The war’s remnants were many, including the naming of the prominent lake adjacent to the coast that soldiers named “Lake Worth” in honor of General William Jenkins Worth, who had led many battles in the Second Seminole War. The Seminoles called the lake Hypoluxo, which meant “water all around, no get out,” indicative that no inlet led to the ocean. Charles Pierce, an early pioneer, noted in his memoirs that Hypoluxo was the Indians’ word for an island, meaning that an island was surrounded by water. For this reason, the Pierce family named their island in Lake Worth Hypoluxo, a name that remains.
After Florida became a state in 1845, the federal government had the enormous task of surveying the land. In 1858, thirty-one-year-old William J. Reyes and his chainmen, Paul Sabata and Gaspar Corrints, were assigned the contract to survey a large portion of what would become the northern half of Palm Beach County. At that time, surveyors used 66-foot-long chains to measure the land. An acre is exactly ten square chains, and a mile is eighty chains long—the familiar 5,280 feet. They conducted the first detailed survey of the area from October 28 through November 3, 1858, and the resulting map is the earliest detailed look at the area, before drainage and filling so altered the topography. The vast swamps and the evergreen sand pine forests along the western shores of Lake Worth were hand-drawn on the linen map. It was from this map that the settlers could claim or purchase their homesteads.
The surveyors found a landscape that looked very different than today’s coconut palm–lined beaches. Only the native subtropical vegetation abounded: cabbage palms, saw palmetto, cocoplum, sea grape, live oak, slash pine, sand pine, mastic trees and mangrove covered the lands and shoreline. The low areas were swampy with sawgrass and cypress, while in the higher dry lands, pine trees and oak abounded in the flatwood forests. Wildlife was there too: deer, raccoons, foxes, squirrels, panthers, opossum and even black bears enjoyed the plentiful foraging areas that the wilderness and swamps provided. But those calm waters also bred mosquitoes that knew no limits; one surveyor in his field notes labeled it “miserable boggy country.”
GENERAL WILLIAM JENKINS WORTH. Fred and Birdie Dewey journeyed south though the Florida wilderness to the “Lake Worth Country” in February 1887. The coastal body of water was named Lake Worth in honor of General William Jenkins Worth, who led troops in the Second Seminole War. Courtesy Library of Congress.
Certainly a few sailors had been shipwrecked along the coast over the centuries, but no one of European heritage had actually attempted to live in the Lake Worth region until the 1860s. Author Tim Robinson compiled many pioneer biographies in his 2005 book, and much of the early pioneer information was gleaned from his research. The first European to live on the shores of Lake Worth was Augustus Oswald Lang, who was born in Germany and had some agricultural education. On the 1860 census, Lang was living at St. Lucie. In 1861, he was employed as an assistant lighthouse keeper at the newly built Jupiter Lighthouse. His political beliefs were with the Southern states, and he became a Confederate sympathizer. Lang and his comrades disabled the Jupiter Lighthouse and several other lighthouses and reported their efforts to Florida governor Madison S. Perry. Lang then joined the Confederate army on January 27, 1862; he subsequently deserted on August 18, 1863.
Remembering the Lake Worth wilderness, Lang returned and built a shack from driftwood and palmetto fronds on the barrier island known today as Palm Beach, about where the old Bethesda-by-the-Sea Church is today. He did not own the land in Palm Beach but rather was a “squatter”; Lang did file for a homestead farther north near Fort Pierce.
Lang was discovered in 1866 quite by accident by Michael and George Sears, who were sailing home to Biscayne Bay from Sand Point (Titusville); a storm had created a tiny inlet as water was rushing into the ocean. Sears sailed into Lake Worth through the inlet, proceeded down the waterway and noticed Lang standing on the shore. Lang asked if the war was over, which it was. Sears also ended up homesteading in the area, after seeing the immense beauty of the unspoiled landscape.
The next person on the scene was Charles Moore. The April 5, 1900 Lake Worth News reported, “He came from Chicago where he got into some trouble that made it necessary to seek another abiding place without delay.” Moore made his living by being a beachcomber, walking up and down the beach looking for shipwrecks and cargo lost from ships. Today’s beachcombers might find a few shells and some sea glass, but Moore found many treasures, including $8,000 in gold in a trunk, according to the newspaper’s account.
Whatever washed up on shore was put to use. In the 1896 Lake Worth Historian, Marion Dimick Geer noted, “Trunks containing ladies’ clothing, too, and Mr. Moore assured us he wore trimmed underclothes for some time, having no wife to utilize them.” Moore bought 129 acres on Palm Beach and took over the small cabin that Lang had built on Palm Beach; he also homesteaded 80 acres on the west side of Lake Worth, north of the present-day downtown West Palm Beach.
Hiram F. Hammon filed the first formal homestead claim on Lake Worth on July 28, 1873. Settlers had begun to enter the area from northern cold climates, ready for a pioneer life that was not easy. The nearest store and doctor were 135 miles away in Titusville, a trip of one to two weeks, and mail service was sporadic at best. The second homestead claim was filed by Hannibal D. Pierce, who had been the assistant lighthouse keeper at Jupiter; from his lighthouse perch he could see the shimmering water that was Lake Worth to the south. Pierce filed his claim farther south than Hammon, on an island in Lake Worth that he named Hypoluxo.
A very influential pioneer, Elisha N. “Cap” Dimick, arrived with his extended family in 1876 from Michigan. He built the first structure that could truly be considered a “house,” complete with glass windows and built from lumber shipped down the Indian River from Jacksonville. The house became the fledging community’s center, witnessing many dances and holiday celebrations. Soon, Dimick added eight rooms to the house, and the community that called itself Lake Worth had its first hotel, the Cocoanut Grove House, opening in 1880. (The city that today is known as Lake Worth was not incorporated until 1913 and has no relation to the earlier Lake Worth Post Office located on the barrier island of Palm Beach.)
The hotel could be named as such because of a fortuitous event that had occurred just two years earlier. On January 9, 1878, the Spanish brigantine Providencia, headed for Cadiz, Spain, shipwrecked off Palm Beach carrying twenty thousand coconuts from Trinidad. Two pioneers, William M. Lanehart and Hiram F. Hammon, made a salvage claim against the ship and began selling the coconuts to settlers, not so much for food but for planting. They hoped that thriving coconut plantations could provide a cash crop for the pioneers, one that was in demand and shipped well across vast distances. There were certainly a few coconut palms here and there along the coast started from coconuts that had washed ashore and taken root, but this cargo allowed thousands of the fast-growing trees to be planted. The old saying is, “The coconut—seven years from nut to nut.” Lanehart ended up being the highest bidder at auction for the floundered ship, paying $20.80 for the ship and its entire cargo.
Lanehart wrote, “I was greeted by the mate of the vessel, with a bottle of wine and a box of cigars, as a sort of olive branch. There were 20,000 coconuts, and they seemed like a godsend to the people. For several weeks, everyone was eating coconuts and drinking wine.” Many settlers bought the coconuts for the two-and-a-half-cent asking price, and they planted coconuts along the coastal areas, but especially on the barrier island that soon named itself.
Dimick had spelled coconut as “cocoanut,” as was popular during the Victorian era. This spelling lives on today on Palm Beach’s Cocoanut Row and in Cocoanut Grove south of Miami. The post office had been known as Lake Worth, but the settlers decided that their new coconut palm-filled paradise needed to become a named settlement. Palm City was submitted to the U.S. Postal Service in January 1887, but residents were notified that another Florida town had already chosen that name. Fittingly, a tourist from up north, Gus Ganford, had another sug
gestion, “Palm Beach,” after all the coconut palms. And so in November 1887, Palm Beach emerged from the tropical jungle.
COCOANUT GROVE HOUSE HOTEL. The Deweys stayed at the Cocoanut Grove House, owned by Elisha N. Dimick. The Cocoanut Grove House, named for the twenty thousand coconuts gleaned from an 1878 shipwreck, was opened in 1880 and served as the Lake Worth area’s first hotel. Courtesy Florida Archives.
This was the landscape along Lake Worth as Fred and Birdie made their decision to venture to the Lake Worth Country. The first step in this new beginning was to secure a homestead. At the federal land office in Gainesville, Fred filed a homestead application on December 27, 1886, for two government lots, and in February 1887, the journey southward began. Birdie wrote, “The Lake Worth Country was almost as remote as the moon. The railroad ended at Titusville, and, from there, we sailed in a schooner large enough to carry both us and our effects.” The trip from Titusville to the Lake Worth inlet took seven days, something that could be driven today by car in three hours. They sailed down the Indian River, following the broad, calm waters with its many sandbars. But the last nine miles of the trip to Lake Worth saw them sail out the Jupiter Inlet into the ocean waters, as Jupiter was the terminus point of the Indian River: “We sailed into Lake Worth Inlet from white-capped seas to a ruffled sound bordered with shores of primeval forests and thickets. There was a semi-occasional clearing where toy houses tip-toed to peep over what looked like immense bushes of red roses, but which proved later, on closer inspection, to be the glorious, ever-blooming hibiscus.”
SURVEY MAP. On December 27, 1886, Fred Dewey filed a homestead application for two government lots. The land, outlined on this 1859 survey map, had a high ridge running north and south through the property. Courtesy Bureau of Land Management.
They stayed at the Cocoanut Grove House, spending a few days on the east side. She wrote, “It was a new Florida we had discovered. True, there were a few families living there; but we felt ourselves to be, none-the-less, real discovers.” They set forth to inspect the property they had secured at the land office in Gainesville. Fred’s homestead claim was for two government lots in Section 9, Township 43 South, Range 43 East, which bordered a lake to the west, the entrance to the Everglades. When land bordered water and therefore had an irregular shape, it was surveyed as a “government lot” for claim purposes. The land, which totaled seventy-six acres, was located about one mile inland from Lake Worth, and the property’s western edge was located on the inland freshwater lake known as Sunset Lake, today’s Lake Mangonia. Very detailed information on the claim, the land and the improvements the Deweys made to property is in the National Archives. The homestead claim file provided pertinent details on life at their first Palm Beach homestead.
It is quite possible that the Deweys were living farther west in Palm Beach County than anyone else at that time. It certainly would have been more prudent to purchase property along Lake Worth, but the land farther west was essentially free to the claimant. The property’s middle was about where Twenty-fifth Street is located, and its eastern point was about where Tamarind Avenue is on a modern West Palm Beach map. Lake Mangonia’s shoreline was much farther east than it is today, as it was dredged and filled in the 1950s to build a major roadway. It was on this isolated spot that the Deweys built a small home of charm and beauty in the wildest woods of South Florida.
The Hermitage
The land they secured was unique for South Florida, as it had a high ridge running north and south through the property. They started clearing the land in February 1887 and had cleared the home site and two acres by May. Sand pines, oak trees and white sand covered the property, with saw palmetto and other Florida forest plants as groundcover. She wrote, “By climbing a tree on the wooded hill we also had a fine view of the Atlantic Ocean, with its passing sails and smoke-stacks.” Because of the good view, they chose this hill to build their cottage. According to the federal homestead file, they occupied the property on May 20, 1887, first pitching sleeping and cooking tents and building a chicken park before they began building their own cottage.
The lumber for the house was hauled to the building site in April, and Fred built the house, with a carpenter assisting, in only eighteen days. This cottage is depicted in the background of a picture taken in 1923 of the city incinerator. There in the distance, tucked under the sand pines, a small cottage is visible that matches the description provided in the homestead file of a twenty-two- by twenty-five-foot cottage with windows on each side.
Birdie named the small cottage the Hermitage to signify its remote location. This small cottage and its description provided key clues in deciphering Birdie’s pen names she used for magazine writing. Authors write under pen names for a variety of reasons; often in the nineteenth century, female writers submitted articles under a man’s name to increase chances of being published.
LITTLE COTTAGE IN THE WOODS. The Deweys built a twenty-two- by twenty-five-foot cottage, which they affectionately referred to as the Hermitage due to its remote location in the pine woods. This view shows the small dwelling in later years, tucked under the pine trees on the left of the photo. Courtesy Florida Archives.
A biography published in 1917 furnished a complete listing of works published under her real name. Through libraries and antiquarian dealers, copies of all her works were located and compiled, except one: a short story with a title that made the elusive hunt that much more alluring and mysterious. The work’s title was “Who Seeks, Finds.”
The authors returned to the Historical Society of Palm Beach County archives to see if something had been missed in the Dewey file, and indeed something had. Upon opening the folder, the document at the very top was “Who Seeks, Finds,” complete with a hand drawing on the cover by Birdie. The story is a fairy tale with the moral that you find whatever you look for, good or evil. It had been published in pamphlet form, as she often did with her short stories. The inside cover stated that it was published courtesy of the Century Company, which published many leading periodicals of the time, including Scribner’s Monthly and Century Illustrated Monthly. If the story had been published before, why did months of searching fail to find it?
An Internet search of a few of the story’s keywords along with the title found a link that showed the full text of the article’s first sentence. With a click of the link, the article appeared with its byline, Judith Ray. A pen name had been revealed. The article was published in 1895 in St. Nicholas, a popular children’s magazine of the time published by the Century Company. However, extensive searches in periodical and magazine databases failed to find any other articles written by a Judith Ray. Additional searches, this time using just the first name Judith, uncovered several articles written by another Judith. This time it was Judith Sunshine. A “Ray of Sunshine” had finally shone on the quest to unearth Birdie’s pen names after more than a century of being hidden. Undoubtedly several more remain to be discovered.
The clincher that this was Birdie’s writing was that in the short story “At Other People’s Convenience,” the Judith and Julius characters made their entrance into the literary world, some nine years before Bruno’s publication. There were three articles published in the Christian Union that provided wonderfully detailed glimpses into the Hermitage, the four-room cottage they had built. She also used the initials J.S. in several articles and letters that appeared in the Lake Worth News, a local West Palm Beach newspaper.
The Hermitage, with its design and refinement, stands in stark contrast to the depiction of pioneer life in most accounts of early South Florida. Most often, families are portrayed living in palmetto shacks with dirt floors. Although some did build palmetto shacks while a more substantial house was being constructed, rain and vermin could too easily penetrate the walls, and such a shack offered no protection against storms.
Birdie’s first known article was published in November 10, 1887, in the Christian Union and explained how they had camped that summer in tents: “It will rain occasi
onally, even in the best regulated climate, and although a good tent will not leak, there is a dampness about the inside air that can not only be felt, but smelt, and also tasted. Its flavor is like mildewed mold.” Florida’s summer humidity must have been quite a challenge while living in a tent during the weeks it took to build the Hermitage, as they had moved to the property at the beginning of Florida’s rainy season in May. The wood and building materials came from Jacksonville. She described the Hermitage thusly: “Our little home consisted of four rooms below; a living-room, and a bed-room in front connected by a large archway, and back of these were dining room and the kitchen. There was an attic above the two front rooms where we stored various odds and ends; the piles of papers and magazines that are always with us; also spare sails; and other boat tackle.”
In the April 5, 1888 article from the Christian Union, Birdie described in great detail how they constructed the furniture, with Fred completing the carpentry and Birdie the upholstery. A feature in all the Dewey homes was that of built-in furniture, and being a small home, it made an efficient use of the limited space. She provided detailed instructions on how to make a built-in sofa and construct sideboards and bookcases that were built on each side of a window to give the effect of a bay window. She states “Our furniture was all home-made, the ‘good man of the house’ having a taste for such work. To those who must depend on outside skill I would like to say, do not have any dealings with those mechanics who will tell you that a thing is impossible because unusual.” Frank Lloyd Wright, the famous architect and designer, was also a proponent of built-in furniture, so Birdie was ahead of her time in using this innovation.
Pioneering Palm Beach Page 6
