] Herbert Seaverns was the town’s first mayor under the 1913 charter. This is his trade.

Avon Park Hardware and Furniture Company, N. G. Langford, manager:

“A full line of Hardware of all kinds and furniture at attractive prices. Paints and Oils, Caskets and Coffins. Undertaking and Embalming. See our stock and get prices. Located in old Burleigh Store.”[dsc-1915-01-07]

That last line is a genuine discovery. John C. Burleigh — the sawmill man who hauled a Shay locomotive twenty-three miles overland in 1894 and became superintendent of the wooden railway — also kept a store at Avon Park, and the building was still known as “the old Burleigh Store” in 1915. He is not recorded elsewhere as a storekeeper. It is also, incidentally, a description of a small-town hardware trade: nails, paint, furniture and coffins from the same counter.

Other names

Recorded here so they are not lost: S. I. Whidden of Fort Meade, fitting up “a first class barber shop in the Park” in March 1915; Mr. and Mrs. Grover Langford of Avon Park; W. A. Smith, formerly of Arcadia, farming in the lake region between Avon Park and Sebring; a Roslin, described in March 1915 as “now a leading dry goods merchant of Avon Park,” visiting his brother in Arcadia; and Charles C. Edwards of Avon Park, who made homestead entry No. 011838 on 29 May 1913 and proved it at Arcadia on 1 April 1915.

There is nothing in these pages about Black Avon Park, although New Mount Olive A.M.E. Church had been meeting since 1900 and St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church was founded in 1916; the county paper recorded a white town, and that absence is a fact about the paper, not about the town.

References

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 De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla. (transcription by Genealogy Trails), The De Soto County News, 6 October 1905 (transcribed sick list) (1905)
  2. S. F. Tucker (department editor), The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 11 February 1915, page 7: Avon Park Department, S. F. Tucker, Editor (1915) · newspaper
  3. S. F. Tucker (department editor), The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 4 February 1915, page 5: Avon Park Department, S. F. Tucker, Editor (1915) · newspaper
  4. O. R. Thacher (department editor), The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 13 October 1905: Avon Park Locals (1905)
  5. O. R. Thacher (department editor), The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 10 November 1905: Avon Park Locals (1905)
  6. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 29 December 1905, page 4: Avon Park department (1905)
  7. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 9 February 1906: Avon Park department and Business Locals (1906)
  8. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 7 January 1915: Avon Park notes and advertisements (1915)
  9. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 14 January 1915: county board of public instruction minutes (1915)
  10. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 18 February 1915: election notice, polling places and inspectors (1915)
  11. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 4 March 1915: Avon Park notes (1915)
  12. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 11 March 1915: Avon Park notes (1915)
  13. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 23 March 1916, page 5: Avon Park (1916) · newspaper
  14. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 6 April 1916, page 12: Avon Park (1916) · newspaper
  15. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 6 April 1916, page 8: Local and Personal (1916) · newspaper
  16. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 13 April 1916, page 8: Local and Personal (1916) · newspaper
  17. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 20 April 1916, page 5: Avon Park (1916) · newspaper
  18. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 11 May 1916, page 2: Official Proceedings of Board of County Commissioners (1916) · newspaper
  19. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 18 May 1916, page 1: Local and Personal (1916) · newspaper
  20. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 6 July 1916, page 3: Local and Personal (1916) · newspaper
  21. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 14 September 1916, page 2: Official Proceedings of Board of County Commissioners (1916) · newspaper
  22. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 19 October 1916, page 5: minutes of the DeSoto County Board of Public Instruction, Avon Park Special Tax School District bond assessment and depository (1916) · newspaper
  23. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 26 October 1916, page 6: Local and Personal (1916) · newspaper
  24. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 6 January 1916, page 10: Compulsory attendance election returns (1916) · newspaper
  25. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 4 May 1916, page 7: Board of County Commissioners proceedings, road to county line (1916) · newspaper
  26. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 21 December 1916, page 2: Board of County Commissioners proceedings, county depositories (1916) · newspaper
  27. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 3 February 1916, page 10: Local and Personal (1916) · newspaper
  28. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 18 March 1915: Avon Park notes (1915)

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