Canter Brown Jr. is an American historian, professor and author. He was born in Fort Meade, Florida. He graduates from Fort Meade Middle-High School. [1] He earned degrees[ which? ] at Florida State University. He has taught at Florida A&M University and has worked at Fort Valley State University in Fort Valley, Georgia. He wrote a book about Florida's African American public officials from 1867 until 1924. [2] [3]
Brown has written on Florida and southern United States history, including Florida's Peace River Frontier, earning him the Florida Historical Society's Rembert W. Patrick Award, and Ossian Bingley Hart: Florida's Loyalist Reconstruction Governor, winner of the Certificate of Commendation of the American Association of State and Local History, about Ossian B. Hart, one of Florida's Reconstruction era governors. [4]
He wrote Florida's Black Public Officials, 1867-1924 documenting the many early black political leaders in Florida especially during the Reconstruction era.
Fort Meade is a city in Polk County, Florida, United States. As of 2020, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau is 5,100. It is part of the Lakeland–Winter Haven Metropolitan Statistical Area.
William Dunnington Bloxham was the 13th and 17th Governor of Florida in two non-consecutive terms. Prior to his first term as governor, he served in the Florida House of Representatives.
David Shelby Walker was the eighth Governor of Florida, serving from 1865 to 1868.
Ossian Bingley Hart was the 10th Governor of Florida from 1873 to 1874, and the first governor of Florida who was born in the state.
Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs, II was an American Presbyterian minister who served as Secretary of State and Superintendent of Public Instruction of Florida, and, along with U.S. Congressman Josiah Thomas Walls, was among the most powerful black officeholders in the state during Reconstruction. An African American who served during the Reconstruction era, he was the first black Florida Secretary of State, holding the office over a century prior to the state's second black Secretary of State, Jesse McCrary, who served for five months in 1979.
The Peace River is a river in the southwestern part of the Florida peninsula, in the U.S.A. It originates at the juncture of Saddle Creek and Peace Creek northeast of Bartow in Polk County and flows south through Fort Meade Hardee County to Arcadia in DeSoto County and then southwest into the Charlotte Harbor estuary at Punta Gorda in Charlotte County. It is 106 miles (171 km) long and has a drainage basin of 1,367 square miles (3,540 km2). U.S. Highway 17 runs near and somewhat parallel to the river for much of its course. The river was called Rio de la Paz on 16th century Spanish charts. It appeared as Peas Creek or Pease Creek on later maps. The Creek Indians call it Talakchopcohatchee, River of Long Peas. Other cities along the Peace River include Fort Meade, Wauchula and Zolfo Springs.
Isaiah David Hart was an American plantation owner, and the founder of Jacksonville, Florida. Originally from Georgia, Hart took up arms against Spain in the Patriot Rebellion of 1812. After moving to a location near the cow ford on the narrows of the St. Johns River, he began platting the town in 1822, and later served as postmaster, court clerk, commissioner of pilotage, judge of elections, major in the local militia during the Seminole War, and as a Whig member of the Florida Territorial Senate. The Isaiah D. Hart Bridge over the St. Johns River in Jacksonville is named after him.
Joseph Bradford Lancaster was an American lawyer and Whig politician who served on the Florida Supreme Court from 1848 to 1850. An important figure in Florida law and politics, he was the last justice under the system in which the circuit court judges served also on the supreme court. He served as Mayor of Jacksonville, Florida from 1846 to 1847 and as the first Mayor of Tampa, Florida in 1856.
Franklin D. Fraser was a lawyer and a Republican politician who served on the Florida Supreme Court from 1873 to 1874. He was from Pennsylvania and joined his brother in Florida after the American Civil War. Republican governor Ossian B. Hart appointed him to the Florida Supreme Court. He resigned 16 months later following Hart's death.
Fort Meade Middle-High School or FMMSHS is a combined middle school and high school located in Fort Meade, Florida in Polk County, Florida. The school serves the city of Fort Meade and surrounding areas. The school is located on the northeast side of the city of Fort Meade at 700 Edgewood Drive North. The school enforces a dress code for grades 6-8. The school's teams compete as the Miners.
Charles H. Pearce (1817–1887) was a religious and political leader in Florida. An African Methodist Episcopal (AME) minister, he was dispatched to Florida in 1865, after the American Civil War. He had previously been a missionary in Canada after moving from Maryland to Connecticut. He helped bring the AME Church, the first independent black denomination in the United States, to Florida and worked to build its congregation during and after the Reconstruction era. In 1868 Pearce was elected as a delegate to the Florida Constitutional Convention of 1868. Later that year he was elected to the state legislature as a state senator from Leon County, Florida. He served numerous terms in the legislature, working to gain support for civil rights and public education for Floridians.
James T. Magbee, known as J. T. Magbee, was a pioneer of Tampa, Florida, the town's first lawyer, and the federal collector of revenues at Tampa. Magbee was a Florida State Constitutional Convention delegate, a Florida State Senator, a newspaper editor and a judge of the Circuit Court. He owned slaves prior to the Civil War.
Dr. Algernon Sidney Speer (1818–1857) was a Florida settler and politician, serving as House of Representative for Orange County, Florida in the Florida State Legislature from 1854-1855. Before his political career, he was also a lawyer, horticulturist, farmer. Speer's Landing is named for him.
Angola was a prosperous community of up to 750 maroons that existed in Florida from 1812 until Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821, at which point it was destroyed. The location was along the Manatee River in Bradenton, Florida, near Manatee Mineral Springs Park. The exact location is expansive, ranging from where the Braden River meets the Manatee River down to Sarasota Bay; archaeological research focuses on the Manatee Mineral Spring—a source of fresh water and later the location of the Village of Manatee two decades after the destruction of the maroon community. Archaeological evidence has been found and the archaeology report by Uzi Baram is on file with the Florida Division of Historical Resources of the Florida Department of State. In 2019, the National Park Service added the excavated location at Manatee Mineral Springs Park to the Network to Freedom.
James Gettis was a lawyer and judge in Tampa, Florida. He was the second lawyer in Tampa. Gettis was also a city councilman, and state representative, and the first town clerk.
William Archer Cocke was an American attorney and politician who served as the 13th Florida Attorney General. Cocke was placed into the national spotlight due to his role in the controversy following the 1876 presidential election.
William Bradwell was a religious leader and Reconstruction era politician in Florida. He lived in Jacksonville and represented Duval County in the Florida Legislature. An African American, he was a leader in the A.M.E. Church. He served in the Florida Senate representing Duval County, Florida from 1868 to 1870. He was a Republican and stated that his father was "one of the first representatives to the Legislature of Georgia".
George Washington "Wash" Hendry (1838–1914), was an American land developer, writer, and farmer, who was from an early settler family in Southwest Florida. Hendry served in the Seminole Wars, and in the American Civil War for the Confederate States Army. He was also known as G.W. Hendry, and Wash Hendry.
Emma Frances Riggs Campbell was an American hymnwriter and author. She is best known for her hymn "Jesus of Nazareth Passeth By".
William Lee Apthorp was an American military leader, and Florida's first state surveyor. He also worked as a music teacher, and dairy farmer. During the American Civil War, he served as a Lt. Colonel in the Union Army and led a regiment of African American soldiers. He remained in Florida after the war and served as a surveyor, before moving to New Jersey and operating a dairy farm until his death.