LOUISE STANTON WARREN author: Evergreen Cemetery

Showing posts with label Evergreen Cemetery. Show all posts

March 2, 2023

MRS. EMMA BROWN DODD

On facebook, several months ago, there was particular interest in ghosts at Evergreen Cemetery including the Dodd mausoleum. The initial attraction to this gorgeous mausoleum was that this object of beauty could have been in such a pitiful state of disrepair. It is no longer. And whether ghosts dance at Evergreen is for individual contemplation, but the true story of the Dodds is probably just as interesting. Cemetery records indicated Dodd family members were all interred on April 15 and 16, 1911. A mass murder, a fire, a buggy crash?

The Dodds buried in Evergreen Cemetery were born in England, but the only Dodd who was a Jacksonville, Florida resident when she died was Emma Brown Dodd. Her probate file was therefore in the Duval County Courthouse. Full of information, it chronicled Emma moving into the luxurious Ambassador Hotel apartments at 320 West Church Street. She owned the block abutting it framed by both Church Street and West Julia, and collected rent from tenants on that property.

According to the probate files, she died at “about 60," on January 8, 1910. Her death in January may have been caused from an accident in October 1909 based on a drugstore receipt from Wm. Fairlie Prescription Druggist at Bay and Florida Avenue. On the list, among other things, were bandages, oiled silk, codeine, and epson salts. However, Emma died at the DeSota Sanitorium, now St. Vincent’s hospital in Riverside. After a six day stay there, she was billed $33.88, which included room and board, special nursing and supplies.

After her death Emma Dodd Brown waited for her vault to be finished almost 16 months. She lay in the holding vaults at Evergreen Cemetery, constructed partially underground similar to prairie dirt houses. She rested among those being shipped north during the winter season waiting for the spring thaw so the ground could be shoveled in their frigid homes. At last everything and everyone was ready and the Dodds moved into the lovely mausoleum.

In Mrs. Dodd’s Will, she specifically requested the construction of a mausoleum not only to house her body as well as to have her families’ bodies moved from Sanford, Florida. Her husband and son, John Sr. and Jr., had died of typhoid fever as did her mother, Sophia Marchand. She further instructed land for the mausoleum was to be purchased at Woodlawn or Evergreen, which were together “near Jacksonville, Florida.” The Dodd mausoleum was to be constructed for no more than $3,000, but the bodies were to be moved no matter the expense. Moving the family cost $30 apiece, $15 from each funeral parlor involved.

So strong was her desire for the safety of her remains that her executors, with permission of her beneficiary, added a marble veneer to the mausoleum costing an extra $1,600. Her beneficiary later wrote to the marble company “that from an artistic standpoint, the vault has been ruined. Its finest features have been lost although it probably has gained a 1,000 % increase in durability and 'perpetuality'."

The irony of this building’s miserable plight was Emma’s great concern for the excellence of her perpetual resting place which she had specifically ordered in her Will. Another interesting bit found in the probate records was a small but powerful contract, approximately 4” by 5”, between Dobbs and Evergreen Cemetery. The cemetery had agreed to maintain perpetual care of Mrs. Dobb’s plot no questions asked. In the present world, in certain places this promise seems to be an anomaly. However, as soon as existence of the contract, buried in an old manila folder for a century, was presented to the cemetery staff, the world began to heave and Evergreen returned the mausoleum, neglected for nearly 100 years, to its intended glory.

February 16, 2022

Florida's Original Tourist Theme Park Featured -- What Else? -- Alligators

If Alligator Joe Campbell really had rounded up "worthless dogs and stray cats" to feed the big, bull gator he rode, few would care if Joe himself wound up in the gator's mouth.

However, although Joe had ridden with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, that roundup tale was false.

Alligator Joe Campbell

Joe's real name was Hubert and he was born in India in 1872, his father a decorated English officer. His passion was alligators and after his Wild West days and a stint of ostrich riding and training, he chose to live in Jacksonville, where, for all his showmanship, he was a well-respected naturalist.

Due to the drainage of the Everglades and other state development, 2.5 million alligators were reportedly killed in the 1880s. Commercial hunters and gun-happy tourists helped decrease the population. There seemed to be no better fun than killing gators while cruising on a steamboat.

Although Campbell also hunted alligators, because he feared their extinction he merged with Jacksonville's ostrich farm, the best in the country. By adding his gator collection to the lanky menagerie, he could study and breed both species.

In 1912, when 200 ostriches strode into their new billet at Phoenix Park, Alligator Joe and his patient pod of gators were already awaiting the bubble-bottomed birds. This lively tourist destination, Florida's original theme park, percolated east of Jacksonville at Talleyrand Avenue, near Evergreen Cemetery and the river.

Ostrich racing was a great sport of the era as contemporary ads and postcards indicate. So, to prevent hurt feelings and jealousy, Campbell likewise trained his gators to race and to carry riders. The alligators' education extended to climbing and to waltzing. While the reptiles and ostriches were not competitive, they spent little time together, promoting ostrich longevity.

In 1907, the Dixieland Park exposition and resort opened at the ferry landing in South Jacksonville, where Alligator Joe, some ostriches and alligators, together with electric fountains, burros, bands and theater productions, were major attractions. The reptiles climbed ladders, slid down chutes and carted children on their broad, rough backs. Campbell was also becoming famous in the movies and newsreels for his alligator shenanigans and study of the creatures.

In 1916, the Ostrich Farm and Alligator Farm, in some queer arc, shifted across the river to South Jacksonville on the site of the Aetna Insurance building, originally Prudential Insurance. Campbell and his wife, Sadie, lived on a houseboat near the southern end of the future Main Street Bridge.

Alligator Joe and Sadie continued farming gators in what they called the swamp. As accomplished as Joe, Sadie could mimic the alligator's wild, guttural sound, sometimes a hunting ploy, which lured gators to the river's surface. Often, she accompanied him on tracking expeditions, during which she was also able to nab some floating snakes by looping their so-called necks.

While Campbell wrestled the reptiles and delivered lectures, Sadie managed the store at the Alligator Farm, displaying all possible contrivances from alligator parts, including ashtrays and purse latches (made from the smaller heads), etc. In addition to meat and hides, every part was utilized, creating products from alligator oil to claw purses, from embryos for study to egg shells for souvenirs. In addition, filling orders from across the country, together with instructions for care, the Campbells shipped thousands of baby gators in light, cypress boxes filled with Spanish moss.

They continued to keep some ostriches, and Sadie remembered a surrey race between an ostrich and a horse. She declared, in the short run, an ostrich could always beat a horse, but this ostrich, frightened by a balloon, sat down, giving the horse the advantage.

In later years, Campbell wrote a pamphlet about alligators, which included explanations of his life and work. His early gator farming was in Palm Beach, Arkansas and California. By the time he developed his Jacksonville enterprise, hoping to discourage their cannibalistic tendencies, he separated his alligators by size into pens of 200 head, numbering in the thousands.

When not hibernating, his reptiles ate a total of between five and six tons of fish a week. Old Oklawaha, which according to Joe's own pamphlet reached the thoroughly impossible age of more than 800 years, was his oldest alligator. His type ate a hundred pounds of fish each feeding.

Sadie recalled the only dangerous accident at the farm was when her pet otter escaped and bit her. Of course, she had been bitten by snakes and nipped by gators several times. Then, there was the terrible incident when a guide lost his arm while sticking his head in a gator's mouth and sightseers pulled him free.

Alligator Joe died in 1926 at age 53. He is buried at Evergreen Cemetery with guess what marking his grave?

His headstone reads:

Hubert Ian Campbell
Born in Berhampur, India
June 10, 1872
Died in Jacksonville, Fla.
March 10, 1926
Beloved by All

Sadie, his wife, is buried beside him.

His alligator lies on the top of his memorial.

Automobiles Had a Special Place in Jacksonville History

Jacksonville was a racing town.

Steamboats, sailboats and yachts, and power swimmers plowed the river. Horses and bicycles were big business and lots of fun. Motorcycles and automobiles coursing the beaches brought in lots of money and people.

However, excluding Oscar and the other ostriches, the race extraordinaire was in 1910, when Cadillac and biplane sped down the Moncrief Racetrack.

Like every crossroads in the nation, Jacksonville longed to be an automobile town.
John Einig (1854-1912) chugging along in his horseless carriage
John Einig, inventor of Big Jim, the steam whistle, tinkered around in 1895 and built the first auto in Jacksonville, then cranked along Bay Street in his chug-chug machine at 5 or 6 miles per hour.

In 1900, Charles A. Clark, an undertaker, owned the first store-bought auto in the city and Claude Nolan opened the Claude Nolan Cadillac Co. in 1907. He headed the dealership for 35 years, expanding through Florida and beyond, creating the first installment purchase plan for automobiles in the country.

Claude Nolan At 22, Nolan had graduated from Vanderbilt University Law School and immediately returned to Jacksonville to enter the automobile business. In an era of horse-drawn carriages and dirt roads, the entrepreneur actively promoted the new machines and where they ran.

As a member of the Good Roads movement, he believed all Floridians, as well as automobile dealers, deserved smoother road surfaces for travel and business transportation than rutted sand and oyster shells.

Part of the Good Roads movement included efforts to require public and private fencing to restrain livestock. It had traditionally been a four-legged habit to bum about paths and byways, colliding with mobile contraptions while destroying themselves, the rolling object and the well-laid travel plans of humans.

Nolan was the first to drive an auto into Key West. He traveled over the Florida East Coast railroad trestle before the overseas highway was built. There were other auto races, but none like the weird one in which a pilot challenged Nolan to race. Pilot and driver, after some aerial showboating, settled into a serious match.

The automobile won, the aeroplane pilot blaming a headwind for his loss, and Claude Nolan was awarded a victory spin around the racetrack in the biplane. Reported to be the second successful flight in the state, Nolan became the first native Floridian to breeze in the clouds.

Claude Nolan Cadillac Co., 1911

A year later, architect John Klutho designed one of the finest of his oft-discussed Prairie-style buildings at Main and Orange streets for Claude Nolan Cadillac. A beautiful, three-story construction with a showroom on the first floor and repair shop and additional cars on the second. A far cry from Auto Max.

In 1948, the building was unfortunately remodeled by another architect into what has been called a monstrosity. The complex that included additional garages in the rear still abuts Hogans Creek.

Claude Nolan died of a brief illness in 1943 at age 57 and is buried at Oaklawn Cemetery. On the bright side, he was born in Sanford in 1884, where his father, an attorney and Confederate veteran from Henry County, Ga., had recently moved with his wife and five children.

A decade later, George M. Nolan again moved the family, this time to Jacksonville, where he continued to practice law. Nolan lived in a beautiful home, now demolished, on the corner of Second Street and Main overlooking Springfield Park. Second Street was considered to be the most beautiful street in the city.

After serving in the Legislature in 1899, a decade after his arrival in Jacksonville, George Nolan was elected mayor of the town. During his mayoralty, beginning two years after the Great Fire, the city's growth was spiking, although numerous fires continued to break out across the city.

That was also the year of the worst flood in Jacksonville history. A week of heavy rain caused the overflow of McCoy's Creek, and water covered Broad Street to the Union Depot and throughout the railroad yards. Rowboats were used to cross Bay Street near the depot. The floodwaters extended as far north as Springfield Park and the waterworks grounds across the street from Nolan's home.

Not simply enmeshed in the purple, journalistic prose of the day, Nolan, a popular politician, orator and "entertainer," seemed genuinely liked by the people. He died during his second term, during the Carnival week he loved. All Carnival flags were lowered to half-staff.

Eight children survived Nolan, including his sons, Claude Nolan and E.M. Nolan, and he is buried at Evergreen Cemetery.

Jacksonville attorney Louise Stanton Warren shared the stories behind the headstones in the city's oldest cemeteries for the Port of Jacksonville Pilot Club's annual cemetery tours.