Florida's Peace River Frontier - A Book Review

Florida’s Peace River Frontier - A Book Review

By Spessard Stone



Fort Meade native Canter Brown, Jr. , a doctoral history student at the University of Florida, has written the definitive history of the Peace River region in the nineteenth century, Florida’s Peace River Frontier.

Brown, now 40, earned his Phi Beta Kappa key and a bachelor’s degree in history and a law degree, both from Florida State University. From 1972 until 1985, he worked as a lawyer with several governmental agencies in Florida, Georgia, and Washington, D. C. While serving as an aide to Congressman Charles Hatcher, he began historical research which led him to give up his legal career for the intellectually more rewarding career as an historian. Besides numerous articles, he has compiled, in addition to Florida’s Peace River Frontier, a history of Fort Meade and a historical novel, both unpublished.

Commencing with the Creek and Seminole emigration to the peninsula, Brown details in Part 1 in 59 pages a succinct account which presents innumerable original contributions. The various conflicts with the whites, including the Patriot War of 1812-14, the First Seminole War of 1817-18, and the Second Seminole War of 1835-42 are thoroughly covered. Besides the well-known Seminoles, such as Osceola and Billy Bowlegs, we learn of Negro settlements near the Hillsborough and Peace rivers and black warriors and black chiefs, such as Abraham, Murray, and Harry (who lived at present-day Lake Hanock).

Part 2 is aptly titled "The society of a frontier 1842-1858.” The conclusion of the Second Seminole War and the Armed Occupation Act, which granted 160-acre tracts to homesteaders, opened South Florida for settlement. Principally they came from the north Florida counties of Alachua, Columbia, and Hamilton counties. Some brought their black slaves, e.g., Frederick Varn’s 1851 arrival at now Bartow with ten slaves, four of whom were Harriet, Charlotte, Steven, and Manerva.

Present-day citizens will recognize many of their Cracker ancestral settlers, such as James W. Whidden and his in-laws Noel Rabun Raulerson and William L. Campbell, Rigdon Brown, Willoughby Whidden, William B. Hooker, John Parker and his brother William Parker, James D. Green, Louis Lanier, Daniel Gillett, Benjamin Moody, Francis A. Hendry and his mother Lydia Carlton Hendry and her other children, including son-in-law James T. Wilson, Francis M. Durrance and his brothers and brother-in-law Willoughby Tillis, David J. W. Boney. Eli English, future founder of present-day Wauchula, arrived, as did Alderman Carlton and his large family, including Daniel Wilson Carlton.

On page 103 we learn that: “Beginning in the fall of 1854 pioneer families pressed down the military roads into present-day Hardee County with members of the Whidden family in the vanguard. By April 1855 the frontier was defined by the homestead of Willoughby Whidden, located just north of modern Wauchula. About ten miles to the northwest, on the military road from Tampa to Chokonikla, lay the settlement of Whidden’s son-in-law, James D. Green. Jesse Alderman lived nearby, and three miles to the northeast on the north side of Paynes Creek was the home of Richard Pelham. A little farther north on Little Paynes Creek, just inside the present Polk County line, were the homes of Pelham’s brother-in-law, Thomas Summeralls and William Simmons. Three miles northeast of Pelham, on another military road to Chokonikla, was the home of Thomas Underhill. Farther south and to the west of these settlements, by late 1855, lay the settlement of cattleman John Parker on Troublesome Creek near Ona. Farther still lay the isolated homestead of John Platt on Horse Creek near Lily.”

Brown closes Part 2 with “a veritable clap of thunder from a sky,” the Third Seminole War. The familiar story of Lt. George L. Hartsuff’s destruction of Billy Bowleg’s banana grove and his abuse of Bowlegs led to the war’s outbreak, according to Brown. Ironically Hartsuff was seriously wounded in the subsequent attack by Billy Bowlegs, and Fort Hartsuff, just northwest of present-day Zolfo Springs, was established and named for the thought-to-be-dying Hartsuff. (Fort Hartsuff would evolve into English and finally Wauchula.) The end of the war in May 1858 resulted in almost complete Indian emigration, but a remnant eluded capture and deportation and their descendants remain in Florida.

Part 3 covers the 1858-77 era. The conflicts between the wealthy cattlemen, planters, and merchants of mostly present-day Manatee County and the farmer-cowhunters of now Hardee County are depicted. Brown presents the Machiavellian maneuvers of the Manatee elite to disenfranchise their opponents. Particularly offensive was the partial invalidation of the fall of 1859 elections. Among others, John W. Whidden was not allowed to assume the office of sheriff-tax collector, which remained vacant for a year with the result that no taxes were collected.

Brown shows there was a strong pro-Union group in southern Polk County and now Hardee County. James D. Green, for whom Fort Green was named, is depicted as the leader of the majority of the settlers of now Hardee County. Green went on to become a Union captain and, during Reconstruction, the Republican Party area boss. Holding great power, he appeared to use it responsibly, except for the attempt to impeach Governor Reed and the thwarted election chicanery of 1876, which, nevertheless, resulted in part in the election of President Hayes.

Many area residents who assume their ancestors were Confederate soldiers and staunch Democrats will be in for a surprise. Brown is fair to all, but, to this writer, it is clear that he believed the Union cause was just. It should be emphasized that owning slaves didn’t deter one from being a Unionist, nor can it be said that Unionists were necessarily sympathetic to the black slaves although they were more likely to be so. Appendix 8, pages 360-361, has a partial roster of Union enlistees, while Appendix 9, page 362, has a partial roster of Capt. F. A. Hendry’s Co., CSA.

Reconstruction is shown to be a turbulent area. Republicans for a time remained supreme, but it wasn’t just a carpetbagger regime. True, there were Northerners, a few ex-Union officers, who held sway over the former Confederates, but most were the original Crackers.

Polk County remained staunchly Democratic and largely unreconstructed. There were some Unionists who were to hold local offices via appointment by the governor via Representative James D. Green of Manatee County, namely: Archibald Hendry as sheriff-tax collector, James M. Hendry as registrar, and James T. Wilson as county judge and later county commissioner. Other Polk appointees included: Nathan S. Blount, the original captain of Co. E, 7th Fla., CSA, but Blount, a county commissioner, was an unrepentant representative of the Old South, an unsuccessful endeavor by Governor Reed to curry favor, as was other like appointees.

In Manatee County, Representative Green secured appointments of Enoch E. Mizell as county judge, Andrew Garner as county sheriff, James M. Youmans as tax collector, and the former Union captain John F. Bartholf as clerk of the circuit court. County commissioners included Lewis B. Platt and Henry Messer. Only Bartholf was a Carpetbagger.

Representing a formerly missing element, Brown features a balanced, non-biased portrayal of African Americans. Beginning with blacks allied or slaves of the Seminoles, he gives census data on slaves, their more prominent citizens, including John Lomans, who survived a hanging by Regulators (Vigilantes), and information on their settlements, especially at Homeland and Thonotosassa. It is noteworthy that prior to the Civil War slaves worshipped in the same churches as their white masters.

Part 4, pages 237-345, spans 1877-99. The Peace River Valley made great progress, notably with the arrival of H. B. Plant’s South Florida Railroad. In January 1884, the railroad reached Lakeland and a year later at Bartow. In July 1885, along a route surveyed by a black crew under future governor Albert W. Gilchrist, construction proceeded southward from Bartow to “roughly two miles to the west of Peace River from Bartow to just south of Fort Hartsuff where it crossed the river about a mile north of Zolfo Springs.” Blacks composed most of the construction crew. The railroad reached Arcadia in March 1886. Gov. Edward A. Perry and other dignitaries took an excursion trip to the end of the line.

The sleepy village of Arcadia, under the political leadership of John W. Whidden, experienced a boom. In December 1886, it was incorporated and, subsequently, became the county seat of DeSoto County, split from Manatee in 1887. Other towns to spring up or grow due to the railroad were in part: Bowling Green (1886), Wauchula (formerly English), Zolfo Springs, Punta Gorda (formerly Trabue).

The book closes with a political in-fighting in the Democratic Party. With the Republicans, except for Federal appointments, gone from the scene, the party split into Conservative and Populist branches, with the Conservatives triumphant. Phosphate boom and bust are also featured.

In conclusion, this book should be in the personal library of all citizens interested in this region’s history. It is a scholarly work, but this should not put off the layman as Brown’s prose flows as gently as the Peace River.

Florida’s Peace River Frontier contains 486 pages, with ten appendices, notes, bibliography, index, and numerous photographs and illustrations. It can be ordered from University Presses of Florida, 15 NW 15th St., Gainesville, FL 32611.

This is adapted from the original review, which was published in The Herald-Advocate (Wauchula, Fla.) of March 14, 1991.


March 24, 2001