By Jeff Blakley Did you ever go out to Grossman’s Hammock before it became part of Everglades National Park to see the sulphur spring? Did you ever wonder where it got its name? Did you wonder if perhaps the name was somehow a corruption or misspelling of the Gossman surname? The first time I visited…
By Jeff Blakley In this post, my goal is to draw a better picture of the Reverend J. M. Cormack, whose name appears in other stories written about the early history of the Florida City and Homestead areas. In those accounts, his name is usually given as J.M. Cormack or Rev. J.M. Cormack but there…
By Jeff Blakley Shortly after I published David Torcise’s Google Earth map of the locations of the homesteads of early settlers in this area, I received an e-mail from a man who thanked David and me for our work and stated that it had helped him clarify some issues about his ancestor. While looking at…
By Jeff Blakley When I started researching the early settlers of Florida City and Homestead in April of 2015, I soon wanted to know exactly where they had claimed their homesteads. The links on the sidebar entitled BLM Tract books and Homesteading Records/BLM provide written information on where the homesteads were located, but maps are…
by Jeff Blakley After David Torcise performed his magic with the original homesteads in South Dade, I discovered Krome’s 1903 Cape Sable Expedition Survey and wondered if it might be possible to overlay it on a satellite view of the area. Sure enough, David was up to the challenge and he produced a wonderful creation….
By Jeff Blakley At the turn of the 20th century, Florida City (originally known as Detroit) was marketed by its developer, the Miami Land & Development Company, as a planned agricultural community. While Homestead, to the north, had its roots in 160 acre quarter-sections of land homesteaded by individual settlers, Detroit had its roots in…
By Jeff Blakley The following article was generously shared with us by Robert Fuchs, the owner of RF Orchids in Homestead, Florida. In it, Margaret Mae Stull Williams, Robert’s maternal grandmother, relates how she and her husband came to Homestead in 1919. These reminiscences were the source document for Jean Taylor’s entry on the Williams…
By Jeff Blakley Anyone who starts to delve into the early history of this area soon reads about William J. Krome’s survey of a proposed route for the extension of the Florida East Coast Railway from Homestead to Key West via Cape Sable. Jerry Wilkinson has written an account of the expedition on his website,…
By Jeff Blakley I found the following article recently at the Town Hall Museum in Homestead. It was written by Flora Harvey Anderson, who was a sister of Will Anderson, of Anderson’s Corner fame. She was born on September 9, 1875 in Martin County, Indiana and died here on April 19, 1966. She is buried…
by Jeff Blakley I subscribed to Genealogy Bank the other day, at the suggestion of Larry Wiggins, and I’ve found it to be an invaluable source of information about the early days of this area. As I was reading newspaper clippings about Detroit, I was intrigued with the incessant boosterism tone of the articles and…
