1674-11 Rose Weiss co,'•
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. ' _ The s ` 1.--'' The
`f BEACHCOMBER •• ; �'�G• •
K. f BEACHCOMBER
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By WESLEY STOUT
h.i BY WESLEY STOUT
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+ - -i What would you say that 65 miles of beach-
, • ��`
Part III: When coconuts had failed them, Nate•- is
Field, John Collins, J.T. Lovett, George E.Tilton' i 1,. front, Key Biscayne to above Jupiter, is worth
�' and David Baird. all Jerseymen, had launched' . today? Q
South Florida's first real estate development,. Not as much as the national debt, maybe, but
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l4•billions, anyway.
' g! 't;Hypoluxo Beach, each putting in $4,000. J y
Buying the George R. K. Charter homestead • Elnathan T. Field and his partners owned it •�
in the winter of 1891-A2, they began clearing f outright. Field's granddaughter, Mrs. Joseph R.
` - streets, building a seawall and starting a hotel,'
. .4i.,....:(- Tottenhoff, nee Priscilla Poindexter, and her hus- .�
"'1,4 ''.,'•,`-,k., • band, now live in Miami, recent corners from a
.1. What with the panic of 1893, the promotion failed; • • x • ;f,R,,,',, ;►
- + Chicago suburb. So do a great-grandson, John P. '
the hotel nowadays, the Manalapan home of the .Tottenhoff, and a great-great-granddaughter. _
' Jerome Gedneys. r
The partners thought themselves luckx to sell . * * • . *
'for exactly-what they had put in. The times being ; Henry Lum, a California Forty Niner, took
j. •what they were, Field insisted upon converting a his •
15-year-old son, Charles, by steamer to Key `
U,y check into gold and carrying the bullion himself. ti West in 1868, chartering a sailboat and cruising •
•to New Jersey. Moreover, he traveled by ship, the Bay,
from Jacksonville, reasoning that a thief would L-_ ^ There he saw three coconut palms in a cluster
have nowhere to hide at sea. on Miami Beach, Copra was in high demand. On
' * * * - •returning to Red Bank, N.J., he bought a stretch
',•'' " ' 0;s • Field died at 80 in his chair in his West Palm •r.''• , "1 of beach from the government for 35-cents an
r'•••, •::
:'.Beach hotel Feb. 6, 1919, leaving a $200,000 estate.: ' acre. ' w
i. Virtually the last of his Florida land, 17-miles of ��'1 Lum had no capital and was 12 years in inter-
.beach from Pompano north,'was bought in Feb-:. J esting two other Jerseymen, Field a Middletown
ruary, 1921, by Harry Kelsey, Boston promoter of : nurseryman always called Nate, and Ezra Os-
Kelsey City, today's Lake Park. ' born, who bought all unclaimed beach from
By the terms of the will, his funds were in- Cape Florida Light to Jupiter Island, paying 75
vested in mortgages, the estate to be distributed cents to $1.25 an acre.
. as the heirs reached the ages of 21, 31 and 40.: (When Congress opened the Public Domain to
Many of the mortgages soured in the depression, '.,settlement in 1796, almost a century earlier, it
the heirs getting only a part of what he had. "' set the price of land at $2 an acre.) d` @`
' • " • ..worked so hard and frugally to accumulate, .. ,, * • *. *
• t\
y
Frugal with himself, he was generous to oth ''.i.-.i.,4"-----4, a` " The partners hired 25 crewmen from Jersey .
ers, especially the family. Mrs. Tottenhoff tellslifesaving stations, bought and repaired con-
of being cautioned by her mother to say "Yes, • ''-. denmed U.S. lifeboats, a knockdown house, mules, ,
i .
' sir't to her grandfather when he visited them in ' tents, wagons,-tools and food for 100 days, load-
ing J
Denver; if she did, lie would have a present for all aboard a Mallory steamer for Key West..
her, she was promised. The child_expected a__ t dung-a•sofwore for.the-Bay, they;uuloaded,1�t'•.
'``dime,or quarter at most, but the present was ' ''o all through the surf and began clearing the Lum-'''.,,.1
an Elgin wristwatch. w mus Park site, where Capt. Dick Carney of
Middletown, put up the 12x22 prefabricated
' Priding himself on being a trader, he never • house. e
sold anything for less than he had paid, if While they slashed at the dense growth, the
he could help it. When Mrs. Tottenhoff and her schooner made three voyages for nuts, to Trini-
mother spent the winter of 1915-16 with him at I dad, Cuba and Nicaragua, bringing back 334,000
West Palm Beach, he bought his granddaughter in all,
a second-hand bicycle for $6, to pedal to school; ', • As with the Dutch tulip madness, coconuts
After they had returned home in the spring, he ' were to make them effortlessly rich. One version
' sold the bicycle for $7. is that they were led to believe that every tree
Ile wrote later, grumbling that the hotel hadLwould produce a nut a day. A more probable one
charged him $45 a week for rooms and meals for ---- is that each would bear 100 nuts yearly, a total of i
MHthe three. Mrs. Tottenhoff and her mother also ' . 33,400,000; and all the owners had to do was to
• had been his guests at Mrs. Forssell's Green Tree pick them up and ship them.
' Inn, Miami, when the granddaughter was four or : As an experienced nurseryman and man not
five. • ��� given to romantic enthusiasms, his granddaugh-
ter finds it hard believe that Field would
Nate Field was a knowing enough nurseryman I. have accepted eitherto figure without Nate investigation.
to have brought Blue Spruce trees from the Colo- • In three years they had planted all 334,000, as
rado mountains and made them thrive in the sea- i far north as Delray, and were virtually broke,
level sands .of New Jersey. His granddaughter, ' the cost twice their calculations. Meanwhile,
'. who had thought of this tree as living only above.' Field had returned to New Jersey and got $5,-
5,000-feet, was astonished when she first saw his ;. 000 from his fellow nurseryman, John S. Collins •
at Middletown. .:of Moorestown; and in his absence the Lums
r - .,P;- He and his wife had lost three young children ' ' •: ,,1 :nteresfed a drop-in, Henry Robinson, a New �1
44.
within five years, 1869-74. Then both his wife and-,-..-,--.-. E Yorker. Before-the 1880s were out, some 60
rhis father died in 1887, losses from which he neo- "� ----,' Northerners had invested in the coconut golconda,'=,
er recovered. Music having a melancholy effect...-,,'•.-I It was a pathetic failure. Even 100 nuts year-
upon him, he never thereafter allowed playing or .�. ` ? : ly from each tree was six times the average
singing in his home. - yield; the coco palm is seven years or more in
* * * I bearing under ideal conditions; amd only the
On her father's side, Mrs. Tottenhoff's Poin- ' tropical nut has copra value. South Florida nuts
dexter and Timanus ancestors were Floridians are low in oil content. -,
before the Civil War, living at Jacksonville and But this was academic, for few trees grew;
Fernandina. Her great-grandparents, Col. and rabb is and coons ate the tender sprouts as fast
Mrs. Henry Timanus, are buried in Fernandina's : :• , � as they popped up. )1' f
;•historic Bosquebello Cemetery. ;• Commodore Ralph Munroe found Mrs. Field
i.• Yellow fever in 1857 drove Col. Timanus front ! and two small daughters camped on the Boca
Jacksonville to Fernandina, from where the fain, • .Raton rocks in the winter of 1885-86, overseeing a
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. ily fled four years later from the Union occupa- ;: ; >, crew of 15 or 20 quartered in the knockdowntion. They returned to Fernandina after the war; ., , house brought up from the Bay. The daughters14: though all their properly had been seized, stoled were Mary Matilda (Mamie) and Annie Frances or burned. (Frank), the latter Mrs. Tottenhoff's mother. 'The lat nut planted, Dick Carney moved the c
-•- :, house back to Miami Beach, where it was the (�
t only building until Charles Lum brought his bride
1;'ctiw 4. a+,,;4r,f r..,,,:4".:7,X44 a.;.y+rE Yi y r y'°.. i down
r. ,,; f, �t_ •7 in and built a 2-story frame. Both
hnncrc I lnr ,vnrn h,,,,-,1 i„ r., .,.,,.i, r-,._. ...