FHS Press Book

Jonathan Dickinson’s Journal,or God's Protecting Providence: An Early American Castaway Narrative

Title:
Jonathan Dickinson’s Journal,or God's Protecting Providence: An Early American Castaway Narrative

First published in 1699, “Jonathan Dickinson’s Journal” is a firsthand account of the 1696 wreck of the ship Reformation, the castaway’s journey up the east coast of Florida, and their encounters with the Indigenous people living there. This narrative has become a valuable resource for historians, archaeologists, ethnographers, and literary scholars. Edited with a fresh perspective, this book also includes previously unpublished, recently discovered material from 1696, that predates the familiar version of this important work.

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Price:$24.95

Dispatches from Beluthahatchee

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Dispatches from Beluthahatchee

Stetson Kennedy (1916-2011) was a life-long activist for social justice, environmental stewardship, and the preservation of traditional cultures. He wrote six published books, contributed to dozens of other volumes, and composed thousands of articles as a journalist and freelance essayist. Stetson used acerbic prose, down-home Southern humor, double entendre, and colorful idioms to engage his readers and to skewer those who would malign or exploit others.

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Price:$24.95

The Spanish Seminole: The Untold History of the Spanish Indians as Shared by a Descendant

Title:
The Spanish Seminole: The Untold History of the Spanish Indians as Shared by a Descendant

In the 1700s, as Florida’s Indigenous tribes were displaced, the forebears of the Miccosukee and Seminole descended along the southwestern Gulf Coast. They soon began working with Hispanic and Indigenous fishermen from various Spanish colonies, who had seasonal operations along the barrier islands.

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Price:$24.95

Discovering A.S.J. Allen:  A Story of Skinfolk, Kinfolk, and Village Folk

Title:
Discovering A.S.J. Allen:  A Story of Skinfolk, Kinfolk, and Village Folk

2023  Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Award Winner

Growing up, Alonzo Felder heard just a few stories about his great-grandfather A.S.J. Allen. In this book the author shares his process, providing guidance to others seeking to discover the stories of their ancestors. The Rev. A.S.J. Allen was a respected African American community leader in Alachua County, Florida. In 1904, he was killed by a white neighbor over a property border dispute. In the Jim Crow era, the white neighbor faced no consequences for his actions.

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Price:$29.95

The Biography of John Wayne Mixson: Florida’s 39th Governor

Title:
The Biography of John Wayne Mixson: Florida’s 39th Governor

2022 Samuel Proctor Award Winner

John Wayne Mixson served as a Florida state representative, Florida lieutenant governor, and briefly as the 39th governor of Florida. The results of his work while filling these roles continue to positively impact the state of Florida and its citizens.

Author Sid Riley was a political columnist, managing editor, and part owner of The Jackson County Times newspaper. For this book, Riley conducted extensive oral history interviews with John Wayne Mixson, and his wife Margie Mixson.

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Price:$19.95

An Englishman in the Seminole War: A Memoir Based Upon the Letters of John Bemrose

Title:
An Englishman in the Seminole War: A Memoir Based Upon the Letters of John Bemrose

John Bemrose came to America from England as an unaccompanied 16-year-old in 1831. He served in the US Army as a dedicated hospital steward during the Second Seminole War. This exciting memoir, available to the public for the first time, provides valuable new insights into Florida history and culture from An Englishman in the Seminole War.

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Price:$19.95

Mastodons, Mansions and Antebellum Ghosts: A Sketchbook of Voices Rising Up From Florida's Red Hills

Title:
Mastodons, Mansions and Antebellum Ghosts: A Sketchbook of Voices Rising Up From Florida's Red Hills

This fascinating “sketchbook” of Florida history and culture focuses on the rural Red Hills of north Florida. Comprised of what is now Madison, Jefferson, and Leon counties, this region is home to a rich heritage that includes prehistoric people and megafauna, Native Americans, Spanish settlers, British soldiers, and Southern Plantations dependent upon the work of enslaved people. Celt and African traditions became incorporated into the Southern folklore of the area, including colorful traditions and ghost stories.

 

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Price:$29.95

Henry Plant: Pioneer Empire Builder

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Henry Plant: Pioneer Empire Builder

“This is a must read for every railroad buff. It adds to the literature on Henry Bradley Plant and the machinations of late 19th century transportation barons. Plant led an interesting life—as a Confederate and a Yankee—juggling the demands for business success with an ever-changing political milieu. Plant’s achievements rivaled those of Henry Flagler in making modern Florida.” - Nick Wynne, The Florida Historical Society

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Price:$19.95

A Bosnian Diary - A Floridian's Experience In Nation Building

Title:
A Bosnian Diary - A Floridian's Experience In Nation Building

William Potter served as an International election supervisor in Bosnia-Herzegovina and as the Air Force legal advisor to the Office of the High Representative and government of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In addition, he served as the Head of the Rule of Law Department in the administration of the High Representative Paddy Ashdown.

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Price:$10.00

Black Cloud: The Deadly Hurricane of 1928

Title:
Black Cloud: The Deadly Hurricane of 1928

The deadly hurricane of 1928 claimed 2,500 lives, and the long-forgotten story of the casualties, as told in Black Cloud, continues to stir passion. Among the dead were 700 black Floridians - men, women, and children who were buried in an unmarked West Palm Beach ditch during a racist recovery and rebuilding effort that conscripted the labor of blacks much like latter-day slaves. Palm Beach Post reporter Eliot Kleinberg has penned this gripping tale from dozens of interviews with survivors, diary entries, accounts from newspapers, government documents, and reports from the National Weather Service and the Red Cross. Immortalized in Zora Neale Hurston's classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, thousands of poor blacks had nowhere to run when the waters of Lake Okeechobee rose. No one spoke for them, no one stood up for them, and no one could save them. With heroic tales of survival and loss, this book finally gives the dead the dignity they deserve. The new, updated edition of this important book is published by the Florida Historical Society Press.

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Price:$19.95

Mary McLeod Bethune: Her Life and Legacy

Title:
Mary McLeod Bethune: Her Life and Legacy

This book is easy and interesting reading. It presents the life and legacy of the late Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune holistically and concludes with testimonies from living witnesses. The author narrates Dr. Bethune's early years and documents how developments in those years influenced her later accomplishments. Permeating Dr. Bethune's spectacular career is a philosophy based on deep religious convictions and held that work was honorable, no matter how menial the task. - Dr. Oswald P. Bronson President of Bethune-Cookman College, July 19, 2004

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Price:$19.95

Weird Florida II: In a State of Shock

Title:
Weird Florida II: In a State of Shock

Cows in the Intracoastal Waterway? A bloodsucking night creature on the loose in Miami? The Virgin Mary on a cheese sandwich? Nationally known talk show host high on drugs? The mayor of one small town who banned Satan? The mayor of another small town who campaigned on a platform of "hot loins?" Yep! All this and more too! It's all in Eliot Kleinberg's Weird Florida II; In A State of Shock.

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Price:$10.00

The Trouble With Panthers

Title:
The Trouble With Panthers

2011 Patrick D. Smith Award

“The trouble with panthers is they can’t change. With the whole world changin round it, old panther got no choice but to go on bein a panther. It can’t reason like you and me -- can’t decide to earn its livin a little differently.”

Central Florida, November 2004. Upon hearing this admonition from his dying grandfather, young cowman, Bodie Rawlerson, doesn’t hesitate to promise the old man that he won’t be like the panther. Though he hates change, fears it more than anything else, he vows to do whatever necessary to carry on the family legacy of raising cattle on the land he so dearly loves. But unbeknownst to Bodie, forces are already in motion to render his promise impossible to keep. Within days of his grandfather’s passing, these forces of human (and inhuman) nature will convince him that nothing lasts forever, that change is life’s only certainty -- that time and chance do indeed rule us all.

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Price:$19.95

Then Sings My Soul: The Scott Kelly Story

Title:
Then Sings My Soul: The Scott Kelly Story

2008 CHARLTON TEBEAU BOOK AWARD WINNER

“In this exciting book—part political history, part travelogue—Dorothy Smiljanich sheds light on 1960s Florida with her vivid portrayal of one of Florida’s most colorful political figures, Scott Kelly. Mayor of Lakeland at 28 and legislative power broker in his 30s, Kelly strode a wide path in the swirling political cauldron of 1960s Florida. Kelly twice came within an eyelash of being governor. This vivid portrayal of Kelly’s life begins in the Old Florida of tobacco and turpentine, and concludes with the New Florida of huge housing developments and super expressways, a Florida Kelly helped create.”
James M. Denham, Professor of History, Florida Southern College

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Price:$10.00

The St. Johns From The Marshlands To The Atlantic

Title:
The St. Johns From The Marshlands To The Atlantic

The authors are not historians or experts of any kind but they have traversed the waters of the river by air boat from the flood-plain and marshes southwest of Fellsmere which mark its beginning, and later by larger vessel to the point where its waters join one of the great oceans of the world. We have endeaved to show the river as we saw it and to provide accurate descriptions and information.

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Price:$10.00

Saving Home

Title:
Saving Home

Saving Home is an historical novel set during the English siege of St. Augustine in 1702. The story is told through the eyes of nine-year-old Luissa de Cueva and her friends, ten-year-old Diego de las Alas, and a Timucuan Indian girl named Junco. Based on meticulous research, Saving Home engages readers of all ages with descriptions of Spanish and Native American families seeking refuge for more than six weeks within the walls of the Castillo de San Marcos as St. Augustine goes up in flames and a battle rages around them. This exciting historical novel has messages about life, family, and what is important that will resonate with both the young and the young at heart.

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Price:$19.95

River Road Stories

Title:
River Road Stories

River Road Stories is a little masterpiece of story telling. Mary Eschbach, a Rockledge resident, captures life along the Indian River as only a resident can. What a wonderful way to celebrate a way of life that has passed us all by! --Patrick Smith, author of A Land Remembered

There are some authors and some books that you start to read with interest and finish with envy. River Road Stories is such a book. Packed in a few pages, Stories manages to describe in great detail the daily humdrum and occasional excitement of a young girl's life along the Indian River Lagoon. At the same time, River Road Stories is a song of praise for a lifestyle that is largely gone, but which exists forever in the mind of the author. Once you read River Road Stories, you'll become part of the past. --Nick Wynne, PhD, The Florida Historical Society

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Price:$15.00

Palmetto Country

Title:
Palmetto Country

Stetson Kennedy collected folklore and oral histories throughout Florida for the WPA between 1937 and 1942. The result was this classic Florida book, back in print for the first time in more than twenty years with an Afterword update and dozens of historic photographs never before published with this work. Alan Lomax said, "I doubt very much that a better book about Florida folklife will ever be written."

“I don't know of any book on my whole shelf that hits me any harder than Palmetto Country. It gives me a better trip and taste and look and feel for Florida than I got in the forty-seven states I've actually been in body and tramped in boot. If only, and if only, all our library books could say what [Kennedy does]—the jokes and songs and old ballads about voodoo and the hoodoo and the bigly winds down in your neck of the woodvine.”  --Woody Guthrie Folk Musician and singer-songwriter, This Land is Your Land

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Price:$29.95

Overhead The Sun

Title:
Overhead The Sun

Overhead The Sun, a gripping historical novel about race relations in Florida during the late Nineteenth Century. Written by the late John Ashworth, Overhead The Sun is based on the tragic story of Rosewood, a small Florida community of African-Americans that was destroyed by a mob of whites in 1923. The central character in Overhead The Sun is Julia Clayton, a young woman striving mightily to achieve emotional and intellectual independence. Her husband, Tom Clayton, works for Arthur Wilkins (who is based on the real life person of Henry Flagler) who seeks to extend his hotel and railroad empire across the Sunshine State. Neglected and verbally abused, Julia Clayton takes a heretical economics professor, Thorstein Brach, as her lover. The intrigues and conflicts of personality that mark these tortured relationships light up the pages of Overhead The Sun.

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Price:$10.00

Life and Death at Windover, Excavations of a 7000 year old Pond Cemetary

Title:
Life and Death at Windover, Excavations of a 7000 year old Pond Cemetary

In 1982, a backhoe operator working at what would become the new Windover Farms housing development in Titusville, Florida, uncovered a human skull. The bones of several other individuals soon emerged from the peat bog. It would be determined that the human remains uncovered at Windover were between 7,000 and 8,000 years old, making them 3,200 years older than King Tutankhamen and 2,000 years older than the Great Pyramids of Egypt. This was just the beginning of an archaeological adventure that continues today.

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Price:$19.95

In No Ways Tired: The NAACP's Struggle to Integrate the Duval County Public School System

Title:
In No Ways Tired: The NAACP's Struggle to Integrate the Duval County Public School System

2016 Stetson Kennedy Award Winner

Abel Bartley's new book In No Ways Tired is both the unique story of a particular Florida community's struggle with the integration of public schools, and a reflection of similar experiences throughout the South there desegregation "with all deliberate speed" took decades to achieve.

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Price:$19.95

Hannibal Square Heritage Collection, The: Photographs and Oral Histories

Title:
Hannibal Square Heritage Collection, The: Photographs and Oral Histories

2017 Samuel Proctor Award Winner 

The historic photographs published in this book are part of the permanent collection and display at the Hannibal Square Heritage Center, located in Winter Park, Florida, USA. The center is a program of Crealdé School of Art and is operated in partnership with the City of Winter Park. The Heritage Center was established in 2007 as a tribute to the past, present and future of Winter Park's African American community. It is a unique cultural facility that celebrates community heritage through documentary photography and public art. Crealde School of Art is a forty year old, widely recognized visual arts school, offering an educational curriculum of over 100 courses for students of all ages and backgrounds, three galleries, and an award winning outreach program that brings arts and humanities to many underserved communities throughout Central Florida. Its mission is based on the belief that the arts are for everyone; every individual has a story worth telling and something creative to contribute, making a positive impact on family and community life.

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Price:$24.95

Forcing Change

Title:
Forcing Change

2018 James J. Horgan Book Award Winner

It is June 1963 and fifteen-year-old Margaret Jefferson is being arrested at a sit-in at a lunch counter in St. Augustine. The Civil Rights Movement has found its way into her hometown, and Maggie feels a deep need to be a part of it. She believes in the ideals of the movement and the ultimate goal of equality. She also finds the nonviolence that the protestors are committed to very comforting.

However, as the summer and fall of 1963 unfold in St. Augustine, their nonviolent protests are met with rising resistance, aggression, and intimidation from local government officials as well as the Ku Klux Klan. Cattle prods used on protestors, firebombs thrown into the homes of families trying to integrate the schools, teenagers held in jail indefinitely. No one is safe, it seems.

This story, told through Maggie's innocent and hopeful eyes, will help a new generation of young people to understand the strength and sacrifices of those who worked so hard for civil rights in this country. It will also help to shine the spotlight on the role that St. Augustine, and Florida, had in the movement.

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Price:$14.95

Florida's Maritime Heritage: The Sketchbook of Philip Ayer Sawyer 1938

Title:
Florida's Maritime Heritage: The Sketchbook of Philip Ayer Sawyer 1938

This is intended to be a faithful reproduction of the original, with background information added as a Introduction and to accompany some of the sketches. Sawyer's expectation was that his drawings should eventually illustrate a manuscript which would describe the maritime history of Florida. In a small way it is hoped this book, in his memory and seventy-five years later, may that purpose.

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Price:$29.95

Florida's Golden Age 1880-1930: The Rollins College Colloquy

Title:
Florida's Golden Age 1880-1930: The Rollins College Colloquy

How did Florida, one of the country’s four smallest and least developed states in 1880, become within fifty years not only a tourist mecca but also a hub for technological innovation?

To explore this remarkable Golden Age, Rollins College brought together a wide variety of scholars and artists – historians and poets, biologists and environmental scientists, philosophers and literary critics – to help shine light on a period that, despite its challenges and failures, transformed the Sunshine State.  This volume brings together their insights as we all continue reflecting on our post, our present, and our future.

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Price:$24.95

Florida's Frontier: The Way Hit Wuz

Title:
Florida's Frontier: The Way Hit Wuz

"The Way Hit Wuz" is a novel about Florida's history similiar to Patrick Smith's book "A Land Remembered". Recently reprinted 2010 with new cover. 

As a Mizell family descendant who married and had children with a Barber, author Mary Ida Bass Barber Shearhart has a personal interest in the infamous Barber-Mizell Family Feud. Florida’s Frontier: The Way Hit Wuz is written as a compelling, action-filled novel set between 1841 and 1870, but is firmly based in historical fact. In addition to offering descriptions of pioneer life in Florida from running cattle, to making soap, to cane grinding, the author provides insight about the Spanish colonization of Florida, the Seminole Indian Wars, the Civil War, and other topics

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Price:$24.95
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