From reviews of the first edition: "A succinct and informed account of [Flagler's] leadership in transforming Florida's economy."--American Historical Review "An important contribution to the understanding of Standard Oil's extended partnership and how the personal desire of Flagler led to the early development of Florida's Atlantic Coast."--The Historian Henry M. Flagler (1830-1913), the ambitious Gilded Age tycoon who designed and built much of Florida's fashionable east coast, rode to success on the rails. As John D. Rockefeller's closest adviser in the 1870s, Flagler helped assemble the Standard Oil empire. In this thoroughly researched biography, Akin shows that Flagler understood early in his career that cheap freight rates determined industrial profits. Portraying Flagler as an aggressive entrepreneur, Akin documents his shrewd negotiations to obtain reduced rates, rebates, and drawbacks from the railroads, thus assuring Standard Oil's national domination over oil transportation costs. Flagler drove himself as hard as he drove a bargain, obsessed with the desire to create a monument to himself that he called "my domain." His legacy was no less than modern Florida. In 1885, at the age of fifty-five, he turned his attention away from Standard Oil and began construction of the Ponce de León luxury hotel in St. Augustine, the city where he had honeymooned with his second wife. Realizing he could never fill its rooms unless better transportation with the North was available, he embarked on the second railroad venture of his lifetime, creation of the Florida East Coast Railway. Flagler's resort empire eventually included The Breakers in Palm Beach and the Royal Palm in Miami; his Atlantic coast railroad extended all the way to Key West, an engineering achievement that was called the "eighth wonder of the world." By the beginning of the twentieth century, Flagler dominated not just the resort and railroad industries in Florida but steamship and agricultural operations, too. Florida politicians gave his projects preferential treatment, even changing the state's divorce law so he could marry for a third time. Woven into this biography are details about Flagler's family, personality, three marriages, alienation from his only son, and devotion to the Presbyterian church--copy that fueled society gossip columns from New York to Palm Beach for decades. Edward N. Akin, author of Mississippi: An Illustrated History and other works on southern history, taught at Mississippi College in Clinton. His biography of Henry Flagler won the 1985 Phi Alpha Theta manuscript prize.

An exciting biography about the man who changed Florida's east coast with his hotels and his Florida East Coast Railway. Henry Morrison Flagler was already a millionaire when he first visited Florida in 1878. He liked what he saw. He came back and built railroads along the east coast so that others could more easily come. And he built grand hotels so that those who came had a beautiful place to stay. By the end of his long and productive life, he had built a railroad all the way to the very end of the Keys. It arrived in Key West in 1912. Henry Flagler was very determined and practical. He met all the great challenges he set for himself. Ages 9-12 Next in series > > See all of the books in this series

Facing Florida is the third volume of a series sponsored by the Academy of American Franciscan History and Flagler College exploring the Franciscan legacy in the Spanish Borderlands. This volume focuses specifically on early modern southeastern America. The volume's multidisciplinary approach, Dr. Kathleen Deagan notes in the introduction, provides us "with new multivalent scholarship that often challenges prevailing assumptions about motives, social relations and power structures in the mission systems." Despite the diversity of topics in the volume, several thematic threads run through the essays. One is a concern with locating belief, motive and intention in past actors. Eliciting thought and belief in the past is a notoriously murky undertaking, but one that is directly relevant to understanding the legacy of the Franciscan project in America. Another thread in the volume is a concern with language and meaning, particularly in the ways language has conditioned how we understand the past from written and iconographic sources. A third is "exemplars," with a meaning similar to that used by Franciscan friars in conversion. Many of the essays in the volume incorporate historical anecdote, but some of the contributors highlight the ways that foregrounding a particular individual or event can bring important but underrepresented issues into sharper focus. The result is an important new collection that explores innovative avenues in the study of southeastern American Indian culture and religion prior to the 1900s.

All aboard for the history of one of the most audacious and innovative railroad engineering feats in history from the celebrated Floridian author. Although several people had considered constructing a railroad to Key West beginning in the early 1800s, it took a bold industrialist with unparalleled vision to make it happen. In 1902, Henry Flagler made the decision to extend the Florida East Coast Railway to “the nearest deepwater American port.” In this book, renowned Florida historian Seth H. Bramson reveals how the Key West Extension of the Flagler-owned FEC became the greatest railroad engineering and construction feat in United States, and possibly world, history, an accomplishment that would cement Flagler’s fame and legend for all time. Join Bramson as he recounts the years of operation of this great railroad, what it did for the Florida Keys and what it meant to the resident conchs. Includes photos

Offers a comprehensive look at the history of the state of Florida, from its discovery, exploration, and settlement through its becoming a state, to notable events in the early twenty-first century.

This book tells the story of Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin), her brother Charles, and a small group of Yankee reformers who lived in Reconstruction Florida.

Henry Morrison Flagler (1830-1913) was a railroad tycoon and partner with John D. Rockefeller in the Standard Oil Company. Although most of his fortune was made in the North, he devoted the better part of his life and his wealth to the development of Florida. Published in 1949, Florida's Flagler was the first biography of Flagler, tracing his life from his heritage and youth through his early dealings in grain, his association with Rockefeller, and his later activities in Florida. Sidney Walter Martin presents a colorful and authoritative account of the accomplishments and failures of this controversial figure.