By Jeff Blakley William C. Norwood, a merchant, came to Florida City from West Palm Beach in 1910 and homesteaded in sections 25 and 26. Searching the Bureau of Land Management records yielded the information that he was granted patent 289088 on the west half of the southwest quarter of section 25, township 57 south,…
By Jeff Blakley William Alfred King was the first section foreman in this area for the Florida East Coast railway. He was born on 29 December 1860 in Troy, Pike County, Alabama. On February 28, 1882, he married Frances Elzada Jones in Hatchechubbee, Russell County, Alabama. She was born there on December 24, 1866. Their…
by Jeff Blakley When I first started writing articles for this website, I decided that I would explore the lives of people mentioned in early newspaper articles about Detroit, now known as Florida City. I subsequently posted essays on James M. Powers, William C. Norwood, the Brooker brothers, Bryan H. Edwards, and John and Florence…
by Jeff Blakley I am indebted to Ed McMichael for much of the information in this post. Without his help, it couldn’t have been written. Or, perhaps I should say, a much leaner version with much less information in it would have been written. Jean Taylor, in her book The Villages of South Dade, wrote…
By Jeff Blakley In this post, I’m going to detour from my previous posts about pioneering families so that I can bring the role of the Florida East Coast Railway into the picture. Because history is not a popular subject to read about, the vast majority of people now living in Dade County have no…
