Page 128 - a-history-of-columbia-county-florida-(1996)-edward-f-keuchel

A History of Columbia County Florida (1996) Edward F. Keuchel 117/340

The Era of Reconstruction
cable to Havana. John R. Miller was the first manager and
operator of Lake City’s Western Union office.6
Such promise brought about an influx of northerners into the
state bent on making their fortunes either through political in­
fluence in the form of the Republican Party of the state or various
business ventures. Those northerners who came expecting political
positions were usually dubbed “carpetbaggers” while southern
supporters of carpetbag Republicanism were usually denounced as
“scalawags.” One Floridian was appalled to find Lake City “beset
with Yankees and southerners who were worse than Yankees.” A
resident of Jacksonville wrote that his city had become “a worse
Yankee hole than ever.”7
Many of the northerners looked to the state’s economic poten­
tial and did not become embroiled in the political activities of the
period. Such a person was Ambrose B. Hart, a young man with
$1,000 who left the family farm near Poughkeepsie, New York, in
1866, and went to Florida to make his fortune. He started initially
in logging in East Florida but eventually went into cotton farming
in Columbia County. Upon arriving by ship at Fernandina on
December 15, 1866, Hart found resentment among Floridians but
looked with enthusiasm to the area’s economic future. In writing to
his brother Ed, Hart prophesied that Florida was “destined to be
filled up by northern men. . . .” Hart regarded Mandarin orange
groves along the St. Johns River and sea island cotton in East
Florida as the most promising areas of opportunity and noted that
ex-Union troops already were settling along the railroads in East
Florida and planting cotton.8
With his $1,000 Hart went into logging with S. B. Thompson, a
6May Vinzant Perkins, “Early Facts About Columbia County,” Lake City
Reporter,, December 26, 1947.
’Richardson, The Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida, p. 3.
8Hart to Father, December 18, 1866, Hart to Brother Ed, December 29,1866,
Letters of Ambrose B. Hart, Box 13, Manuscript Collection P. K. Yonge Library,
University of Florida, Gainesville.

115

www.LakeCityHistory.com LCH-UUID: 02905885-C4E0-4A35-9DAE-804ED8349EC9