June 2009
22 posts
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Roland Hardy's "Firsts"
Although he was but 15 years-old at the time, Roland Hardy became one of the first permanent residents of the Pompano area, when he settled here in 1899 with his family. Later in life, he could claim several other “firsts.” In 1925 he entered the insurance business, and served as president of Hardy, Sours and Walton Insurance Company, the first such agency in Pompano. When the Pompano...
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Bean Growers
A 1946-47 U. S. Department of Agriculture report identified 185 Pompano-area farmers that were growing green beans. Although the acreage devoted to beans varied greatly from farmer to farmer, the average was estimated at 157 acres per grower.
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Okra
The first commercial crop of okra in southeast Florida was reportedly grown in the early 1900s by J. M. Bailey on farmland just south of Pompano. He is said to have made $1,500 for a single acre’s harvest of the crop.
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"Red" Sutton
Like many other northerners, L. Donald Sutton arrived in Pompano Beach in the years following World War II. Nicknamed “Red” because of his hair color, he moved his family from Pittsburgh in 1947 for his wife Lorraine’s health. He initially entered the construction business, but soon began purchasing real estate. His success in the latter endeavor allowed him to retire before he...
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John Mizell's Civil War Record
Pompano’s first mayor, John R. Mizell, was one of several Civil War veterans living in the community when it incorporated in 1908. Mizell was born on December 7, 1838, in Columbia County, Florida. Following Florida’s secession from the Union, he enlisted in Company F, 7th Florida Infantry of the Confederate States Army. Records vary in when and where he enlisted, in one case stating...
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Ms. Tax Collector
The first woman elected as a Broward County constituional office-holder was Lillie Mae Smith. She was elected as Broward County Tax Collector in 1926. The previous year, she had been appointed by Governor John W. Martin to fill the office after W. O. Berryhill resigned.
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Death before Dishonor
The April, 2009, issue of The Florida Genealogist contains an anecdote that was originally published in the St. Augustine Herald*: In a skirmish between a party of Spanish troops and [Seminole] Indians, Tohopahay, a chief, was severely wounded by a load of buck shot. He bears with it for years,but becoming disordered from the effects of his wounds, and it being the opinion of his friends that it...
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Six Decades of Water Management
The South Florida Water Management District is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. Although the SFWMD was not formed until 1972, it traces it origins to the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control District which was formed by the Florida Legislature in 1949. To mark the anniversary, the SFWMD’s website has added information on the agency’s history, as well as the impact of...
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Mortality in 1900
Leading causes of death in the United States, 1900: Tuberculosis - 11.3% Pneumonia - 10.2% Diarrheal diseases - 8.1% Heart disease - 8.0% Liver disease - 5.2% Injuries - 5.1% Stroke - 4.5% Cancer - 3.7% Bronchitis - 2.6% Diphtheria - 2.3%At the turn of the twentieth century, the lifespan expectancy for a newborn was about 49 years, although this differed greatly depending on race and sex. In...
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Teaching Wasn't Easy
Ida Wilder Hardy arrived in Pompano in 1926 with her new husband, Roland Hardy (a member of a pioneer Pompano family). A graduate of Mercer University in her hometown of Macon, Georgia, Mrs. Hardy soon began to teach at Pompano’s new high school. She remembered that there were only a handful of teachers to cover all the subjects offered in the school” “We were so short of...
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Movies Alfresco
Ruby Hardin Sarvis was born in Pompano in 1926, the youngest child of David and Rosa Hardin, who had arrived here in 1910. In a 1977 interview she recalled that as a young girl she watched silent movies that were projected on the wall of the old Kilgore Seed warehouse (now Ward City). The movie projector was located in a truck that parked nearby.
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I. I. Hardy
Isaac I. Hardy was one of the early settlers in Pompano. He arrived from Hypoluxo in 1899 and purchased forty acres east of today’s Federal Highway for six dollars an acre. He built his home near Lettuce Lake (today’s Lake Santa Barbara) and farmed eggplant, peppers and tomatoes. In those early years of the settlement, Hardy traded with the Seminoles who poled their canoes down the...
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Three Who Served
Although the Seminoles were functionally exempt from the draft during the Second World War, three members of the tribe volunteered and served in the armed forces: Howard Tiger, Moses Jumper and Jack Osceola. Howard Tiger was the first to join and served with the Marines in the Pacific, participating in several hard-fought battles such as Guam and Iwo Jima, where he was wounded.
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The Seminoles and World War II
At the beginning of World War II, the Selective Service vacillated on how to treat draft-age Seminole Indians in Florida. At first an effort was made to register Seminoles on the same basis as everyone else, but several factors caused the government to have second thoughts. Even though almost a century had passed since the last of the Seminole Wars, there remained a great amount of distrust...
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What Are the Odds?
In 1936 an unlikely situation occurred: both of Florida’s United States Senators died in office, just 40 days apart. Park Tramell, who had served in the Senate since 1917 (following four years as the state’s governor) died on May 8, 1936. On June 17th, Duncan Upshaw Fletcher, who had been a U.S. Senator from Florida since 1909, passed away. Governor David Scholtz appointed Scott...
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Not What Was Expected
In southeastern Florida, the arrival of the Florida East Coast Railway created the conditions for an expansion of agricultural production. Settlements such as Pompano saw their populations and cultivated acreage increase as the railroad allowed people and goods to move in and harvested crops to move out. Perhaps the one exception was in Florida’s upper keys:Settlers in the upper keys longed...
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Moving to the Mainland
It is estimated that during the first two decades of the twentieth century as many as 12,000 Bahamians, or about 20 percent of the islands’ population, immigrated to Florida.
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Southern Hospitality
The eight-story building located at 225 North Federal Highway is now the home of Everest University’s Pompano Beach Campus. The building was originally the main office building for Southern Federal Savings and Loan. It was dedicated on March 31, 1973, with a ribbon cutting by Florida’s U.S. Senator, Edward J. Gurney, and entertainment by the Pompano Beach High School band. The new...
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Too Far Gone
Soon after the Pompano Beach Historical Society was formed, its members sought to acquire what was considered to be the oldest houses in the city for its headquarters. Located at 15 NE 2nd Street, the structure dated back to the first years of the twentieth century. It was built by James McComb, who came to the Pompano settlement around 1900 to grow pineapples. Apparently, he also raised...
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Strike!
On the south side of NE First Street, just east of Flagler Avenue in Pompano’s downtown, pioneer businessman “Cap” Campbell built a bowling alley. It is not clear when the alleys were constructed (probably in the 1930s or early 1940s), but long-time resident Don Downie, who as a youth worked there off-and-on as a pin-setter, remembers them:On the east side of the Blount Bros....
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Harvest of Shame
During the 1960s,the American public became increasingly concerned about the plight of migrants workers. Focusing on Florida, the television documentary, Harvest of Shame, revealed the poverty, squalid living conditions and other hardships migrant farmworkers and their children endured. The documentary was hosted by journalist Edward R. Murrow and was broadcast on CBS Thanksgiving weekend in...
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Vanishing Farmland
The area that is now the Sandalfoot Cove subdivision in southwest Palm Beach County was originally agricultural land owned by Pompano farmer R. V. Jones. In the 1960s, Jones sold the land to Jack Marqusee, a developer who had built the original neighborhoods of Margate as well as Melrose Park in Fort Lauderdale.
