Florida Frontiers: The Weekly Newspaper Articles of the Florida Historical Society is a weekly newspaper article covering history-based events, exhibitions, activities, places and people in Florida. The newspaper articles premiered in January 2014. We explore the relevance of Florida history to contemporary society and promote awareness of heritage and culture tourism options in the state.
William Bartram fought alligators, befriended Seminoles, and meticulously documented the flora and fauna of eighteenth century Florida. His book “Travels through North and South Carolina, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws, Containing an Account of the Soil and Natural Productions of Those...
Pirates have been romanticized in popular culture for more than a century. We get our ideas about what pirates were like from sources such as the Robert Louis Stevenson novel “Treasure Island,” the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta “Pirates of Penzance,” and the fairytale “Peter Pan.” Dozens of films portray swashbuckling men of the sea, most recently the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series. Most of...
Ernest Hemingway, born in 1899, published his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, in 1926. He was living in Paris with the first of his four wives, Hadley Richardson. Hemingway divorced Richardson the following year. Writer John Dos Passos suggested to Hemingway that he might enjoy Key West, Florida, and in March 1928, Hemingway visited the island for the first time. “He fell in love with Key West...
Many Florida towns were built around Seminole War forts and some, such as Fort Pierce, Fort Lauderdale, and Fort Myers, retain their fort names. Fort Shackleford was constructed in 1855 during the Third Seminole War. Archaeologists continue to search for its exact location. Archaeologist Annette Snapp is Operations Manager for the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Seminole Indian Museum in Clewiston, and is leading...
This week the nation is remembering a series of three marches in support of voting rights that took place fifty years ago. Peaceful protesters in Florida’s neighboring state of Alabama were attacked by police. The demonstrations encouraged President Lyndon Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act. Less than a year earlier, demonstrations in Florida helped lead Johnson to signing the Civil Rights Act...
People have lived in Florida for more than 10,000 years. March is Florida Archaeology Month, and the 2015 theme is “Innovators of the Archaic.” The Archaic Period began about 9,500 years ago and continued until about 3,000 years ago. Florida is rich with Archaic Period archaeological sites. Stone tools, pottery with distinctive regional styles, and prehistoric architectural foundations called...
The loud booming of cannon fire ripped through the north Florida pine forest fifteen miles east of Lake City as startled cavalry horses whinnied. Repeated rifle fire rang through the trees as more than 10,000 soldiers confronted each other on February 20, 1864, near Ocean Pond. The Battle of Olustee was the largest conflict of the American Civil War fought on Florida soil. Each side began with...
Before the Hippie Movement of the 1960s promoted expanded consciousness, sexual freedom, and a widespread questioning of authority in American popular culture, the Beat Generation of the 1950s led a counterculture movement of their own. The term “Beat Generation” brings to mind the City Lights Bookstore and Vesuvio Café in San Francisco, or poetry readings at smoky jazz clubs in New York, but it...