"Roughing It" with the Bros in Fort Myers: The Edison and Ford Winter Estates

 

        The Edison and Ford Winter Estates in Ft. Myers, Florida recently hosted its annual "Airing of the Quilts" event on its grounds.  The members of the Southwest Florida Quilters Guild display their creations on clotheslines in front of the cottages built by Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.  It was a perfect opportunity for us to explore the historic site for the first time.  

        In 1885, inventor Thomas Edison traveled to the wilds of Ft. Myers Florida, scouting for a winter home site.  Smitten, he purchased 13 acres for $2,750 and immediately began designing a family home, a guest cottage, and a laboratory.  He called it Seminole Lodge, and the Edison family spent their winters there, frequently hosting famous guests including Henry Ford, naturalist John Burroughs, industrialist Harvey Firestone, and Herbert Hoover.  Edison and his guests enjoyed the Florida outdoors, swimming, shelling, boating, and fishing for huge tarpon and other fish.  He also worked from time to time, and developed a major interest in botany, using his laboratory and acreage to experiment with various plants for industrial use.

Various pictures of the Seminole Lodge and guest house

    In 1916, Henry Ford bought the property next door to his buddy and built a bungalow that was christened The Mangos.  

    Ford, Edison, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs often went camping together around Florida and beyond.  They, or their underlings, packed their Model Ts and stocked their chuck wagon, complete with camp cook, and hit the road. Maybe they made smores around the campfire and told stories about how they abused their employees, electrocuted dogs, and spread racist propaganda.

    The museum on site contains quite a few interesting displays covering the careers and contributions of both men, minus any controversy or negativity.  The botanical laboratory is also open for visitors, and the Estates have quite an active gardening group which offers workshops, classes, and plant sales throughout the year.  

        The Edison and Ford Winter Estates are worth a visit. Website https://www.edisonfordwinterestates.org/  It's a great look into the lives of two of the most influential Americans of the 20th century.  

Kingsley Plantation

         A short distance south of Jacksonville, on the Fort George River, lies the Kingsley Plantation, part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, managed by the U.S. National Park Service. The plantation house, built in1798, is recognized as the oldest plantation house still standing in Florida. It was built by John McQueen who lost it, through bankruptcy, to Georgian John McIntosh. McIntosh took part in an American insurgency designed to prod the US into annexing Florida from Spain. When that premature insurgency failed, McIntosh fled back to Georgia to avoid punishment by the Spanish. That's when slave ship captain and planter Zephaniah Kingsley and his wife Anna took over the property as one of several plantations. (Website https://www.nps.gov/timu/learn/historyculture/kp_visiting.htm )

    Anna Kingsley was an African princess, kidnapped as a young girl and sold into slavery to Kingsley. Kingsley freed her, married her, and made her his primary wife (There were three other co-wives and families.).  The marriage of white plantation owners to African women was not that uncommon in Spanish Florida, where slavery was practiced differently than the United States, where such marriages were almost unheard of and looked down on. The Kingsleys, Zephaniah, Anna, and other relations, lived on the plantation off and on for 25 years, with about 60-70 enslaved persons, finally selling it in 1852.

    The site is well worth a visit, and the setting itself is beautiful. After a couple of miles drive through Florida brush and forest, one arrives at the house located on the river.  The house itself is temporarily closed for renovations and restoration, so we were unable to see inside, but the barn, kitchen house, and the rest of the grounds were open for exploration.

    The most thought provoking and interesting part of the grounds was the curved row of slave houses. There are ruins of 23 of the original 32 houses still standing, and there are a couple of reproductions as well. These houses are unique for a number of reasons. First, the curved layout has led to questions over the years. On most plantations, slave cabins are laid out in a more linear or square fashion. At the Kingsley plantation, they are in the shape of a curve opening outward to the main house. Some have theorized that it was a defensive position against Creek and Seminole attacks. Others point out that it's a formation that Anna and the enslaved Africans would have been familiar with. Remember, she grew up as an African princess. She was totally used to having servants and slaves, just as she was accustomed to polygamy. In many African cultures, the family home is built in a circle or semicircular shape, with the master's main house as the center, surrounded by the homes of his wives, families, and retainers. 

    A second unique characteristic of the slave houses, and other structures on the plantation, is that the walls are composed of tabby. Tabby is a building material composed of seashells, rock, and lime that make a concrete-like substance. It was a common building material on the Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina coasts, where oyster shells, often taken from Native American mounds and garbage dumps, or middens, were plentiful.  

    A third unique thing about the Kingsley plantation is how the Kingsleys treated their slaves which was quite different from other planters.  Zephaniah never gave his slaves anglicized names; they were encouraged to keep and use African names. Also, he never allowed attempts to Christianize them. The Kingsley Plantation slaves continued to practice animism, and archaeologists have uncovered evidence of their rites in and around the slave houses, blue beads hidden inside door frames and walls and the bones of  sacrificed chickens at doorways, for instance.    

    Altogether, the Kingsley Plantation is a one-of-a-kind historic site.

Welcome to the Fairgrounds

         Say "St. Petersburg, Florida", and you are likely to picture lots of retirees and lots of tourists on some of the best beaches in the world, but there's much more to the city. St. Petersburg is rapidly becoming a city of world-class museums, authors, and artists. A few weeks ago, a group of local artists opened a new attraction called Fairgrounds ( https://fairgrounds.art/ ), located in the heart of the Warehouse Arts District. It's billed as "an arts destination where everyone is invited to explore an immersive world of playful art and technology exhibits based on original Florida stories."  Contributing artists were asked to create interactive and immersive art works in a 15,000 square feet space that capture the history and culture of Florida, celebrating the weird and wild that makes Florida Florida, their works commenting on the truth and the mythology that make Florida unique.

    The organizers plan to make Fairgrounds a year-round arts center, with changing exhibitions and classes and workshops offered. I found the art installations interesting and engaging, but I probably spent less than an half hour inside, which makes the admission price a little steep (adults $27 or $25, children $22), so I'm not sure about how many repeat visits will be made. These are just a few of the pictures I took. You might be able to tell that my favorite room contained fish tanks transformed into dioramas.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Children of All Ages...."

     Have you ever:

• thought of running away to join the circus?
• used the phrase "not my circus, not my monkey"?
• used the word "jumbo"?
• called somebody a clown?
• described a situation as a "freak show"?

If so, Sarasota Florida's Ringling Museum ( https://www.ringling.org/ )is the place for you to visit! For many years, Sarasota, on Florida's Gulf Coast, was the winter home of many traveling circuses and carnivals. Nearby Gibsonton was, and is, still a major winter home for carnival and sideshow folks.  The Ringling has become one of Florida's most popular and interesting museums. Actually a museum complex, the Ringling is the result of the bequest of John Ringling, one of the most famous individuals in American circus history. In 1936, he bequeathed his art collection, mansion, and estate to the people of Florida. Unfortunately, the property was not very well taken care of until years later, when governance of the museum was transferred from the Florida Department of State to Florida State University in 2000. One can easily spend a whole day or two exploring the complex, which consists of the Circus Museum, the Ringling mansion Ca' D' Zan, the official Florida state Museum of Art, and the Bayfront Gardens.  

    The Circus Museum contains everything you would expect, costumes, posters, wagons, props, and there are video clips and hands-on activities like tightrope walking, etc. However, the most stunning exhibit has to be the miniature circus scenes, showing almost every aspect of circus life, comprising 44,000 handmade figures. The miniature circus alone could probably entertain visitors for a day.

       

 

                                                            (for more about the Muse brothers, 

pictured above, see

  https://thehistocratsbookshelf.blogspot.com/2021/06/let-your-freak-flag-fly.html)

    From the Circus Museum visitors can take a walk through beautiful gardens to reach the John and Mabel Ringling family mansion. Located on the water, it's a beautiful Mediterranean-style villa built in the 1920s.

    From the mansion, take another beautiful walk to the Museum of Art. The Museum's collection had its beginnings as John and Mabel Ringling's private art collection that's heavy on Renaissance and baroque European art, but it also has art from other regions and genres, including a great Asian art collection.

    The next time you find yourself in Sarasota, plan to visit the Ringling, and tell people you've run away to join the circus!