A Look at the Uses of Oral History by Jeff Blakley In this post, I am continuing to explore the lives of ordinary working stiffs in early Homestead. The subject of this post is Willie Alonzo King. Susan Dryer, the owner of Ages Ago Antiques in Homestead, donated a booklet to the Town Hall Museum…
By Jeff Blakley It is often noted that history is told by the victors. Those who don’t tell their stories are forgotten but those who do assume out-sized importance in the historical record. Such is the case with Edward Stiling, who, in the published histories of Detroit (now known as Florida City), overshadows many others,…
by Jeff Blakley If you stop at Robert is Here, at the corner of Tower Road and Palm Drive west of Florida City to buy a milkshake or some of their other offerings and if you look very closely at the overgrown northwest corner of the intersection you might by able to see that there…
By Jeff Blakley I ran across an article that appeared in the Homestead Enterprise on July 16, 1914, giving a history of the Women’s Industrial Club in Detroit. It was organized for social reasons as well as to promote the civic betterment of Detroit on October 29, 1911, shortly after the Longview Club was organized…
By Jeff Blakley In part 1 of this series on the Reverend Joseph A. Kahl, I explored the early lives of Joseph and his future wife, Harriet Woodbury. I ended that post with their marriage, on August 20, 1908. After their marriage, the Methodist Episcopal Church sent the Reverend Kahl and his new wife to…
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 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 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 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…
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,…
