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<\/a><\/p>\n\t\t\t\tRachel McMillin, a fifth generation Smallwood, sticks her head out the window of the old US Post Office turned Smallwood Store museum in Chokoloskee where she was working in 2024. -KELLY J FARRELL \/ COURTESY PHOTO
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She did, just before the Category 4 storm swept through.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, whenever it was done, that was the piling still left,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n
For more than a century, the Smallwood family has remained standing much the same way.\n<\/p>\n
McMillin\u2019s grandfather, Charles Sherod \u201cTed\u201d Smallwood, came to the Everglades around 1895. He had lived an itinerant life since running away from home in Georgia, with his older brother, while in the third grade.\n<\/p>\n
He worked for a farmer on the Turner River, traveled to Cuba and the Bahamas, and then married the farmer\u2019s daughter. They settled on Chokoloskee Island, which sits on the inside edge of the Ten Thousand Islands \u2013 the last stop before the marshes give way to coastal mangrove islands and open Gulf waters.\n<\/p>\n
Smallwood bought half the island. By 1900, he\u2019d made enough money farming to buy the other half.\n<\/p>\n
Anyone traveling between the mainland settlements and the islands would often pass through Chokoloskee. Smallwood opened a trading post in 1906, providing supplies, food and tools for daily life on the remote coast.\n<\/p>\n
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Art honoring Susie Billie, a Seminole medicine woman of the Panther Clan, at the Smallwood Store in Chokoloskee shows the integral lives of the Smallwoods and the area tribes, including the Seminole and Miccosukee. -KELLY J FARRELL \/ FLORIDA WEEKLY<\/p>\n
In 1917, to better serve customers coming by boat, Smallwood built a new trading post in its current spot at the water\u2019s edge. The store became a lifeline for the small maritime community built on commercial fishing, boating, trading, farming and hunting. The store also was the island post office, with Smallwood as postmaster.\n<\/p>\n
Smallwood built the store with sturdy Dade County pine, a dense South Florida timber prized by early builders for its resistance to rot, insects and humid weather. When Hurricane Irma struck in 2017, it may have wiped out the dock, but the store survived with minor roof and structural damage \u2013 which McMillin attributes to \u201cthat Dade County pine.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
To protect against flooding, Smallwood raised the store with 4-foot railroad jacks but realized quickly that wasn\u2019t enough. By 1926, he finally had the store up on pilings about 7 feet off the ground \u2013 where it remains.\n<\/p>\n
Smallwood befriended members of the local Seminole and Miccosukee tribes, who had lived in the Everglades since the Seminole Wars of the 1800s. In fact, McMillin said they were one of the reasons her grandfather moved the store.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cMy grandfather made it to keep the peace,\u201d she said, telling of how white men would sell moonshine to the natives and then rob them when they passed out. \u201cThe Seminoles traded a lot here. They even came from the East Coast, because my grandfather was very good to them, and he tried to help them.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
When McMillin reopened the store around 1989, she was told by some older tribal members that her grandfather was the first white man they\u2019d seen. He was also one of the few they trusted.\n<\/p>\n
McMillin, now 70, a grandmother of seven and a great-grandmother of two, still runs the family store, now a museum and gift shop that also offers boat tours.\n<\/p>\n
Since the establishment of Everglades National Park in 1947, there aren\u2019t a lot of ways left to make a living among the Ten Thousand Islands. While the park protected the ecosystem, it also brought new federal regulations limiting fishing, hunting, land use and development.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThey took our livelihoods away from us,\u201d McMillin said, adding the government seized land through eminent domain. \u201cThey took a lot from us to form the park, and they wanted this island, but they couldn\u2019t have it because there was a post office here. If you look at the map, it goes all the way around (the island).\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Life in the area hasn\u2019t changed much in recent decades. McMillin graduated high school in 1974 as one of 28 students \u2013 a record, she thinks. She doubts her granddaughter\u2019s senior class is more than 15 to 20.\n<\/p>\n
Yet some things are different. For instance, \u201cthe big glow in the sky at night\u201d is no longer Miami \u2013 it\u2019s \u201cAlligator Alcatraz,\u201d the detention center for undocumented migrants the state erected last year.\n<\/p>\n
But, just like the dock piling that Irma couldn\u2019t topple, the Smallwood family is still standing.\n<\/p>\n
These days, McMillin can be found at the store that is her family\u2019s legacy, chatting with locals and greeting tourists who want to experience wild Florida.\n<\/p>\n
And they know where to go: From the shore, boaters can enter the maze of tidal creeks, bays and mangrove islands that make up the Ten Thousand Islands.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of them, they\u2019ve done their research,\u201d McMillin said. \u201cThey know we have the best location in the park because we were here first.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The Hendry family: The cattle king of Fort Myers
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The historic Hendry Residence at 1619 Jackson Street in downtown Fort Myers, a symbol of the renowned Hendry family. -DAVID WISHTISCHIN \/ FLORIDA WEEKLY<\/p>\n
When Francis A. \u201cF.A.\u201d Hendry died in 1917, according to legend, Josie Billie \u2013 the most powerful of all Seminole medicine men, who was said to be able to call lightning down upon his enemies \u2013 walked 80 miles from the Everglades to attend his funeral.\n<\/p>\n
Decades earlier, Hendry let Billie\u2019s father \u2013 Billie Conapatchee, or \u201cBilly Corn Patch\u201d \u2013 live with his family while the young man learned to read and write.\n<\/p>\n
As both the region\u2019s largest cattle rancher and a state lawmaker, Hendry was a friend to the Seminole people, even after serving in the Seminole Wars of decades earlier.\n<\/p>\n
Harry Hendry, 73, grew up hearing this and other stories about his legendary ancestor, Francis Asbury Hendry \u2013 a founding father of Lee County, who built a cattle empire out of Fort Myers and left his family\u2019s brand on Southwest Florida.\n<\/p>\n
Today, the Hendry family tree spreads so far throughout Florida that Harry Hendry can barely begin to trace its branches.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing that I\u2019m finding interesting in my old age is just this whole spider web of family relationships all over the state,\u201d said the great-great-grandson of F.A. Hendry. \u201cWe\u2019d have a family reunion and 150 people would be there.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
A retired attorney, he once looked up how many kin worked in the legal profession: \u201cIt was enough to start our own bar association.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
He\u2019s related to just about every cattle family in Florida, and he\u2019s met Hendrys as far away as Tennessee.\n<\/p>\n
Their Florida heritage began around 1850, with about 3,000 head of cattle and a long trail drive.\n<\/p>\n
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Hendry St. and Main St. of downtown Fort Myers. -DAVID WISHTISCHIN \/ FLORIDA WEEKLY<\/p>\n
\u201cWe basically moved west across Georgia, staying ahead of civilization until we got to Thomasville, and then the decision was made to go down into Florida,\u201d Harry Hendry said. \u201cBasically, nobody was in Florida then.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
They settled on the Alafia River, 22 miles east of Tampa. In 1852, when his father died while settling affairs in Georgia, 19-year-old F.A. Hendry, nicknamed \u201cBerry,\u201d decided the family would stay. He married, moved to Fort Meade and started a cattle ranch.\n<\/p>\n
He served in the Third Seminole War and in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. As the Union Army tried to control the state\u2019s beef supply, Hendry joined the \u201cCow Cavalry\u201d that attacked the Fort Myers army post on Feb. 2, 1865. The Battle of Fort Myers, the southernmost land battle of the Civil War, ended with a Union victory.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think they were die-hard Confederates,\u201d Harry Hendry said of the Cow Cavalry. \u201cTheir real intention was to keep the cattle herds together until the war was over.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
After the war, F.A. Hendry brought his extended family and 12,000 head of cattle to the now-abandoned Fort Myers. Harry Hendry thinks they were the third family in the settlement.\n<\/p>\n
From Fort Myers, Hendry soon became one of the state\u2019s most successful cattle ranchers. He helped spearhead the lucrative Cuban cattle trade, widely credited with rebuilding Florida\u2019s economy after the Civil War, when Confederate currency became worthless.\n<\/p>\n
Between 1868 and 1878, more than 1.6 million head of cattle were shipped from Punta Rassa to Havana. F.A. Hendry sent 10,000 to 15,000 cattle a year, Harry Hendry estimated.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Spanish cattle buyers paid in gold, and so all of these early cattlemen became immensely wealthy and started paving the streets in Fort Myers and putting up brick buildings and becoming storekeepers and hotel operators,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n
By 1876, his herd had grown to 50,000, spread among 25,000 acres of fenced-in range land. Beef was now Florida\u2019s primary crop.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI once read an article he wrote about the benefits of being a cattle person, because the cows made money all year round, in the sense of having calves that you could sell,\u201d Harry Hendry said. \u201cThey didn\u2019t need a lot of attention. That gave him plenty of time to engage in local politics.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Hendry chaired the meeting in 1885 where residents voted to incorporate the city of Fort Myers.\n<\/p>\n
Fort Myers was then part of Monroe County, which covered all of Southwest Florida from Charlotte Harbor to the Florida Keys. Residents wanted to change that.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYou had to take a schooner to Key West to see your county commissioners back then,\u201d Harry Hendry said.\n<\/p>\n
The last straw: Commissioners blamed locals for a schoolhouse fire and refused to rebuild it.\n<\/p>\n
Lee County \u2013 named for Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee \u2013 was established in 1887, with Hendry as one of its first commissioners.\n<\/p>\n
Other relatives followed into politics and business, such as opening Lee County\u2019s first banks. One of F.A.\u2019s sons expanded the old family home into a hotel.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just had their finger in everything that was going on,\u201d Harry Hendry said.\n<\/p>\n
Hendry advocated for the region in Tallahassee, serving multiple terms in both the Florida Senate and House of Representatives.\n<\/p>\n
The family\u2019s wealth helped to transform Fort Myers from a rural outpost to a growing town. The Hendrys were among the first families in the area to drive cars and enjoy many new conveniences.\n<\/p>\n
Occasionally, Harry Hendry is asked to speak to community groups about his family and their history \u2013 in many ways, also the history of Fort Myers.\n<\/p>\n
When looking at a street or building, he\u2019ll recall some bit of family lore. Streets lined with royal palms, for instance, conjure stories of his great-grandfather, James Hendry, a nursery owner who first transported the regal trees from Cuba on a schooner.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I sometimes feel like I\u2019ve got a protective interest in it,\u201d he said of the community that is still his home.\n<\/p>\n
He felt that protective ache in 2022 while watching, from his mother\u2019s farm in Ohio, as Hurricane Ian devastated Lee County.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe still haven\u2019t recovered,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n
Hurricanes can flood streets and rip apart buildings, but they can\u2019t erase the Hendry legacy in Southwest Florida.\n<\/p>\n
In the 1890s, F.A. Hendry platted land for a new city. Combining the names of his daughters, Laura and Belle, LaBelle is now the county seat of Hendry County \u2013 which the state named in his honor in 1923.\n<\/p>\n
Hendry\u2019s former home in LaBelle was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.\n<\/p>\n
Berry Hendry, the name of a branch of the Peace River, flows near where he had a cabin and land \u2013 an epitaph written in water.\n<\/p>\n
Martha Bireda\u2019s family: Keepers of Punta Gorda\u2019s Black history
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Marth Bireda stands at the historic Blanchard House in Punta Gorda with Jaha Cummings. -GARRY OVERBEY \/ FLORIDA WEEKLY<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is untold and untaught history, young man.\u201d Martha Bireda speaks to a teenage boy visiting the Blanchard House Museum. \u201cYou have not gotten this in school.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The boy and his family have stopped at the museum \u2013 one of only two in Southwest Florida devoted to Black history.\n<\/p>\n
As they look around, Bireda describes Punta Gorda\u2019s beginnings as a biracial community.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe two groups worked together to make Punta Gorda the town that it is,\u201d Bireda says.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe railroad was brought here by colored men. So, take a look at how this little town, different from everywhere else, developed because of the relationships between white and colored.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
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Martha Bireda, 80, the museum\u2019s executive director of the Blanchard House Museum, is a seventh-generation Floridian and fourth-generation Punta Gorda resident. -GARRY OVERBEY \/ FLORIDA WEEKLY<\/p>\n
The museum \u2013 in a century-old home on a quiet Punta Gorda street \u2013 is more than a collection of photographs, artifacts and oral histories. It\u2019s a dream made real.\n<\/p>\n
The dream belonged to Bireda\u2019s mother, Bernice Russell. An activist, historian and volunteer in Charlotte County, Russell worried young people didn\u2019t know the stories of their heritage.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cShe noticed some of the kids had their heads turned down,\u201d Bireda said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s where the museum came from \u2013 for the youth to really know their history and be proud of who they were.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Bireda, 80, the museum\u2019s executive director, is a seventh-generation Floridian and fourth-generation Punta Gorda resident. Her son, Jaha Cummings, is the next generation. In addition to helping his mother run the museum, he\u2019s overseeing its new expansion. And, inspired by his grandmother and mother\u2019s dream, he founded the Blanchard House Institute, a nationwide project to revitalize neglected communities.\n<\/p>\n
Both mother and son believe Punta Gorda\u2019s early years show that unity is possible.\n<\/p>\n
Founded in the 1880s as Trabue, Punta Gorda was mainly a fishing village until the Florida Southern Railroad made it the southernmost station on the west coast \u2013 turning it into a shipping point for cattle, fish and other goods.\n<\/p>\n
Needing land surveyors, engineer Albert W. Gilchrist, a future state governor, picked seven men \u2013 all Black. Among them was Dan Smith, Bireda\u2019s great-uncle. The 20-year-old child of an ex-slave, he arrived in Punta Gorda in 1885 unable to read or write. Yet Gilchrist recognized him as a \u201cmath genius,\u201d Bireda said.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cHe didn\u2019t believe in that narrative about the inferiority of African American men,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd so, he chose seven colored men and trained them to be the survey team to bring the railroad to Punta Gorda.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The survey crew increased the male population from eight white men to 15. Black residents accounted for nearly half the city\u2019s population until the 1950s, according to Cummings.\n<\/p>\n
By 1886, the railroad was completed with the labor of 200 Black men. Almost overnight, Punta Gorda became a bustling port town of settlers, merchants and laborers \u2013 including Black families who, despite Jim Crow laws, built neighborhoods, churches and schools.\n<\/p>\n
The museum devotes considerable space to Smith. As a community leader, he held the first religious services in Punta Gorda \u2013 welcoming both Christians and Jews under a palmetto-thatched roof \u2013 and helped establish the first Black church, Bethel AME. He also recruited the city\u2019s first Black teacher, Benjamin J. Baker.\n<\/p>\n
Punta Gorda families valued education from the beginning, Bireda said. Smith, enrolled in the Black school with other adults, learned to read alongside children. Two of his daughters would go on to become math teachers, and three grandchildren became engineers.\n<\/p>\n
Bireda\u2019s great-grandmother was Queen Evans, a South Carolina arrival, whose sister married Smith. At a church \u201ctoe party\u201d \u2013 a courtship tradition where men chose women hidden behind a sheet, visible only by their toes \u2013 she met James Andrews. They soon married.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my belief,\u201d Bireda said, \u201cthat Dan Smith let [Andrews] know which girl to choose.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
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Martha Bireda, a foundational family of Punta Gorda, and teller of its history. -GARRY OVERBEY \/ FLORIDA WEEKLY<\/p>\n
Andrews, the city ice plant\u2019s first Black firefighter, was involved in business ventures such as fishing and orange groves. Prosperity allowed her grandparents to enjoy a higher status in what Bireda called a \u201ccolored society.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe colored women married to fishermen here did not work,\u201d Bireda said. \u201cLife was good. On Sundays, the women dressed up and would take excursions to Boca Grande. Queen, or Queenie, raised lavender, had a piano, had China \u2013 they had a very good life.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Born in Arcadia in 1945, Bireda spent much of her childhood in the Appalachian Mountains where her father was born. Moving back to Punta Gorda at age 10, she attended segregated schools. Bireda attributes Charlotte High School\u2019s voluntary desegregation in 1964 to Punta Gorda\u2019s earlier biracial unity.\n<\/p>\n
She studied speech and hearing pathology in college, eventually earning a Ph.D. Working as a speech therapist at the University of Miami, a client with a stutter one day offered her a rose. She married him and gave birth to her son. After a second marriage and her daughter\u2019s birth, Bireda returned to Punta Gorda.\n<\/p>\n
In the 1980s, her mother, Bernice Russell, created a traveling Black history exhibition.\n<\/p>\n
With a vision to create a museum celebrating local Black history, Russell purchased the historic Blanchard House at a tax sale in 1997. One of the few remaining examples of a Florida vernacular-style Craftsman bungalow, it was built in 1925 for a local fisherman and his mail-order bride.\n<\/p>\n
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A framed photograph of Bernice Russell, who had purchased the historic Blanchard House in 1997. -GARRY OVERBEY \/ FLORIDA WEEKLY<\/p>\n
\u201cI used to type Mrs. Blanchard\u2019s Christmas cards for a dollar,\u201d Bireda recalled.\n<\/p>\n
When Russell died in 1999, Bireda adopted her mother\u2019s vision. Finally, after moving the home to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in 2002, the Blanchard House Museum opened in 2004.\n<\/p>\n
Within months, damage from Hurricane Charley forced it to close for two years. It closed again, from 2022 to late 2025, for repairs due to Hurricane Ian.\n<\/p>\n
After 22 years, the museum will soon expand with the addition of another historic home \u2013 the Jean Cleveland House, named for a longtime city clerk who worked with Russell to preserve local history.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we say, in life they worked together, and now in death they work together,\u201d said Cummings.\n<\/p>\n
Planned to open later this year, the refurbished home will be called the Cultural Heritage Center. Cummings said it will combine a youth museum showcasing Florida\u2019s cultural diversity with a senior center to fill the void left by the storm-wrecked Cultural Center. Also, he hopes to bring adult education classes back to Charlotte County.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is one of the missions \u2013 to create this intergenerational space,\u201d Cummings said. \u201cOn one hand, it\u2019s introducing our young people to our history, but also a place where our older residents can socialize and be together.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
After college, Cummings spent 20 years abroad as a consultant. A trip home led him to stay and become involved in civic affairs. He served three terms on the Punta Gorda City Council and now sits on the boards of several organizations.\n<\/p>\n
Cummings said more places could learn from Punta Gorda\u2019s origins.\n<\/p>\n
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Martha Bireda and Jaha Cummings stand before a wall of photographs and history in Punta Gorda. -GARRY OVERBEY \/ FLORIDA WEEKLY<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Foundational Families. -STOCK PHOTO The history of a place isn\u2019t always found in museums and monuments, or in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-215996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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