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The 1870s
[August Park registered his Sebastian homestead in 1877. The receipt form reads as follows:]
Receiver's Duplicate Receipt, No. 5406
[August Park died at 61 years of age in 1895. His gravestone may be seen at the Sebastian Cemetery on US 1. Several other Park family gravesites may be seen there, in addition to burial sites with other notable family names such as Baird, Cain, Davis, Gibson, Hall, Hardee, Hearndon, Holtzclaw, Judah, Kroegel, Lawson, Lowder, Martin, Sembler, Stinson, and Vickers.]
from p. 56
[cruise of the Blue King, 1879]
Pioneer Chit-Chat
Dempsey Cain, carpenter by trade, originally from Georgia, lived in Bradenton, Fla., for a time, moved to Fort Drum and then to the East Coast, south of Fort Pierce. He heard about the George Fleming Grant along the Sebastian River, which had been sold by the Fleming heirs in l837 and since that date several attempts had been made to sell homesites. In the l870s, he negotiated for the purchase of 20 acres of this wild country. A freighter with a load of lumber had been wrecked off the coast near where he was living, and sufficient lumber to build a good-size house washed ashore. He built a floating abode from this lumber and started a two-month trip to his new home. He tied the pieces of lumber together and lashed the larger of his two sailboats in the center to serve as the cabin for protection of the family - his wife, Celia Padgett Cain, and l0 children. With all their possessions aboard and the smaller sailboat as the towing power, they cast off and started north. Much of the time he used a pole to keep the raft moving. In late February l887, they anchored off the north shore at the big bend of the Sebastian River, west of where the railroad crossed l5 years later. On Sept. 29, l888, the entire 20,000 acres of the Fleming Grant became the property of Herbert M. Fennel on a tax deed, with the exception of the land owned by Dwight F. Camron, Frank H. Allen and Cain. Katherine Cain White, the baby on this two-month voyage, was born Dec. 25, l876. She gave credit for her more than 90 years of good health to this early experience, which she couldn't rememer. She said she also believed the isolation of the family from civilization had much to do with the excellent health of the entire family. Home In The Wilderness Cain slowly but surely established a home in the wilderness. Freshwater fish, seafood and wild game were abundant, and fruits and vegetables were either wild or easily cultivated. The myriad of mosquitoes was nearly unbearable. After a time, almost everyone became immune to their bite, but the blood-thirty insects were bothersome, to say the least. Alligators were plentiful and could not be avoided. Predatory animals were few in number and had plenty of food, so they did not attack humans. Mosquitoes were the Cains' major worry. Indians were friendly. They often borrowed tools but never failed to return them promptly and in good condition. The children were in awe of the Indians because of their aloof manner. In l885, Cain acquired some land between the Indian River and the ocean, but never moved his home there. It was about l0 years before the Cains had any close neighbors. In l887, Benjamin Jerome, a bachelor from Connecticut, built a house west of the Cains and a little later the Stokes family built east of where the railroad came through in l89l. Will Underwood, from Canada, bought the Jerome house in l889. Capt. David Peter Gibson, one of the area's most colorful and discussed personages, moved with his family to the south bank of the Sebastian River in l879 - two years after the Cains had settled there. Their first home was at considerble distance but they were the Cains' nearet neighbor for several years. Thomas New came shortly after Gibson and was the firt postmaster of Newhaven. Gibson married Ellen Sarah Ann Aphire West on Aug. 3l, l853, and they moved from near Ocean Pond, Ga., to Florida 26 years later. Gibson brought along some purebred hogs, but soon found the forage in Florida was not suitable and his hogs died. There were seven boys and two girls in the Gibson family, all fine childrn. Mrs. Gibson was described as a cultured, good Christian lady. There were many conflicting stories about Gibson and a goodsize book could be written about him My theory is he enjoyed the reputation of being a mysterious person and did all he could to encourage it. New spent many hours digging and hauling sand to make an opening from Indian River to the ocean and Gibson did the same. The early attempts were named after each in turn, New's Cut and Gibson's Cut. Buildings Along Sebastian River An l884 map lists the buildings on the bank of the Sebastian River starting from the west as follows: Cain on the north bank and D. G. Gibson, Sebastian Post Office, August Park and John Baird all on the south bank. Gibson erected several buildings and his last home was a large, two-story house on the west side of Indian River Drive south of Roseland Road. He built a substantial dock with a square warehouse near the shore and an octagonal building of cypress at the other end, wich was referred to as The Block House. Settlers crowded into the area after the railroad was in operation, but most of these early pioneers bought land in the Sebastian area. At that time it was all in Brevard Copnty, with Titusville as the county seat. In l905 the part of the Sebastian River flowing at about a 45-degree angle to the northeast became the boundary line between St. Lucie County and Brevard County. The Cain property was considered part of Roseland, but after l905 was in a different county. Alfred White came to Florida before the turn of the century and met Katherine Cain. They were married in l898 and moved south of the Sebastian river. Aunt Katy White was left a widow in l902 with two children, Freda and Katie. Opportunities for earning a living were scarce and Mrs. White undertook the responsibility of caring for three orange groves which were on the south bank of the Sebastian River halfway between the railroad and U.S. l for absentee owners. It was hard work, but Mrs. White carried on and was able to give her two daughters an education. They grew up, were married and moved to Staten Island, N.Y.
Riverfront Rich In History As Sebastian's riverfront district becomes reality, many tourists will undoubtedly for the first time get a glimpse into the area's old Florida fishing village history. And those who believe the district will only turn the city into a tourist haven may wish for some of whatever worked a century ago, as the area's first tourists liked what they saw, but did not stay too long. The first tourists to Sebastian arrived by steamship, an industry which saw its golden era on the Indian River from 1877 to about 1900. One popular ship in those days was the "St. Sebastian," named after the town that was a common stop on the Titusville-to-Jupiter run. The ship, called "the handsomest steamboat ever seen in Florida waters" by the Florida Times Union in Jacksonville, was 130 feet long and came complete with staterooms. It was a sister ship to the "St. Augustine" and the "St. Lucie," which also came through Sebastian, and were built by the Indian River Steamboat Co. in Brevard County. There were more than 100 ship landings on the Indian River from Titusville to Jupiter. Some marked large settlements, while others were but remote plantation landings. Sylvanus Kitching, a Sebastian pioneer from England, built the first steamship dock in Sebastian, near where Captain Hiram's is today. It reached 1,100 feet out into six feet of water. Many tourists probably stayed at Roseland's Ercildoune Hotel, built in 1889. President Grover Cleveland is said to have resided there for a week or two of hunting and fishing, the principle activities which attracted tourists to the area. Then Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railroad came through Sebastian in 1893, and everything changed. The Indian River Steamboat Co. went bankrupt in 1895, and the "St. Sebastian's" next destination was Key West, where she was used to haul ammunition during the Spanish-American War. A large share of the Steamship passengers were tourists, since an 1893 census reveals that only 300 people lived in Florida along the coast from Melbourne to Miami. Why would tourists come to a remote area such as Sebastian a century ago? Maybe for some of the same reasons they do today. "I think many came down for the weather," said Sebastian historian George Keyes, who should know. He lived in Clearwater for a year in 1934 because of asthma complicated by Rhode Island winters. "The entire trip was interesting to the tourist for its novelty," wrote Fred Hopwood in his book "Steamboating On The Indian River." "On one hand was a narrow strip of beach across which, at intervals, one may see the masts of southbound ocean steamers keeping close in shore to avoid the Gulf Stream," Hopwood writes. "On the other hand are occasional settlements with the unbroken forest between, and beyond them a wilderness that had never yet been thoroughly explored." Hopwood, sitting on his back porch behind his home in Melbourne one day recently, talked of how Victorian America loved the steamship trip down the Indian River for a variety of reasons. "It was a leisurely way to travel," he said. "The boats only got up to 8 or 9 miles per hour. And there was no clutter, no noise. Just one big wilderness, with lots of wildlife." The "St. Sebastian" featured 24 staterooms, a saloon, and "a place to play cards," Hopwood said. If you were not lucky enough to get a room you slept on a chaise lounge or on a blanket on the deck. Popular were train-steamship tours out of New York to luxury hotels in Palm Beach, Hopwood said, with many stops along the way. And Indian River County gladly offered its share of hunting and fishing guides, as well as boat rentals. But as the trains brought more and more tourists south, most were intent on getting to Palm Beach or Miami quickly, and rarely spent much time in Sebastian, said Cora Sembler Sadler, who grew up in Wabasso, Roseland, Grant and Sebastian. "Sebastian didn't have too much to offer but the friendliness of the people and fishing," she said. "A couple women had boarding houses for people who would come down for the winter, but most tourists wanted to get further south." Tourists who did stop off at tiny Sebastian occasionally had their difficulties. Hopwood tells the story of a man who got off a ship and went to the Sebastian post office, where he had to send a box by mail, and was charged 57 cents. But the man only had a $20 bill. "The postmaster had to go borrow from four or five stores to change that $20 bill," said Hopwood. "There wasn't a lot of money floating around back then."
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