Senator Duncan U. Fletcher

By Linda McCauley

Duncan U. Fletcher Middle and High Schools are landmarks of the Beaches. With so much needed attention focused on the naming of our public schools, I wanted to address the history of Senator Duncan U. Fletcher.

Born in 1859 in Americus, GA, Fletcher attended Vanderbilt University and was admitted to the bar in 1880. He moved to Jacksonville and set up his law practice, where he became a founding member of the Jacksonville Bar Association and its first President. In 1896, Fletcher was one of three attorneys appointed to administer the bar examination to James Weldon Johnson, who in addition to his many other accomplishments, was the first African American man admitted to the Florida Bar by examination. It was Duncan Fletcher who moved that Johnson be admitted to the bar over the objection of another examiner.

Fletcher served as the 21st and 25th Mayor of Jacksonville and was instrumental in rebuilding the city after the Great Fire of 1901. He also served five consecutive terms, from 1909 until his death in 1934, representing Florida in the United States Senate as a Democrat. One of his most notable achievements while in the Senate was introducing legislation in 1928 to create Everglades National Park, which was signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934.

Fletcher died in 1936 from a heart attack while still in office. His remains are interred in Jacksonville at the Evergreen Cemetery.

In addition to having our two schools named in Fletcher’s honor, a dormitory at University of Florida is named after him. It is part of the historic Murphee area and it forms half of the “F” in the iconic “UF” buildings. Fletcher High School was built in 1937, after Senator Fletcher’s death through a federal grant he received to build it.

Right: Photo of Senator Fletcher and two constituents, John and Lena Cypress, 1931. Photo courtesy of Florida Bureau of Archives and Record Management, Florida Photographic Collection.

Left: First graduating class of Fletcher High School, 1938. Beaches Museum Archives.

Rhoda L. Martin was born a slave in Abbeville, South Carolina in 1832. In late 1891, she moved to the beaches area as a free woman.

By 1905, enough African Americans had moved to the area for Martin and other Christians to found St. Andrews African Methodist Episcopal Church. Martin ensured that members of her community had access to education and faith from her own home until the founding of Ole school #144. This school provided desegregated education long before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and would bus older students to the difficult to reach high school in Jacksonville.

Rhoda L. Martin passed away in 1948 at the age of 116. Ole School #144 is now the Rhoda L. Martin Cultural Heritage Center and provides free academic assistance to elementary students three days a week.

Beaches Museum has missed you!  We are happy to announce the reopening of our History Park on May 21! We invite you all to come take a self-guided tour through our beautiful History Park. The garden is blooming, the birds are singing and history is waiting on you!

A brief guide to the history of each building and feature of our Park will be available through phones and other mobile devices. We hope you can learn something new every time you come. Visit our new informational page on Clio here: https://www.theclio.com/entry/99431. Information is included about the 1911 Steam Locomotive, the Pablo Beach Post Office, the Mayport Florida East Coast Railway Depot and Foreman’s House, the 1873 Oesterreicher-McCormick Cabin, the Beaches Museum Chapel and more.

“Our Heritage Garden is in full bloom and has never been more beautiful, making it an ideal time to take a peaceful walk through our gardens and historic buildings. The addition of the free mobile app will give everyone the opportunity to learn more about each of the buildings and features in the park” says Chris Hoffman, Director of Beaches Museum.

With visitors and our volunteers in mind, our buildings will remain closed until we can open them safely. We request that you maintain appropriate distancing so everyone can be safe and comfortable during their tour.

“We are excited to begin welcoming our guests back to Beaches Museum” adds Hoffman.

For more information, please call 904-241-5657 or visit the Beaches Museum website, www.beachesmuseum.org.

Test your knowledge of Beaches History with the Beaches Museum Crossword Puzzle!

You can print the puzzle or try it online here: https://crosswordlabs.com/view/beaches-museum

Need something to keep the kids entertained? Try this Home History Scavenger Hunt to help kids learn what history is to them!

Uncovering the history of Manhattan Beach – Florida’s first African American beach resort in the segregated South – has been a labor of love for Beaches Museum Associate Director, Brittany Cohill.  Manhattan Beach, located at present-day Hanna Park, was founded by Henry Flagler around 1900 as a place for black employees of his Florida East Coast companies to spend their leisure time, including those building his Continental Hotel. In keeping with national, regional, and local Jim Crow laws the Beaches area was segregated. Until the late 1930s, Manhattan Beach was the only beach in the Jacksonville-area open to African Americans. However, with no visual evidence of the site remaining today and little archival material, uncovering this history relies heavily on the contributions of members of the community with direct ties to its past.

Dr. Yvonne Hicks shares family history and photos with the Beaches Museum

Cohill’s research began as she was pursuing her master’s degree in history at the University of North Florida. She transformed her student project into a public presentation which she debuted as part of the Museum’s Boardwalk Talk series in August 2017. Since then, Cohill has continued her research under the auspices of the Museum and her presentation has evolved in step.

Over the course of two and a half years, she has delivered her presentation nearly a dozen times. Each time, someone from the community comes forward with another piece of the puzzle.

Most recently, Cohill had the pleasure of sitting down with Kenneth LeSesne and Dr. Yvonne Hicks. Mr. LeSesne’s grandfather, Mack Wilson, was a prominent business owner in Manhattan Beach. Dr. Hicks’ great-grandmother was Mack Wilson’s sister.

They chronicled their family’s story including the journey out of plantation slavery in the Florida panhandle to becoming property and business owners in Jacksonville and Manhattan Beach.

Their oral histories – now recorded and housed in the Beaches Museum archive – are truly invaluable. Just as invaluable are the photographs Dr. Hicks provided of her family spending time at Manhattan Beach in the 1930s – all of which can be viewed in the Museum’s newest pop-up exhibit.

The exhibit, “Recovering Manhattan Beach: Florida’s First African American Beach Resort in the Segregated South,” will be on display at the Rhoda L. Martin Cultural Heritage Center in June 2019. In conjunction with the exhibit installation, Cohill will deliver the newest iteration of her presentation on June 4, 2019, which is now available on YouTube here.

Reproductions of “The Green Book” accompany the traveling exhibit.

Michener and the McCormicks

By Johnny Woodhouse

Best-selling author James Michener paid an impromptu visit to the Ponte Vedra Beach home of Jean and J.T. McCormick on February 13, 1981.

At the time, Michener, then 74 and considered “America’s best loved author” was working on a fictional novel about the history of the U.S. space program. “Space,” published in 1982, would  become one of Michener’s most popular books, prompting “a first printing so large that no warehouse in the country could stock all the copies,” according to a biography of the author.

How the McCormicks, a wealthy couple known for their civic involvement at the Beaches, got to know the famous writer from Doylestown, PA, is an interesting nugget of local history.

According to a daughter of the couple, Suzanne McCormick Taylor of Ponte Vedra Beach, the McCormicks first made Michener’s acquaintance in the summer of 1980 at a famous Wyoming resort. “They met him at a party at the Old Baldy Club [in Saratoga, WY],” Taylor recalled. “Mr. Michener was quite taken with my mother and her interest in history.”

The founder of the Beaches Area Historical Society (BAHS) in 1978, Jean McCormick first became interested in local history during America’s Bicentennial celebration in 1976. Her late husband, J.T., was a direct lineal descendant of the Solanas, the oldest documented family of St. Augustine.

It’s no surprise that Jean McCormick, then president of the BAHS, and Michener, known for writing sweeping, historical-based novels such as “Hawaii” and “Centennial,” became quick friends.

A meticulous researcher, Michener had a great fondness for historians and archivists. In the introduction to “Centennial,” a 1974 novel about the settlement of the American West, Michener thanked the history department at the Wyoming State Archives for allowing him to do a portion of his research there.

The book’s fictional town is situated on the Platte River, which runs across Colorado and into Wyoming. J.T. McCormick’s family had been involved in cattle ranching in Wyoming’s North Platte River Valley since the 1950s, according to Suzanne McCormick Taylor.

“Mother told [Michener] to come to Jacksonville [whenever he was in the area] and he did. He called from the airport and said, ‘We’re here,’ and mother invited him to a dinner party that night.”

Michener had already begun the first draft of “Space” in early 1981, according to “Michener: A Writer’s Journey.” He had been appointed to NASA’s Advisory Board in 1979. A likely topic of conversation at the McCormicks home on Feb. 13, 1981, would have been J.T.’s long business association with NASA.

For 12 consecutive years dating to the early 1960s, McCormick Construction was involved in several projects at the Cape, including construction of the launch pads. The construction firm also built the so-called “Road to the Moon,” which was used to transport the first Apollo rockets and later the Space Shuttles to the launch site.

At the time of his visit to Ponte Vedra Beach, Michener was married to his third wife, Mari Sabusawa, whom he wed in 1955. In a black-and-white photo taken during his visit, Michener is pictured dining with the McCormicks and another guest, Nancy Corwin. Michener, seated to the right of J.T. McCormick, is wearing a coat and tie and a thick pair of bifocals. Jean McCormick, always the gracious hostess, is standing behind both men and smiling at the camera. The author, who died in 1997 at age 90, signed the photo, “James A. Michener.”

In his 1992 memoir, “The World is My Home,” Michener wrote that “Wherever I went in these exciting years of extended travel, I studied people, listened to their stories, and weighed the honesty of their statements.”

When the McCormicks befriended Michener in Wyoming, they became friends of his for life. Said the couple’s daughter: “My parents maintained a friendship [with Michener] over a period of many years.”

The St. Johns River Ferry

This article is an excerpt from the 2016 exhibit, Mayport Village: On the River of Change.

Locals and visitors have been crossing the St. Johns River between Fort George Island and Mayport Village for centuries. In the 1600s, Spanish missionaries relied upon those they wished to convert, the Timucua Indians, to provide transport via dugout canoe. In the post-Civil War years, residents, travelers, tradesmen and farmers often crossed the river by way of privately-owned flatboat ferries.

The post-World War II boom in automobile tourism and federally-mandated highway extensions led to a dramatic increase in traffic to Northeast Florida. State and local officials recognized that an uninterrupted coastal highway would not only bolster the economies of seaside communities from Fernandina Beach to St. Augustine but also ease traffic on inland roadways. More than seventeen miles of new highway and a formal ferry service connecting Fort George Island to Mayport Village was required to realize this goal.

On September 15, 1950, the St. Johns River Ferry Service opened to the public. The ferry slips were built 2.5 miles inland from the mouth of the St. Johns River. Inaugural ships, the Reliance and the Monadnock, carried passengers and cars along the 0.9 mile water route connecting North and South State Road A1A.

Billed as “the gateway to A1A,” this newly-created stretch of highway enabled motorists to bypass Jacksonville via the St. Johns River Ferry Service. A marketing campaign invited tourists to travel the “Buccaneer Trail” and “ride through history on Florida A1A.” Suggested stops along the Buccaneer Trail included Fort Clinch, Kingsley Plantation, and Mayport Village for its French Huguenot history and “unsurpassed” seafood supported by the local shrimping fleet.

Locals have fought the closure of the St. Johns River Ferry Service in recent years in the face of state and city budget cuts. In 2016, community advocates and officials successfully secured funding for guaranteed operations for the next two decades. The ferryboat, Jean Ribault–built in 1996–currently supports the St.Johns River Ferry Service with a carrying capacity of 40 cars and 206 passengers. Boasting membership to the East Coast Greenway, the Ferry is now a vital link in a 3,000 mile-long trail system stretching from Maine to South Florida.

Residents gather for the official opening of the St. Johns River Ferry Service. September 16, 1950.“Mayport Topographical Map, 1964 excerpt”–Excerpt from a 1964 topographical map of the area. The ferry path is traced out on the left.Early Mayport Village residents, Ethel Spaulding Tuttle (left) and Beatrice Sallas Tuttle (far right), waiting for a ferry. Circa 1900.Aerial view of the proposed St. Johns River Ferry Service route from July 1950.