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Pioneers

A Pioneer Memory: Poem by Bessie M. Peeples

This poem was provided to me by Merrilou Joanne Wilder Inks, granddaughter of Fannie Green Lastinger. The Lastinger family was the first to homestead in Lake Placid around 1890. A PIONEER MEMORYBy: Bessie Mae Lastinger Peeples-Deckhut(Daughter of Joshua Lastinger, who homesteaded the...

Lorida Memories Book: June 26, 1976

This is a small-run book that was written by a typewriter. Copies were made and hand-stapled to be distributed to local pioneers at the First Annual Lorida Schoolhouse Reunion in 1976. A second book was printed for the 1977 reunion....

Visit to Lake Harney’s Mansfield Island in 1891

In January 1891, photojournalist Clarence Bloomfield Moore traveled down the St. Johns River with a small crew. It had become an annual tradition since he first journeyed deep into the Florida wilderness in 1879. Moore was a Harvard-educated archeologist from...

The Parker Brothers Ranch of DeSoto County

Captain John Parker was a Seminole War veteran and former sheriff of Hillsborough County. He was the first settler east of Arcadia (before the town existed) in 1858. He became a cattle baron and established a ranch spanning 125 square...

Lastinger Family were first to settle pioneer Lake Placid

Joshua Berrien Lastinger decided that his idea of a garden paradise was the wild lake country of southern Highlands County. One of the few surviving photos of Lake Placid’s first white settler, Joshua Berrien Lastinger, comes from a 1904 family reunion....