Browse the Florida Memory Photo Collections at the archives. You can find memories there.

[madfloridian]

https://www.floridamemory.com/photographiccollection/collections/

[FloriTexan]

1. Happy to be the first Rec

I love this.

[madfloridian]

3. Aren't there some great ones there?

Thanks for the rec. Also see my post about Gwen Graham in GD. Hint hint. Have a good week-end.

[eppur_se_muova]

2. Florida Man poses for photo with alligator, loses head ...

said to be recovering and "hopes to run for Governor someday".

[madfloridian]

4. Okay, I give up.

Where's the picture?

[eppur_se_muova]

5. I think it was from the same series as this ...

[madfloridian]

6. ..........

[csziggy]

7. A few of those photos were donated by my parents

Specifically, some of the ones of the phosphate industry in Central Florida.

My grandparents, father & uncle are in another:


My grandfather is at the upper left, my grandmother at the lower left, Dad is standing on the right and his brother is the young man in the middle left. The other people are great aunts and uncles, but I'm not sure who the man in the uniform in the front right is.

[madfloridian]

8. Thanks for sharing that.

I found a picture of a little girl in a pony cart. I knew her name was so familiar. I looked through the genealogy books written by family, and realized I had the family book she had written. A distant cousin with valuable research.

That's great your family donated pictures.

[csziggy]

9. The Florida Archives wants me to donate some of our family stuff

I let them scan some of the photos - they are under David M. Wright. But I have my grandmother's journal from the first year she lived in Florida.

My grandfather was transferred to Florida by Swift & Company in 1925 as an assistant manager for a phosphate mine in Polk County. The little mine town, Agricola, no longer exists - there is now a phosphate pit where the town was - but grandfather had taken photos of the town, the mines, and family gatherings over the decades they lived there - those are some of the photos.

The journal is interesting because it is a day to day account of living in a mine town in that period. Grandmother mentions movies they went to see, arrival of relatives from up North who came for visits by train and general accounts of how they lived.

I will let the Archives scan the journal but the family is not quite ready to donate it. I need to get back to them - I found an account by my father of how my grandfather invented the process by which phosphate is refined. His name is on several patents but unfortunately Swift & Company got the money since he was working for them. He got the idea from watching grandmother make mayonnaise - the process uses an emulsion technique to separate phosphate from the sand and clay matrix. Unfortunately, grandmother's journal ends before that time so we don't have her account of having grandfather and other men from the plant come into her kitchen to watch her mix her mayonnaise!

I may have seen the photo of the girl in the pony cart if it is in the Photo Archives. I've spent a lot of time looking through them and remember a photo like that. That is great - and you're lucky that your family has kept their history!

[madfloridian]

10. That is fascinating about your grandfather's invention.

Yes, get as much family stuff to the archives as you can. Yes, I was pleasantly surprised when I started my genealogy research. I have found old newspaper archives about them and even the writings of one.

Your family sounds like it needs some researching. I remember Agricola, was it near Brewster...which is also no longer there. A friend has donated many pictures of Brewster to the archives. It was a phosphate town as well.