With this new life as a widowed woman, an emergent cause became her final life’s work. In 1920, Birdie became the field secretary of the Florida Audubon Society, which was headquartered at Rollins College in Winter Park. She traveled the state, lecturing on conservation and appearing before city commissions to ensure that bird sanctuary ordinances were passed. From the April 21, 1921 Kissimmee Valley Gazette: “Mrs. Byrd Spilman Dewey, of Winter Park, was in Kissimmee yesterday, making arrangements to come to this city at an early date and impress upon the citizens the need of creating a bird sanctuary. Mrs. Dewey has been speaking in various portions of the state on this topic—and at Haines City she was magnificently received at a very successful gathering.”
Her ability to tame wild birds was legendary and was noted by many in Judge Hoover’s research. Lena Clarke, who knew Birdie at Ben Trovato in West Palm Beach, wrote: “She could mock any bird that lived. She could just talk to them and they came to her. People used to say that she was a little bird and that she had a bird’s throat. She was beautiful. Children followed her about in order to hear her BYRD calls (as we called them) and try to imitate the feathered friends.” Ted Utsey of Jacksonville recalled, “She was a bird caller and had a bird sanctuary in front of her house. She could whistle and those birds would just come running and she would feed them.” Birdie commented on this as well in a 1927 article that she wrote in the Florida Naturalist: “I whistle them in, and they come trustingly to me showing that they have no fear of me, because I speak their own language.” She noted how she could work in her garden, surrounded by birds, but if a strange voice was heard, they were gone in an instant.
In the 1920s, conservation and sustainability were not topics of interest as they are today. She could see what was happening to the environment and feared what the future held for Florida: “If we who now hold the world’s law making in our hands, do not give attention to conserving our natural resources, then the children, coming after us, will inherit a looted estate.”
She lived in several different homes in the Orlando area and found herself once again in Jacksonville. Very little information was found on her activities from about 1929 to 1935. These were, of course, the years of the Great Depression, and depending on how her money was secured, she could have lost money in bank failures. Certainly Florida property values plummeted; her holdings in Palm Beach County had been closed out by 1925.
She did have family in Jacksonville. Her brother William Magill Spilman lived there for many years and passed away in 1926. Birdie purchased a small bungalow on Home Street in South Jacksonville, where she lived, tending to her birds. It is not known why she ceased writing; perhaps, with Fred’s passing, she no longer had the inspiration she needed to write. She was not alone in Jacksonville. Her wide circle of friends was always with her, as noted in a 1931 letter, “[a]s I have no children of my own. All of mine are adopted. I wished a house-full of babies, but my late husband wanted me all to himself, so since I am a widow, a lot of young people have adopted me, the older ones as ‘Little Mother’ and now their children call me ‘Gammy’ which is very ‘happy-fying’ to me.”
She helped children in the neighborhood with their studies. Ted Utsey recalled, “She was a very kind person and never too busy to come out and talk to you. She’d tell us beautiful stories. She wore glasses and long dresses and was not very tall—not over five feet. We talked about her once living in Palm Beach. She told me of the train ride to get near there, and what fun she had.”
And it was fun. During her sixty years in Florida, Birdie saw Florida grow and develop from an untamed place to one of refinement and civilization. In her last publication, she offered the best clue that all she wrote had happened, from the Florida Naturalist: “My greatest hold on the interest of those to whom I speak is that my stories of birds, trees, and beasts, great and small, are not what the children call ‘made up.’ They are true, and are from my own experiences and observation.”
On April 1, 1942, Birdie drew her last breath, and her journey home was complete. From the Florida Times-Union: “Friends from all stations in life are mourning the death of Mrs. Byrd Spilman Dewey, 86, who for many years resided in a tiny bungalow on Home Street and devoted her time to Florida bird protection and forest conservation.” On the subject of dying, she had written to Rosamond Gilder, “I have always prayed to go suddenly—no dying by inches—and my affairs will be settled by strangers (to my own people) here.” She died in the home of a friend. According to her will, she wished to be cremated and that a handful of her ashes be taken to The Breakers Hotel pier in Palm Beach and spread to the sea. Her only surviving immediate family member was her older sister, Anna Louise Spilman, who instead of cremation had her interred at the Greenlawn Cemetery (former Dixie Pythian Cemetery) in Jacksonville, in an unmarked grave, where her brother William and baby, Elizabeth, had been buried.
Seventy years after her death, her final wishes were fulfilled in a symbolic way. The authors burned one of her short stories, and the resulting ashes were spread to sea at The Breakers Hotel beach on her birthday in 2012. The Breakers Hotel pier was no longer extant, as the 1928 hurricane severely damaged the pier and the hotel demolished the pier. The authors felt that Birdie’s unmarked grave in Jacksonville was not the way that someone who had contributed so much to Florida literature, to Palm Beach County and to the birds and wildlife of the state should be remembered. The authors purchased a marker for her grave at the Greenlawn Cemetery, with the inscription, “I am HOME,” to signify her vision of heaven. Birdie always expressed the word “HOME” in capital letters, so her tombstone was engraved in this way.
THE BREAKERS HOTEL BEACH. Flagler built and operated an additional hotel, opening in 1896 as the Palm Beach Inn. Flagler renamed the hotel in 1901 as the Breakers Hotel, as guests requested rooms “over by the breakers.” The hotel is still in operation today. Courtesy Library of Congress.
GRAVE OF BYRD SPILMAN DEWEY. Byrd Spilman Dewey passed away on April 1, 1942, and was interred at the Greenlawn Cemetery in Jacksonville in an unmarked grave. In 2012, the authors of this book purchased a marker for her grave. Private collection.
The Deweys’ lands in Florida were developed in the subsequent decades. If still held today, the properties would be worth tens of millions of dollars. The twenty acres in Zellwood is still fairly rural, dotted with a few houses and businesses. The town lots in Eustis form part of the parking lot for the Eustis Memorial Library. The seventy-six-acre Hermitage site along Lake Mangonia was initially used as a pineapple plantation, but a 1909 blight wiped out pineapple production in South Florida and it was sold to developers. It is now in mixed use, with housing and industry. The city of West Palm Beach purchased part of the land in 1913, and it became the pauper’s cemetery. The cemetery was used as the mass burial site for the African American victims of the 1928 hurricane; in 2002, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
The Blessed Isle property was initially subdivided into two housing developments called the Croton Park and Nichols-Baldwin subdivisions; a large lot still surrounded the Ben Trovato house. A subsequent owner added a north wing to the house. The owners abandoned the house in the 1960s, and vagrants stripped and vandalized the residence. The property owners demolished Ben Trovato in 1970 to make way for the nineteen-story North Rapallo Condominium. A parking lot now stands on the footprint of Ben Trovato.
Fred’s 80 acres west of the downtown West Palm Beach area was planted with pineapples by the Clarke family and then developed in the 1920s housing boom as the Parker Ridge neighborhood. Birdie’s 160-acre plot at the southern foot of Lake Worth contains the original town of Boynton plot and is today known as the city of Boynton Beach. The Boynton Ben Trovato home burned down in 1920, and a gasoline station now occupies the property. The land along the Intracoastal Waterway where the tomatoes grew and Fred had his orange grove has restaurants, condominiums and several natural preserve areas. The Palm Beach Ben Trovato was demolished in the 1930s and replaced wit
h a concrete block home.
The Broward County lands were in two sections, each 640 acres. The northern piece is mixed use, including housing and the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport. The southern piece composes a large portion of the city of Hollywood with housing and businesses.
BYRD SPILMAN DEWEY AND HER DOGS. Pictured with her two dogs, Foozle and Van, Byrd Spilman Dewey wears a bonnet as her preferred head covering. She shunned the fashion of the time and refused to wear feathered hats in protection of Florida’s birds. Private collection.
Birdie’s bungalow on Home Street in South Jacksonville has long since been demolished, and only one cottage remains on the street.
So the Deweys’ legacies are many, as the lands they settled have evolved to the landscape we see today. But one legacy remains the same: Birdie’s writings. Perhaps no other words can better express her beliefs, philosophy and outlook on life than her essay entitled “Realities,” which was written when their dog Van had passed away following a long illness. From The Blessed Isle and Its Happy Families:
Pondering these things, we arrive at the truth, old as human feeling, that the only realities of life are the things that do not exist. What are called realities—life’s necessities—these never quicken the pulses, nor choke the breath with hurried heart-beats.
But the intangibles—love, art, beauty, music, and again love; for love, in all its many kinds and degrees, is what gives meaning to art, beauty and music—these are the things that stir us to the depths—these are the things that grasp us with resistless power, dragging us up by the roots to throw us down quivering where we perish; or else take ahold new with our soul-fibers.
These non-existing realities make of earth a garden of delight; or a desert swept by simoons and scorched by droughts.
Nothing else really matters—or rather, everything else follows as the non-existing verities set the pace.
The Deweys lived in the realities of life in early South Florida. They never gave up on their adopted state, even though the heartaches and failures were many. In a letter, Birdie stated the Taylor family motto: “What I attempt, I accomplish.” And what they accomplished in their sixty years in Florida, through pioneering and prosperity, teaches much about perseverance and hope. Birdie’s literary works live on, and the Deweys’ souls dwell through eternity in their Blessed Isle paradise of HOME.
Bibliography
Blackman, William Fremont. History of Orange County, Florida; Narrative and Biographical. Chuluota, FL: Mickler House, 1973. Originally published in 1927.
Brinton, Daniel. A Guide-book of Florida and the South: For Tourists, Invalids and Emigrants. Philadelphia, PA: George Maclean, 1869.
Coleman, J. Winston. A Centennial History of Sayre School, 1854–1954. Lexington, KY: Winburn Press, 1954.
Daugharty, Hazel H. Major Nathan Smith Boynton and His Family. Boynton Beach, FL: self-published, 1972.
Dewey, Adelbert. Life of George Dewey. Westfield, MA: Dewey Publishing Company, 1898.
Dewey, Byrd Spilman. The Blessed Isle and Its Happy Families. St. Augustine, FL: Press of the Record Company, 1907.
———. Bruno. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1899.
———. “From Pine Woods to Palm Groves.” Florida Review 1 (1909). Series of articles that eventually was turned into a book of the same name.
———. Peter the Tramp. West Palm Beach, FL: self-published, 1916.
———. “Some Bird Notes.” Florida Naturalist 8 (1927): 23–25.
Gilpin, Mrs. John R. “To Miami, 1890 Style.” Tequesta 1 (1941): 89–102.
Hoover, Earl R. “J.E. Spilman—Kentucky’s Long-Lost Composer of a World-Famous Melody Rediscovered.” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 66, no. 3 (1968): 222–41.
———. Report on Mrs. Byrd Spilman Dewey. Cleveland, OH: self-published, 1967.
Knight, Lucian Lamar. Library of Southern Literature. Atlanta, GA: Martin & Hoyt Company, 1907.
Lanier, Sidney. Florida: Its Scenery, Climate and History. Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippincott & Company, 1876.
Linehan, Mary Collar. Early Lantana, Her Neighbors & More. St. Petersburg, FL: Byron Kennedy and Company, 1980.
Linehan, Mary Collar, and Marjorie Watts Nelson. Pioneer Days on the Shores of Lake Worth, 1873–1893. St. Petersburg, FL: Southern Heritage Press, 1995.
Melville, Malcolm. The Spilman Papers. Forestville, CA: self-published, 1965.
Metcalf, John Calvin. Library of Southern Literature. Atlanta, GA: Martin & Hoyt Company, 1923.
Myers, Ruby Andrews. “Newspaper Pioneering on the Florida East Coast, 1891–1895.” Tequesta 43 (1983): 51–62.
Pendersen, Ginger L., and Janet M. DeVries. The Collected Works of Byrd Spilman Dewey. Charleston, SC: Createspace, 2014.
Pierce, Charles. Pioneer Life in Southeast Florida. Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1990.
Robinson, Tim. A Tropical Frontier: Pioneers and Settlers of Southeast Florida, 1800–1890, a Comprehensive History. Stuart, FL: Port Sun Publishers, 2005.
Spelman, Henry. Relation of Virginia. London, England: Chiswick Press, 1872.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Palmetto Leaves. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1968.
Tuckwood, Jan, and Eliot Kleinberg. Pioneers in Paradise: West Palm Beach, the First 100 Years. Atlanta, GA: Longstreet Press, 1994.
NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES
Bradford County Telegraph.
Christian Union.
Florida East Coast Homeseeker.
Florida Star.
Florida Times-Union.
Gallopolis Journal.
Good Housekeeping.
Kentucky Statesmen.
Kissimmee Valley Gazette.
Ladies Home Journal.
Lake Worth News.
Miami Metropolis.
New York Herald.
New York Times.
Tropical Sun.
About the Authors
Dr. Ginger L. Pedersen is a college administrator and history researcher. She received her master’s degree in psychology and her doctoral degree in higher education administration from Florida Atlantic University. A native Floridian, Dr. Pedersen has always been intrigued by Florida’s history and Palm Beach County in particular; her earliest Florida ancestor arrived in 1886. She maintains two local history websites and serves on a historic resources preservation board. Dr. Pedersen has given speeches on various historical subjects to several local audiences. This is her first book.
A resident of Palm Beach County since 1987, Janet M. DeVries is an archivist and historian. DeVries graduated from Palm Beach State College and is finishing her Bachelor of Arts degree in history at Florida Atlantic University. She is the author of four books, including Around Boynton Beach (2006) and Sport Fishing in Palm Beach County (2008). DeVries is a member of the American Association of Archivists, Society of Florida Archivists, Gold Coast Archivists, American Association for State and Local History, Genealogical Society of Palm Beach County, Florida Historical Society, Historical Society of Palm Beach County, Boynton Beach Historical Society and the Lantana Historical Society. Her roots in Florida go deep; her paternal grandfather, Fred Gardner, was a real estate agent and property appraiser in South Florida in the 1930s.
Visit us at
www.historypress.net
Pioneering Palm Beach Page 12
