This unusual, richly illustrated guidebook details Florida's historic pioneer and cracker villages, describing the homes, work-ways and folk-ways of the states early settlers, through preserved and tangible objects and structures. Across the state, dedicated local historians and community groups have carefully preserved and moved 19th- and early 20th-century structures, including both homes and workplaces, to specially created villages in order to display the lives of Florida pioneers. The tools, houses, farms, gardens, barns, sugar and turpentine mills, churches and schools that are gathered into twenty separate sites are described here, for the first time in a single volume. Through the rich collections of household utensils, mills, and structures, the visitor can appreciate the details of the everyday life, work, hardships, and recreation of past generations of Floridians. The book is an indispensable handbook and guide for the casual or dedicated historic tourist as well as for parents and teachers seeking to expose young people to the vanishing lifestyles of Florida's pioneers. Contact information, hours, special events, and detailed descriptions of each structure at the sites provide the casual or dedicated visitor with both practical facts for arranging trips, and the specific family histories of the pioneers who built and lived in the homes.

The history of the Palm Beach area, the Treasure Coast, and Lake Okeechobee is one of turbulence, growth, and especially change. Meet the visionaries and outlaws, physicians and poets who shaped this region of southeast Florida from the 1690s through the 1990s. Author William McGoun's stories are sometimes hair-raising, sometimes amusing, and always engaging. Well researched and dotted with photos from The Palm Beach Post archives, this collection of mini-biographies reads like a who's who of Florida history.

A compilation of stories documenting the early settlers in the Bland, Hasan, Sugar Hill, and Traxler communities of northwest Alachua County, Florida, and authored by the descendants of those pioneers.

Formed seemingly out of steel, glass, and concrete, with millions of residents from around the globe, Miami has ancient roots that can be hard to imagine today. Before the Pioneers takes readers back through forgotten eras to the stories of the people who shaped the land along the Miami River long before most modern histories of the city begin. Andrew Frank begins the chronicle of the Magic City's long history 4,000 years ago when Tequesta Indians settled at the mouth of the river, erecting burial mounds, ceremonial centers, and villages. They created a network of constructed and natural waterways through the Everglades and trade routes to the distant Calusa on the west coast. Centuries later, the area became a stopover for Spanish colonists on their way to Havana, a haven where they could shelter from storms and obtain freshwater, lumber, and other supplies. Frank brings to life the vibrant colonies of fugitives and seafarers that formed on the shores of Biscayne Bay in the eighteenth century. He tells of the emergence of the tropical fruit plantations and the accompanying enslaved communities, as well as the military occupation during the Seminole Wars. Eventually, the small seaport town flourished with the coming of "pioneers" like Julia Tuttle and Henry Flagler who promoted the city as a place of luxury and brought new waves of residents from the North. Frank pieces together the material culture and the historical record of the Miami River to re-create the fascinating past of one of the world's most influential cities.

Brings together the reminiscences of two pioneers who came of age in antebellum Florida's Columbia County and the nearby Suwannee River Valley. Though they held markedly different positions in society, the two shared the adventure, hardship and tragedy that characterized Florida's pioneer era.

Wild and wooly recollections from the Florida frontier Cracker Times and Pioneer Lives brings together the reminiscences of two pioneers who came of age in antebellum Florida's Columbia County and the nearby Suwannee River Valley. Though they held markedly different positions in society, they shared the adventure, thrill, hardship, and tragedy that characterized Florida's pioneer era. With sensitivity, poignancy, and humor, George Gillett Keen and Sarah Pamela Williams record anecdotes and memories that touch upon important themes of frontier life and reveal the remarkable diversity of Florida's settlers. Keen's story typifies that of many "Cracker" families. Born in Georgia, he moved with his parents to the Florida Territory in 1830 in search of a better life. He grew up in a dangerous yet exciting setting, and as an old man at the turn of the twentieth century recorded his colorful memories with a verve and vernacular reminiscent of the Georgia humorist, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet. Keen writes about subsistence farming, cattle grazing, the Seminole wars, marriage customs, medical practices, politics, the abundance of wildlife, and the paucity of educational opportunities. Admittedly not a Cracker, Sarah Pamela Williams was the daughter of a nationally recognized man of letters. In 1847 she moved to Columbia County's seat of Alligator (Lake City) and later married into one of northeast Florida's prominent planter families. She recorder her recollections of a life brightened by social functions, travel, and cultural endeavors. Offering a rare glimpse into Florida's Civil War homefront, Williams tells of making clothes of homespun, tithing crops to the Confederacy, fearing hostilities just thirteen miles from her home, and surviving as a widow in the lean postwar era. Cracker Times and Pioneer Lives features biographical sketches of more than 280 persons mentioned by Keen and Williams in their writings, many of whom subsequently pioneered settlement in the Florida peninsula.