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.,,,,rc- . BEACHCOMBER
BEACHCOMBER . .
0 By WESLEY STOUT • •
M %%k m s'kwwk\.\‘\‘M I
. AI.
What would you say that 65 miles of beach-
BcWhoylleiWniks:cojScLoTErnutLoYs hveSatTdtO,fGeoaUi T:rgteheEm.,TNiitoa.tine ,
front, Key Biscayne to above Jupiter, is worth N ,
1 • ' ' Fiell';,rtLin
today?
1! • and David Baird. all Jerseymen, had launched
Not as much as the national debt, maybe, but ,
South Florida's first real estate development,
.i: billions, anyway.
! N 1
Ilypoluxo Beach, each putting in $4,000. •
Elnathan T. Field and his partners owned it
'1 ) • - Buying the George It. K. Charter homestead • i
outright. Field's granddaughter, Mrs. Joseph R.
liot in the winter of 1891-92, they began clearing .
- ' streets, building a seawall and starting a hotel; • Tottenhoff, nee Priscilla Poindexter, and her hus- * .
„
- -- ., band, now live in Miami, recent comers from a
- ,', What with the panic of 1893, the promotion failed; •
'''''s ' ''''.' ft-•'• ' Chicago suburb. So do a great-grandson, John P. . . . • - •
; the hotel nowadays, the Manalapan home of fit!
Tottenhoff, and a great-great-granddaughter.
Jerome Gedneys. 1------1
1 The partners thought themselves lucky.to sell -
• ' for exactly what they had put in. The times being
•
what they were, Field insisted upon converting a
check into gold and carrying the bullion himself * *
• Henry Lum, a California Forty Niner, took
his 15-year-old son, Charles, bysteamer to Key
West in 1868, chartering a sailboat and cruising ii 4
'to New Jersey. Moreover, he traveled by ship. the Bay.
\\
I from Jacksonville, reasoning that a thief would. There he saw three coconut palms in a cluster
.„ L
-' have nowhere to hide at sea. . on Miami Beach. Copra was in high demand. On
1
, • * * * .,.., returning to Red Bank, N.J., he bought a.stretch ' ':'t-.
''•" -•• •' •' 7 • Field died at 80 in his chair in his West Palm
,
. ,., •-, ', of beach from the government for 35-cents an m.
Beach hotel Feb.6, 1919, leaving a$200,000 estate:• acre. 71%
,: Virtually the last of his Florida land, 17-miles of FIII"'"9 - Lum had no capital and was 12 years in inter- 1""lrf ....-
beach from Pompano north, was bought in Feb.; , i , eating two other Jerseymen, Field a Middletown
ruary, 1921,by Harry Kelsey, Boston promoter of ' 1 nurseryman always called Nate, and Ezra Os-
. , born, who bought all unclaimed beach from
Kelsey City, today's Lake Park. .
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 14
Many of the mortgages soured in the depression. ' settlement in 1796, almost a century earlier, it
ef%
• . the heirs getting only a part of what he had . ' set the price of land at $2 an acre.) :...), N
I worked so hard and frugally to accumulate. . •' '
. * " *' *
r_
. 1' . . Frugal with himself, he was generous to oth-, '
ers, especially the family. Mrs. Tottenhoff tells
con-
of being cautioned by her mother to say "Yes,
sir'? to her grandfather when he visited them in
- Denver; if she did, he would have a present for
her, she was promised. The child expected a .
r-
ditne,Thr-a quarter at most, but the pr
Elgin writs
an • twatch. was
-
• ' Priding himself on being a trader,whe present
sold anything for less than he ad paid, if
he could help it. When Mrs. Tottenhoff and her
Trim-
mother spent the winter of 1915-16hiestthmhi wm at
West Palm Beach, he bought his
a second-hand bicycle for $6, to pe
granddaughter
pedal to school. '
After they had returned,home in the spring, he 1
sold the bicycle for $7.
He wrote later, grumbling that the hotel had
charged him $45 a week for rooms and meals for 1 ' The partners hired 25 crewmen from Jersey
; lifesaving stations, bought and repaired: demned U.S. lifeboats, a knockdown house, mules,
tents, wagons, tools and food for 100 days, load-
ing all aboard a Mallory steamer for Key West.
ic,...Charteriog--a•solioofier for the Bay, they uuloaded . -
i, ' all through the surf and began clearing the Lum- :i. ' :7
l' issmus Park site, where Capt. Dick Carney
1 di Middletown, put up the 12x22 prefabricatedof 4
house. ....
c Wile they slashed at the dense growth, the
nah schooner made three voyages for nuts, to w d
oo
a, Cuba and Nicaragua, bringing back 334,009
all.
As with the Dutch tulip madness, coconuts
were to make them effortlessly rich. One version
that they were led to believe that every tree
would produce a nut a day. A more probable one
L....______I is that each would bear 100 nuts yearly, a total of
. _ 33,400,000; and all the owners had to do was to
the three. Mrs. Tottenhoff and her mother also .
• 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
. 7.1 given to romantic enthusiasms, his granddaugh- 1-4:
erit'
five.
• Nate Field was a knowing enough nurseryman.
to have brought Blue Spruce trees from the Cola
rado mountains and made them thrive in the sea- •
level sands of New Jersey. His, granddaughter,'
'' who had thought of this tree as living only above
. '' $5,-
5,000-feet, was astonished when she first saw his '
E ter finds it hard to believe that Nate Field would
have accepted either figure without investigation. \.1'
In three years they had planted all 334,000, as
far north as Delray, and were virtually broke,
the cost twice their calculations. Meanwhile,
Field had returned to New Jersey and got 000 from his fellow nurseryman, John S. Collins •
at Middletown. of Moorestown; and in his absence the Lums (-4,
. • .' He and his wife had lost three young children • - ., Interested a drop-in, Henry Robinson, a New
,
r within five years, 1869-74. Then both his wife and - . Yorker. Before the 1880s were out, some 60 1.
his father died in 1887, losses from which he nev... ---1 Northerners had invested in the coconut golconda.',.
• er recovered. Music having a melancholy effect. 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 cot') palm is seven years or more in
* * * i bearing under ideal conditions; and 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 ts and coons ate the tender sprouts as fast
' Mrs. Henry Timanus, are buried in Fernandinal! . ' as they popped up.
'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 . (z
Jacksonville to Fernandina, from where the fain, . Raton rocks in the winter of 1885-86, overseeing a
•• .. ily fled four years later from the Union occupa. z crew of 15 or 20 quartered in the knockdown
-: .,, •
44 '‘-ii
' tion. They returned to Fernandina after the war, house brought up from the Bay. The daughters
i
though all their property had been seized, stolen
; were Mary Matilda (Mamie) and Annie Frances ' I
e or burned. (Frank), the latter Mrs. Tottenhoff's mother. 4)
rI)
The last nut planted, Dick Carney moved the '
house back to Miami Beach, where it was the
. • - only'building until Charles Lum brought his bride
- .. . ---''''-"---- —..-.,', ... . -.. • ., .
;,,... - , . .1:•;;;;; down in ins6 and built a 2-story frame. Both
holm-, Ho,- 11,m-r. 1,,,,,,,i 4 , f'.,,,.,.,4. r. .
•