Description

FLORIDA – EARLY RAILWAY BOOM / EPHEMERA / CARTOGRAPHY:

John W. WHITE.

[No place or printer, but perhaps Portsmouth, Virginia, circa 1902].

 

8° (23.5 x 15.5 cm): 56 pp. on glossy paper including 25 monochrome photographic illustrations (with 5 being full-page), plus a bespoke edition of The Matthews-Northrup Up-to-Date Map of Florida (colour photolithograph on thin paper, 53 x 41 cm) pasted in to inside back cover, bound in original printed grey paper wrappers (Good, some light staining to covers and title and latter leaves and otherwise mostly confined to margins; map in very good condition, clean and bright with small loss to lower right corner just touching neatline).

 

At the dawn of the 20^th century Florida was considered by many – if not most – people to be a giant malarial swamp, best known only to be avoided.  The 1900 census pegged the state as having only 528,542 residents (although this figure had risen 35% since 1890).  Most of Florida was undeveloped, with Miami having been founded only in 1896.  However, some keen investors recognized the Sunshine State’s enormous potential for tourism, migration, high-value subtropical agriculture and related real estate speculation.

Florida’s modern development was spearheaded by railways, the only viable method to convey the mass movement of people and produce to and from the state.  The preeminent figure in this regard was Henry Flagler and his Florida East Coast Railway (FEC), founded in 1885.  However, there were other significant players.

The Seaboard Air Line Railroad, popularly known as the ‘Seaboard Railroad’, was created in 1900 form the merger of the long-established Atlantic Coast Line Railroad and the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad.  Headquartered in Portsmouth, Virginia, the Seaboard Railroad billed itself as the “The Route of Courteous Service”.  Upon its establishment, it operated a main line that ran from Richmond, Virginia down to termini in Tampa Bay and Orlando, with spur lines throughout the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and northern Florida.

From the outset, the Seaboard Railroad promoted the development of northern, central and eastern Florida, as the growth of these regions would naturally augment the company’s traffic.

Present here is an exceedingly rare, and apparently unrecorded, copiously illustrated guidebook to Florida published by the Seaboard Air Line Railway, featuring a fine large format map of the Sunshine State.  While undated, it was published in or about 1902, as in the Introduction it is mentioned that statistics cited in the work “are from the Commissioner of Agriculture as embodied in his report for 1900, as the report for 1901 has not yet been finished”.

It is important to note that all turn of the century ephemeral works relating to Florida are today exceedingly rare.

The pamphlet was authored by John W. White, a Norfolk, Virginia-based civil engineer who served as the General Industrial Agent for the Seaboard Air Line Railway throughout the 19-noughts, and who was responsible for as series of promotional works and articles on Florida.

In the Introduction’, [p. 3], White writes:

“Not only is the eye of the investor turned towards the South, but the tide of immigration as well. There are various causes for this latter move, chief among them is the escape from the rigorous climate of the North, West and Northwest.  To those farmers who are troubled in this respect, we offer some information in connection with a country where work can be carried on the entire year. A land where pleasant weather – with absence of either extreme – prevails continuously, and for which plant life springs forth at a time when such products are numbered among the luxuries, thus insuring large financial returns. Such a land is Florida.

This pamphlet is designed with a view of presenting to those in search of a home some of the possibilities and advantages offered by this great State.”

The work then features the sections a ‘Chronological History of the State of Florida Since its Discovery’ (pp. 7-14); ‘Rural Florida is Not Excessively Warm’ (pp. 15-17); and ‘Cattle-Raising in Florida’ (pp. 17-19).  This is then followed by descriptions of 21 counties of Florida (pp. 19-56), including Nassau, Duval, Baker, Columbia, Suwannee, Madison, Jefferson, Leon, Gadsden, Wakulla, Clay, Bradford, Alachua, Levy, Marion, Sumter, Lake, Orange, Hernando, Pasco and Hillsborough.  Each description features statistics on the county’s Area, Population, Number of Manufacturing and Mechanical Agencies, Capital Invested, as well as charts, where appropriate, on the annual production of Fruit, Domestic Animals, Animal Productions and Crops.

The text features 25 photographic illustrations (with 5 being full-page), including images of early Florida scenes of townscapes, agriculture, natural wonders and daily life, along with a map of the entire Seaboard Air Line Railway system.

A highlight of the work, significant in and of itself, affixed and folding to the back cover, is the large format colour photolithographed The Matthews-Northrup Up-to-Date Map of Florida (measuring 53 x 41 cm).  Bearing the imprint of ‘1898 by the Matthews-Northrup Co., Complete Engraving and Printing Works, Buffalo, N.Y.’, and is here rendered a special, custom edition, as it is overprinted (in bold red) with the lines of the Seaboard Air Line Railway.  A highly detailed and precise topographic rendering, it colours Florida’s counties in a variety of bright hues and labels every city, towns and village of any note.  It shows the railroad to have stellar coverage in central and north Florida, with spurs running out of Jacksonville to Tampa Bay, Orlando, Cedar Keys and Tallahassee.

The map, which would normally be separately issued as part of Matthews-Northrup’s “Vest-pocket series”, was issued in a handful of revised editions through the 1890s.  The map is today extremely rare, we can trace only 4 institutional examples in any of the editions, held by the University of Michigan Library (being the 1898 edition); Harvard University Library; Yale University Library; and the Princeton University Library.  Moreover, we are aware of only a single sales record for another example.

 

References: N/A – Pamphlet seemingly unrecorded.  Cf. [re: The Matthews-Northrup Up-to-Date Map of Florida, all eds.]: University of Michigan Library [being the 1898 ed.]: G3930 1898 .M3; Harvard University Library: G3930 1894 .M3 vf; Yale University Library: Covers 792 1894; Princeton University Library: HMC01.7294 D-Alcove 2, drawer 15; OCLC: 68698712.