Category Archives: Florida

James Monroe’s Ash Lawn – Highland

10 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Federal Hall National Memorial, Florida, George Washington's Mount Vernon, Heritage tourism, Interpretation, James Monroe, Thomas Jefferson

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Scholars at James Monroe’s Ash Lawn – Highland are incorporating the stories of the local African-American community into the history of the historic site. Many local residents descend from the original enslaved community at the Monroe estate.

One of the most fortunate things about volunteering at Federal Hall National Memorial this summer has been its broadening of my interests. The experience has less taken me in a different direction than expanded my awareness of American and even international history. This is especially true of the Revolutionary and Early American periods. I have a larger, more holistic approach to my scholarship than I did at the start of the summer, and really dating back to the beginning of the calendar year when we became members of George Washington’s Mount Vernon. Among other things I have been following the social media pages and online resources of various people and institutions with which I was unfamiliar just two months ago. One of them linked the other day to this extraordinary New York Times piece about James Monroe and the enslaved persons who lived and worked on his Virginia estate.

The parlor of Casa Bianca near Monticello, Florida. Some enslaved persons from Ash Lawn – Highland lived and worked here.

In a living example of Faulkner’s notion about the past being neither over nor past, it has developed that upwards of one hundred African Americans still live within a short distance of Ash Lawn – Highland, the 3,500 acre property Monroe purchased in 1793 while a U.S. senator from Virginia. Highland is adjacent to Jefferson’s Monticello. By all accounts as known today, Monroe did not father children in the manner Jefferson did with Sally Hemings; the Monroe connections to this local community relate to the conditions of servitude. Scholars have been piecing the history together over the past several years and adding this new knowledge to the interpretive experience at Ash Lawn – Highland, which is today owned by James Monroe’s alma mater William & Mary. The story extends further than Virginia however; to pay off debts Monroe sold some of his enslaved persons to an estate near Monticello, Florida in Jefferson County called Casa Bianca. Some of them, or more likely their descendants, showed up on census records and voter rolls after the Civil War. Read the whole thing.

(top image, RebelAt via Wikimedia Commons; bottom, State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory)

On to 2018

20 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by in Florida, Incorporating New York (book project), Philately

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Hey all, I hope everyone’s 2018 is off to a good start. My timing was fortunate. I left for Florida the day before the snow came and returned the day after the freeze broke. I put the blog aside for a time since my return because I have been plugging away assiduously on the book about Civil War Era New York. I have another few thousand words to go. If I grind it out I may finish the draft as early as next weekend. I intend then to spend the rest of the winter revising, honing, fact checking and putting the bibliography into Zotero. I’m maintaining the energy level as I reach the finish line.

Last weekend I received the box you see below. About fifteen years ago my mother told me she wanted to start a stamp collection. She had had one when she was a girl, which ultimately went to one of my older cousins somewhere along the way many decades ago. She had great of fun building this new collection for about a decade until declining health rendered it impossible for her to continue. I told her when she began back in the early 2000s that there is no wrong way to collect stamps. One does it entirely for oneself and, if one goes about it well, the collection becomes an accurate representation of the individual who created it. Her knowledge of philately was never that extensive–neither is mine for that matter–but she managed with my help to create what grew into something special. Not valuable in a financial sense, but something that collectively was greater than the sum of the parts.

South Florida

As I mentioned she stopped adding to her stamp collection about five years ago due to health issues that rendered it difficult. Last year she asked if I wanted to bring it back to New York. I didn’t, hoping maybe she would pick it up again. This year she asked again and I knew that it was time; more than once she alluded to the fact that seeing the collection and not being able to work on it was painful. I didn’t press it. Two weeks ago today we pulled out the wicker basket containing the album and the supplies. It took fifteen minutes to dust it off–it had been that long. Then I sorted things out, packed them up for safe transport, and boxed them up. The following day, Sunday, we went to the post office in South Florida, put it on the machine, printed a stamp and label, and put it in the big locked box for USPS to start shipping the following day.

Brooklyn

It came in the mail later that week. The first thing I did was open it to make sure everything arrived undamaged. (I had put the items, including the album on the right, in separate bags within the box and added packing material for safer traveling.) Thankfully it was all good. Since then it has sat undisturbed. I told my mother that while I will build on the collection because I do want it to be a living thing. For the most part though it will remain intact and much as it is. In the box are a sizable number of plate blocks and first day covers representing my mother’s various interests. One could call it a very feminine collection. I will sort and organize things in a systematic manner once I figure out how best to do all this. In the much longer term I will probably give it to my niece or nephew, if they want it, somewhere down the line. Time will tell.

December 8, 1941

08 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by in Florida, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Memory

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December 8, 1941: President Franklin Roosevelt appears relaxed after the pressure of having just signed the declaration of war on Japan. When he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the Wilson Administration Roosevelt had overseen the construction of several of the ships sunk at Pearl Harbor. Note Sam Rayburn third from the right, who maintains a serious visage.

About a decade ago during a trip to Florida to visit friends and relatives, I brought with me some then-recent New York Times clippings about the recovery following the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was a complicated months-long operation similar in many ways to the cleanup at Ground Zero after 9/11. The reason I was carrying actual newspaper clippings, as opposed to sending links right after reading them online, was because I was bringing them for a friend’s father. This was an older fellow who like many of his generation was not plugged into the internet that much. I knew however that he would appreciate the articles. He was greatly interested in American history and was himself an Armed Service veteran who had served in the Air Force a few years after the Second World War. I gave them to him at a restaurant over dinner.

Longtime readers of the blog may remember when I used to post every year on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. As some may also remember, I said that I would stop doing that after last year’s 75th anniversary. Yesterday I waited all day for the moment when someone might finally mention Pearl Harbor. It eventually happened in a text message from my friend at about 5:00 pm. This quickly led to a back-and-forth of missives on memory and the meaning to be found in the past. As things go his father, the man for whom I had brought those clippings now a long time ago, died earlier this year. This is the first December since, well, the birth of my friend almost sixty years ago, that his father is not here for the two to commiserate on the significance of December 7, 1941. Needless to say, it made for an emotional and reflective Pearl Harbor anniversary for my friend.

(image/National Park Service)

 

Hoping for a swift Key West recovery

15 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by in Florida

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The Matecumbe Ferry Slip in Key West after the 1935 Labor Day hurricane. Approximately 250 Great War veterans were killed in the category five storm.

I was teaching a bibliographic instruction class yesterday during which the students and I got into a discussion about Ernest Hemingway and the fortunate fate of his house in Key West this past week. Sadly the rest of the Keys, including the area around Hemingway’s home, have not fared as well. The devastation has been just about total. I emailed a local historian down there on Monday but have not yet heard from him. I discovered his writing, research, and curatorial work last week when following the coverage of Irma. I soon began reading about previous hurricanes that have struck the Sunshine State over the past century. I am still waiting to hear back from the historian, whom I do not know but emailed out of concern. Hopefully he and his family have made out alright.

There is also the matter of his work over the past several decades. In that great spirit for which local historians are renowned, he and his colleagues have been gathering images, documents, and various ephemera relating to the Florida Keys for years now. Several years ago I wrote an encyclopedia article about the 1926 Miami hurricane for a reference book about natural disasters. I was also familiar with the one that followed two years later and destroyed much of the region around Lake Okeechobee. I did not know until last week that hundreds of WW1 veterans were killed in the 1935 Labor Day hurricane that struck the Keys. About 250 Great War veterans, many of them marchers in the Bonus Army, were killed when the New Deal camps in which they were housed when building a bridge were destroyed in the category five hurricane. I am going to write more about this next week. In addition to my concern for the personal safety of the individuals involved, I am worried about the fate of the valuable trove of local material they have preserved and if it is still intact. One would have to think that the historians and librarians involved would realize that another storm could take place any given year and made precautions. Still, a storm like Irma is a once-in-a-century thing. I’m really hoping to learn the fate of the people involved.

(image/Florida Keys–Public Libraries)

The Hemingway House

11 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by in Ernest Hemingway, Florida, Heritage tourism, Museums

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The Hemingway Home in Key West has survived Hurricane Irma.

Having lived big parts of my life in South Florida and Houston I watched Harvey and Irma unfold with intense concern. Thankfully everyone I know has emerged unscathed. We consider ourselves among the fortunate. I was watching too the fates of various cultural institutions that found themselves in harm’s way. The Menil Collection and Rothko Chapel in Houston seemed especially vulnerable but emerged with no flood damage from Harvey. As Irma bore down on Key West the Hemingway Home seemed destined for major damage or even outright destruction. Hemingway first started going to the Keys in the 1920s, after the First World War and his years in Paris as part of the Lost Generation. He wrote part of The Sun Also Rises in the Keys. It has now been several decades but I remember going there more than once back in the 1970s and 80s. Hemingway seemed so long gone but he had only committed suicide just 15-20 years earlier.

As Irma moved westward the Hemingway Home’s longtime caretakers decided to hold out, much to the consternation of Mariel Hemingway, who urged them to evacuate along with the rest of the residents of the Keys. The staff did not take that advice and held on. Irma is not yet over and many people are still facing serious threat. The assessment and clean-up have yet to begin in the areas that Irma has already touched. And of course it is not just Florida: Texas is still reeling from Harvey and the people of the Caribbean face incredible challenges from Irma. Thankfully there are a few, very few, things for which to be grateful right now. The Hemingway Home along with its dozens of six-toed cats has survived Irma thanks to the dedication of the staff who worked diligently to save the historic structure.

(image/Michelle Maria via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Battle lines tightening in Florida

07 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by in Florida, Joseph Roswell Hawley, Memory, Monuments and Statuary

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Olustee_Park_Olustee_Battle_Monument

From the “War that never ends” department, a curious story is emerging in Florida in which people are getting angry about a proposed Federal monument to be placed at the Battle of Olustee state park. It seems there are three Confederate, but no Union, memorials at the site. I have never understood these imbroglios. Here is a small piece, complete with video, explaining more. Olustee is actually one of the places I will be visiting as I retrace the steps of Joseph Roswell Hawley in the writing of my biography of him. I really want to see what comes of this story.

(image/Michael Rivera)

Bucket list reading

10 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Florida

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It is spring break at the college where I work and I am taking the next few days off to visit some museums, catch up on some things around the house, and just relax in general. Tonight I started a book I have wanted to read for years, decades actually: Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s The Everglades: River of Grass. I was raised in South Florida and my mother still lives there. Growing up, my friends and I went to the Everglades on an almost weekly basis, taking long hikes on the fire roads built by the Army Corps of Engineers in the middle part of the twentieth century. The Everglades have some of the most beautiful sunsets one could imagine.

I didn’t read Stoneman’s classic during my high school year because, well, I was too busy being a kid. I am not sure what I was expecting but the book offers a surprising amount of historical background on both the state and national level. I checked the book out of the library where I work because I recently agreed to write an encyclopedia article about the Miami Hurricane of 1926. Stoneman touches on it briefly. I thought writing the hurricane piece would help me learn more about Florida during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras, which it has. The Hayfoot and I have it on the 2-3 year plan to take a Civil War road trip through the Sunshine State. It is something I started thinking about more and more after visiting Gettysburg the first time and seeing the Florida monument on West Confederate Avenue. Maybe if I had grown up in the northern part of the state, which is ironically more “Southern” than south Florida, I would have had a better sense of these things. For whatever reason, it is something we never heard about growing up. It is funny how when we reach a certain age we go back and try to fill in the blanks we missed the first time around.