Black History of Everglades City

There can be a wide gulf between history and the historical record, that description of past events created by the hand and mind of man.

Undiscovered information, faulty research and errors of omission can all combine for a less than accurate accounting. So can the biases of the compiler if they aren’t dedicated to objective truths. Inaccurate narratives, unanswered questions and overlooked contributions by individuals and groups are the result.

Recently, a light was shined on a topic about which little has been documented, the history of Black people in the Everglades City area. That illumination was provided by Thomas Lockyear II, museum manager at the Museum of the Everglades, in his presentation: “Celebrating the Black History of Everglades City.”

Whether it’s the area’s 19th Century background as a sparsely populated, isolated backwater to Everglades City’s blossoming into a municipality and Collier County’s first county seat, Black’s played an integral role, Lockyear said. He gave his lecture at the museum mere days before Juneteenth, the national holiday that commemorates slaves in Texas learning they were free. Word was delivered by Union soldiers on June 19, 1865, two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.

Lockyear’s presentation was extensively researched. The Power Point-assisted talk addressed such subjects as early Black settlers Augustus Swycover and his wife, who may have been the community’s first, non-indigenous, full-time residents; midwife Annie Mae “Mother” Perry, who brought hundreds of children into the world last century; Barron Gift Collier’s multi-cultural workforce; why the African American community moved from the adjacent DuPont neighborhood to nearby Copeland and more.

He began by identifying a catalyst for the growth in the Chokoloskee Bay area.

“A lot of the background of this relates to and revolves around Florida's role in the Civil War,” he said, pointing to a map showing the location of Fort Zachary Taylor, at Key West’s southern edge, where the Union Army and Navy had installations. “I always say that most people know that Florida was part of the Confederacy during the Civil War. But a lot of people don't know Key West never was. It was always held by the Union. And it was a very pivotal point for the Union (naval) blockade. The joke was that if you were a southern gentleman in Key West that wanted to join the Confederacy, you had to go north to join the South.”

The soldiers and sailors needed to be fed, but the Key’s soil wasn’t conducive for growing vegetables. However, around 1862, John J. Weeks found rich, fertile soil near Everglades City, at the Barron River’s mouth, and he began shipping produce to the fort. Weeks’ farm was overseen by William Smith Allen, a White man attributed as being the first permanent settler. He’s credited with arriving in 1873, but Lockyear disputes whether Allen was truly the first.

Lockyear said Allen came to Everglades City from Key West, where he’d been a lawyer, a justice of the peace and mayor. Lockyear said that after Allen established himself in Everglades City, he appointed himself justice of the peace and soon began arresting people for interracial cohabitation and then evicting them.

“Obviously, if he's evicting people, there were people here before him,” Lockyear said.

It’s George Storter, Jr. who is credited with founding Everglades City, which he simply called “Everglades.” He arrived in the area with some family members in 1881 and began working as a field hand for Allen, who’d bought out Weeks to become the area’s chief land owner. When Allen retired to Key West later that decade, the Storters purchased his holdings, becoming the area’s chief landowner. He became well known for his sugar cane crops and eventually opened a trading post and post office, as well as a popular hunting and fishing operation for the well-heeled. 

Lockyear said two important contributors have been ignored in the common recounting of the community’s history. They are the Swycovers, who are said to have first settled in DuPont around 1882. The couple made a living growing sugar cane along the west bank of the Barron River and shipping massive boatloads to Key West after a harvest. 

He doubts the 1882 date for the Swycover’s arrival is correct. 

“I know they were already there when the Storters got there, and they say that the Storters got there in 1881,” he said. “It's challenging because, as most people know, a lot of African American history isn't written. People didn't choose to write those things down, didn't choose to include Mr. Swycover in the town's history. They've gone out of their way to say, ‘Well, this is when the first white people got here.’ They've also gone out of their way to say, ‘Nope, nope, nope, it wasn't before the Storters got here.’ But we know when the Storters settled at the top end of the island, the Swycovers were already growing sugar cane and selling it in Key West.”

He also believes the Swycovers came before Allen. “Am I ever going to get to the bottom of that mystery? I don't know,” he added. “Every once in a while, you want to uncover a source that tells you a little more than you knew before. I look forward to that possibility. We do know that Mr. Swycover sold out to George Storter, Jr. in 1887, left the area and I can't find any trace of him after that.”

Lockyear also addressed one of the most legendary elements of Everglades City history, the slaying of the infamous Edgar Watson, a man some refer to as Florida's first serial killer. In 1910, he was shot to death by a posse at the Smallwood store in Chokoloskee for allegedly being a murderer himself.

Watson was a sugar cane farmer in the Chatham Bend River area with a reputation for violence and carrying a gun. He’d become known for having his field hands mysteriously go missing when it was time to collect their wages. 

“It became a frequent thing that people that were working for Watson would disappear,” said Lockyear. “It was so common that people down here referred to it as, ‘Oh, you might disappear if you might get a ‘Watson Payday.’” 

The field hands tended to be transients and some of those who disappeared were Black. The era’s racial politics may have resulted in a lack of concern about the disappearances, that is until a White female worker was found floating in the river with weights tied to her, he added.

The story goes that on the day of his death, Watson went to the Smallwood Store where he encountered a group of angry men. He had words with the House brothers and pulled a gun in anger and pulled the trigger. But the gun didn’t fire. However, one of the observers was also armed, and his shot felled Watson, killing him. The holder of that pistol was Henry Short, a Black man who had lived with the White House family as a youth.

“Now, everybody else looks at each other and says, ’Well, Henry's a Black man here. It's 1910. He's not going to make it through a trial. It doesn't matter if it was self-defense or anything like that,’” said Lockyear. “So everybody in that posse goes up and they all put a bullet in Edgar Watson to protect Henry Short.”

In his PowerPoint, he included an image of a 1910 postcard that shows Short sitting on boxes outside the Smallwood Store. 

Businessman Barron Gift Collier is credited with founding Collier County and Everglades City, its first county seat, as part of his construction of Alligator Alley. He also constructed a hotel, a laundry, stores and other businesses, including a hunting and sport-fishing business, grew grapefruits and built a cannery in the community. Lockyear said Collier’s workforce included a significant number of African Americans who, given the community’s segregation, settled in all-Black DuPont, where Collier built homes, a church and a school for them.

Blacks were also employed at local farms and in the local logging and lumber industries.  

Lockyear also highlighted Anna May “Mother” Perry, a Black woman who moved to Everglades City with her husband in the mid-1940s and was a long-time community leader in DuPont. While he worked for the Lee Cypress Tidewater Lumber Company, she picked tomatoes for $5 a day before taking a job at the Everglades Rod and Gun Club. 

“In her memoir, it says that she met President Truman when he was here for the dedication of Everglades National Park, which was 1947,” he said. “She was very active in her community. She drove the school bus and worked in the cafeteria at the Black school, and also worked in the Head Start program and ran something called the Fun Time Daycare. One of her greatest accomplishments is that she was one of just a handful of licensed midwives in Collier County, and she delivered 514 babies in Collier County as a midwife. And that's prior to 1960 because all the records were destroyed after that.” 

The destruction mentioned was caused by 1960’s Category Four Hurricane Donna, which caused catastrophic flooding and wind damage in Everglades City, even sending water into city hall and drenching the records stored there. The storm ravaged DuPont, destroying homes, the school and more. That, along with the decline in the lumber industry, led to the decline in the local Black population. 

“Whereas on the other side of the highway, in Copeland, where there was still another African American community, people went and stayed with relatives,” said Lockyear. “People went to Copeland, or they went looking for jobs in Naples, things like that. People just left.”

The Museum of the Everglades is located at 105 Broadway Avenue West in Everglades City. For more information, visit http://colliermuseums.com/ or call 239-252-5026.