PRINCESS TO PAUPER: THE ELIZABETH P. STARK LEGEND

PRINCESS TO PAUPER: THE ELIZABETH P. STARK LEGEND
(revised August 13, 2015)
By Donald J. Mabry
©2015 Donald J. Mabry
1
Mayport, Florida legend Elizabeth P. Stark came, saw, and conquered, but died in
poverty. Those who knew her remember her with fondness. She is honored by The Elizabeth P.
Stark Award given to a person who has done the most for Mayport. She is seen as a
benefactor, although a bit eccentric. That’s how many people in the Mayport area of
Jacksonville, Florida remember her. A few still alive knew her in her old age after she had lost
her fortune. The full story of Elizabeth Worthington Philip Stark needs telling from beginning to
end, for she was her own woman, beholden to no man.
Telling Elizabeth’s story accurately becomes a problem because there are so few
reliable sources. She published her 56-page Story of Mayport: Site of the Great Modern Naval
Station in 1961. The part where she describes her life in Mayport begins on page twentythree, thus occupying 59% of the work. It is not a history of Mayport, East Mayport, nor Naval
Station Mayport. The 85-year-old was providing a broad memoir. In 1964, when she was 88,
she paid Vantage Press to publish her forty-five page “book” Around the World in Three
Years. She recounted her adventures in Japan, her trip from there to Europe via Africa, and
in England. The text in both volumes was augmented by images. Neither volume earned
much, if any, income. Did she hope to earn money from these publications (she was poor) or
did she want her life be remembered, or both? While they are fun and necessary to read to
understand her, they should not be taken at face value.1
Leila Philip, a grandniece through Elizabeth’s brother Van Ness Philip, wrote A Family
Place: A Hudson Valley Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family in 2001 based on family
records, the vast majority housed in the Van Ness-Philip Family Papers, 1711-1964 housed at
the New York Historical Society. Her “mysterious Aunt Bessie” appears as she traces the
relationship of the family to Talavera.2
Joe Abb Overby knew her for approximately seven years from 1956 to 1963 according
to the television interview he gave.3 His book is based on Story of Mayport and on his
interactions with her forty-three years before his book was published in 1910. As he says in
Elizabeth Worthington Philip (Mrs. J. P. Stark), Story of Mayport: Site of the Great Modern Naval Station. Selfpublished, 1961; Elizabeth P. Stark, Around the World in Three Years. New York: Vantage Press, 1964.
2 Leila Philip, A Family Place: A Hudson Valley Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family. New York, Viking,
2001.
3 He said he arrived in Mayport in 1956 and stayed seven years but he says in his book that he left in 1961. The
television interview is “Mayport History – The Jacksonville Historical Society,”
http://www.jaxhistory.org/videogallery/mayport-history. The interview contains inaccuracies. Millard Cooper, a
lifetime resident, built a house that backs on Lake Elizabeth in 1957 and Overby was living there then. Overby
had been doing odd jobs for Stark before he bought a lot. Stark never wanted trailers in Wonderwood Estates,
according to Cooper, and Overby promised to build a house if she sold him a lot. Telephone conversation with
Millard Cooper, January 16, 2015. When I wrote this essay, Overby had never answered my letter asking when
he was there, but he in a letter I received on February 17, 2015 but dated January 29, 2015. In it, as noted
above, he said that he saw her the year she died, that is, 1967.
2
1
Acres Aweigh! A True Story of the History of Naval Station Mayport: “A person’s memory
tends to drop dates, places, and names over time, especially when those stories were about
someone else’s life.” Overby should have added that the same is true about one’s own life.
He lost touch with Stark for over four years before she died in May, 1967. One cannot treat
the book as fact. It is historical fiction. Perhaps his description his own life as a tugboat
captain is more reliable but it is not A True Story of the History of Naval Station Mayport.4
Historians prefer contemporary accounts written or otherwise preserved at the time of
the event. We also use census records, birth, marriage, and death records, court records,
newspaper and magazine articles, images, and reminiscences. We know that memory is
unreliable. People forget. They unconsciously shape their memories to enhance their own
and/or other’s opinion of them. We all are guilty of confirmation bias; we see what we want
to see (or remember). Piecing together many sources reveals her fascinating life.
She was born into a prosperous and proud family with deep roots in the Hudson Valley
of New York. The Valley was settled as part of New Amsterdam and Dutch-Americans
dominated it. It was the land of the Van Burens, the Van Rensselaers, and the Roosevelts. The
Philip family proudly traces its ancestry back to the Netherlands while also maintaining an
estate called Talavera in the Town of Claverack, New York.5 In her family were such
surnames as Van Ness, Hoffman, Douw, and, from her mother, Worthington. The men had
served as officers in the military since before the American Revolution.
Her father, William Henry Philip, bought Talavera in 1869 from his sister-in-law, Laura
Johnson Philip, the widow of Naval Lt. John Van Ness Philip, with earnings from his law
practice and business affairs in Washington, D.C. He had been a Colonel in the United States
Army during the Civil War and made an unsuccessful foray into electoral politics in 1870 as
the Democratic Party candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from the New York
12th District.
He was so successful that the family home was located at Number 6, Lafayette Square
across from the White House. In 1880, the city valued Lafayette Square property at $3-$5 a
square foot or $130,680 to $217,800 an acre. It was the second highest property evaluation in
Joe Abb Overby, Acres Aweigh! : A True Story of the History of Naval Station Mayport. Global Authors
Publications, 2010. Ghost written by Lynn Maria Thompson. Ms. Thompson wrote on her commercial Web site:
“Ghostwriting client Joe Abb Overby just released his second book, Acres Aweigh It's a fascinating story of Joe's
time stationed at Naval Station Mayport in the late 1950s-early 1960s, and his friendship with Mrs. Elizabeth P.
Stark, a fascinating woman who used to own the property where the base now sits. You can order the book
through our retail subsidiary, OldMaidCatLady.com, or buy it directly from Joe himself.” She did a good job.
“Chronological History, U. S. Naval Station. Mayport, Florida,” a typescript in the archives of the Beaches
Museum & History Park, covers the naval station from 1939 through 1966. I have hoped that someone would
research and write a history of the base, preferably with the base’s support, both financial and documentary.
5 Leila Philip, Family Place: A Hudson Valley Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family. New York, Viking,
2001. The State University Press of New York issued this marvelous book in a paperback edition in 2009. Reading
it is essential to understand who Ms. Stark was and why, but the story of the family’s attachment to Talavera is a
rare glimpse of the workings of a family for almost 300 years.
3
4
the city (see map below). The average worker in the United States earned $350 annually.
Even without knowing the square footage of the Philip home, we know that the family was
wealthy. In 1880, the servants―-Martha Williams (25 years old, born in Virginia), Celia Horton
(19 years old, born in Georgia), George Ford 22 years old, born in New York), and Fanny
Warren (22 years old, born in New York)―helped the mother, Eliza Worthington Philip, run the
household and care for the children.
City of Washington Statistical Map No.1. Commissioners of the District of Columbia, June 30,
1880
4
Lafayette Square north of the White House
5
Legend to map.
Colonel. Philip was so attached to Washington that he built a family mausoleum in
Oak Hill Cemetery in the Georgetown. Most of the family is interred there. Elizabeth is not.
Eliza Worthington Philip, born 1842, educated in Europe and speaker of several
languages, was an apt mate for the Colonel. She married him in 1864 and bore him their first
child (of seven) in 1866. She managed the household servants, some of whom helped raise
the children. She found Europe fascinating, having clothes shipped from Paris. She lived in
Europe, except summers, after she was widowed in 1881 until she returned to the States in
1895. Then, surprisingly, she died in 1896, the year her daughter made her debut in
Washington society.
Elizabeth Philip’s relationships with her sibling are important to her story and must be
explained. She left the family bosom in 1913 because of her relationship with her brothers.
Her oldest brother, John Van Ness Philip, had been born in 1866 and would become
the pater familias when his father died in 1881 at age 56. Van Ness was educated in
American elite private schools such as Princeton University (1889) and Georgetown University
Law School and abroad at the École de Droit in Paris. He was a lawyer. He served as a
Captain and Adjutant, 31st Infantry. U. S. Volunteer in the Philippines during the Spanish
American War. He was chief of the War Department’s Bureau of Insular Affairs until his
resignation in 1903. He rose to the rank of Major in World War I. In 1921, he married Helen Stott
of Stottville, NY, a woman well known in Albany society where Stott made her winter home.6
6
The Washington Post, May 30, 1921.
6
The marriage of Miss Helen Monroe Stott, daughter of Mrs. William Henry Stott, of
Stottville, New York to Mr. John Van Ness Philip, of Washington and Claverack, N. Y.,
took place on Saturday at 4 o'clock at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The bride
is well known in Albany society, where she made her winter home and Mr. Philip, who is
the son of the late Col. William Henry Philip served as major during the war.
The next two children, Charles Worthington Philip (born 1867) and William Henry Philip
(born 1870) died of diphtheria in 1875. Medical knowledge was not advanced enough and
wealthy children were not immune from the ravages of disease. The seventh child, William
Churchill Houston Philip (born 1879) died in 1881, the same year as his father.
Eliza still had two sons to love and cherish, John Van Ness and Herman Hoffman, born
July 13, 1872 in Washington. Both would make the family proud.
Hoffman, as he was called, was educated in 1887-89 at the elite Lawrenceville School,
just south of Princeton; Magdelene College, Cambridge, 1893-94; and Columbia University
Law School, 1896. He was one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders (1st Volunteer Calvary) in
the Santiago Campaign during the Spanish-American War of 1898, an association which
would serve him well as a Foreign Service Officer as well as to members of his family. Later in
his career, he married Josephine Roberts, a woman fifteen years his junior.
He enjoyed a distinguished career in the Foreign Service, one in which he would not
accumulate wealth but enjoy a comfortable living.
Hoffman Philip. 1930-35. US Department of State photo
Hoffman served as U.S. Deputy Consul General in Tangier, 1901-02; then U.S. Vice and
Deputy Consul General in Tangier, 1902-06; and as U.S. Consul General in Tangier, 1906-08. In
1902, he was able to retrieve his very sick sister from Paris when she suffered typhoid fever so
she could recuperate. He hosted her and introduced her to his friends. She was profoundly
impressed with the people she met. Then he was appointed U.S. Minister to Abyssinia
[Ethiopia] in 1908-10. He served as assistant secretary at the US Embassy in Rio de Janeiro,
7
Brazil. In 1911, while still in Brazil, he was unmarried with a home address of the elite
Metropolitan Club in Washington 7
He did not serve abroad again until 1917 when he was as sent to Colombia as Envoy
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, a rank he would have in several countries. He was
sent in 1922 to Uruguay, to Persia (Iran) in 1925 until 1928. He rotated home for a few years
until serving in Norway from 1930-35. Finally, he reached the rank of Ambassador where he
served in Chile from 1935 to 1937 after which he retired. He died in Santa Barbara, California
on October 31, 1951 at age 79; he was interred in the Van Ness mausoleum in the Oak Hill
Cemetery, Washington, D.C.8
Gaston Pearson Philip (born June 1, 1874) was the problem son, a man his two brothers
and his sister tried to help through his various problems. Elizabeth felt a special relationship to
him because she, too, was not enveloped by the Talavera mystique. They each sold their
shares of Talavera for one dollar to Van Ness and Hoffman in 1905. Van Ness did deed thirtyacres north of Talavera to Gaston.
As with his siblings who survived to go to school, much of his pre-university education
was in Europe and even some of his collegiate schooling when he studied at the University of
Heidelberg in 1891 at age seventeen. He was in the Class of ’96 at Princeton in the electrical
engineering of the John C. Green School of Science but didn’t finish his senior year. He
attended the Corcoran School of Science of Colombian College (George Washington
University as of 1904).9
His training as an engineer paid off. His first job was job as geologist and engineer for
U.S. Geological Topological Survey Tour of the Adirondacks.10 In 1901, he worked for the US
government exploring expedition to Alaska. Then, perhaps through Hoffman’s connections
to President Theodore Roosevelt, he joined the Engineering Department of Panama Canal
as transit-man, instrument man, and assistant engineer for July 27.1904 to January 17, 1906 ,
earning $1,800 a year, way beyond median family income in the United States. He ran into
difficulties in Panama, perhaps because of his philandering and drinking problems. His
service record for 1904 shows him as being AWOL for a time.
International Blue Book. International Who's Who Publishing Company, 1911; “Hoffman Philip (1872-1951),” Office of the Historian, United States Department of State.
http://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/philip-hoffman
8 The Washington Post, November 4, 1951.
9 Catalogue of the College of New Jersey at Princeton, 1894-1895, Princeton University, 1895, page 190;
Catalog, Columbian College in the District of Columbia, F. P. McBreen & Company, 1906, p. 79.
10 Philip, Family Place, p, 119.
7
8
He eventually returned to the Hudson River Valley where he died in Hudson, New York,
near Talavera, on October 11, 1913 at age thirty-nine. He was buried in the Van Ness
mausoleum in Georgetown. Elizabeth, to whom he felt closest, had already declared her
independence and begun her long journey to Mayport, Duval County. Florida. His death
was devastating but she was determined to be free of masculine control.
Elizabeth Worthington Philip (the family called her Bessie) was born at home on Lafayette
Square in Washington D. C. on May 2, 1876, the sixth child and the only female of seven.11
She would be raised in Washington, the ancestral family home, Talavera, in the Town of
Claverack in Columbia County, New York, and in Europe. In 1880, for example, the William H.
Philip household was in Claverack and contained William, Eliza, Van Ness, Hoffman, Gaston,
Churchill, a nineteen-year-old niece, H. Maud Philip, and the following servants--Martha
Williams, 25, born in Virginia; Celia Horton, 19, born in Georgia; George Ford,22, born in New
York; and Fanny Warren, 22, born in New York.12
"United States Census, 1880," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MZZNWXC : accessed 04 Dec 2014), William H Philip, Claverack, Columbia, New York, United States, 6; citing sheet
115B, film number 0820, NARA microfilm publication T9, National Archives and Records Administration,
Washington D.C.; FHL microfilm 1254820.
12
9
Talavera, May, 2005
Photo by Don Mabry
The father, William, died in 1881, dramatically reducing the family’s income. Eliza was
45 years old with four children, the oldest of whom was 15, and family servants. Her husband
had hired someone to manage the farming operations of Talavera and she continued that
arrangement just as she continued managing the household accounts. She moved the
family to Europe (mostly Dresden, Germany) in 1887, believing that the cost of living was less
than in Claverack or Washington. They often summered at Talavera.13
At a time when few Americans graduated from high school (4.3% in 1900), she sent the
children to school on both continents, including, as we have seen, expensive elite
preparatory schools in the United States. Elizabeth studied art at the Corcoran School on
13
Philip, Family Place, p. 130-134
10
Pennsylvania Avenue and 17th Street in Washington and won a prize which gave her an
entrée to study art in Paris.14
Whether Europe was cheaper or not, there was still the cost of crossing the Atlantic. A
one-way, first class steamship fare to the United Kingdom in 1896 was approximately $80 and
she had to pay for her children and servants as well as herself. The average annual wage for
a manufacturing worker in 1890 was $427.15 They were paid better than agricultural workers,
clerks, and such. So the widow had ample resources; she was rich by the standards of the
day.
The traipsing to and from Europe gave Elizabeth much freedom from her mother and
brothers. She did not always accompany her mother to Europe and, while they were there,
she seized the opportunity to pursue her own interests. The oldest male, at twenty-one in
1887, was Van Ness, but he was studying at Princeton. As with any younger sibling would do,
Elizabeth avoided allowing him to boss her around. In 1894, she and her mother decided
that she would go to art school in Paris, known for art and unconventionality. The mother and
her eighteen year old daughter shared an interest in drawing and painting, but Elizabeth
had real talent. The public arts schools in Paris were sexist, so she had to find a private art
school which would take women. She attended Académie Julian on rue Vivienne, a
women-only school created in 1877. Since the art world was dominated by men, training
there would be considered second best. Her mother moved to Paris to be with her daughter
in 1895. As we know, Eliza returned to Talavera in 1896, became ill, and died. Van Ness was
thirty; Hoffman was twenty-four; and Gaston was twenty-two. All three had to be concerned
with making their own way in the world.
So an independent Elizabeth returned to Paris, moved to the Left Bank, and plunged
into its culture. Then, in 1898, she attended Académie Rossi (aka Académie Whistler),
founded in 1898 by the aging James Abbott McNeill Whistler, an American painter most
famous for the painting “Whistler’s Mother.” Whistler, in the last years of his life, was not often
there but association with his fame helped Elizabeth. She said he was talented but illtempered.
Her brothers Van Ness and Hoffman were fighting the Spanish American War. After the
war, Van Ness was assigned to the Philippines and Hoffman was a diplomat in Tangier,
Morocco. She contracted typhoid fever in Paris in late 1900 and lay ill, until Van Ness sent
“Series H 598-601. High School Graduates, By Sex, 1870-1970,” The Statistical History of the United States from
Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1976), p. 379. William Wilson Corcoran founded the
Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1869. He donated additional funding to establish the Corcoran School of Art in 1878,
which became the Corcoran College of Art and Design in 1999. The school's original 19th-century location at
Pennsylvania Avenue and 17th Street. Overby (p. 52) quotes Elizabeth Stark to the effect that she won a $100
medal at the Corcoran School. The fact that she had won that prize gained her admission to the Whistler Studio
in Paris.
15 Bandon DuPont, Drew Keeling, and Thomas Weiss, “Passenger Fares for Overseas Travel in the 19 th and 20th
Centuries.” Paper prepared the Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association, 2012.
http://eh.net/eha/wp-ontent/uploads/2013/11/Weissetal.pdf
14
11
Hoffman to fetch her and bring her back to Tangier in 1901.16
She enjoyed her stay in Tangier, meeting famous people through Hoffman’s
diplomatic duties. She was an asset for her bachelor brother. She rode horses; she would
always have them. She would return to Morocco in 1903 on her trip from Japan to England.
Hoffman had been promoted and was better able to help her.
After recovering, she returned to the States but soon became restless even though she
enjoyed her Washington society friends. They were even more “connected” than she was
and helped her get what she wanted. It was at a dinner party on DuPont Circle in autumn,
1901 that she announced her desire to go to Japan to study the Kanö School of woodblock
printing.17 So friends and friends of friends in Washington helped her. She was sent to General
Henry Clark Corbin (Adjutant General of the U.S. Army from 1898 to 1904) to arrange
passage for her and Isabella, her African American maid to Manila, Philippines.18 He did,
sending them on a troop train to San Francisco. She was an attractive redhead but it must
have been her family connections that got her this favor. Van Ness was stationed in
Mindanao in the Southern Philippines, thus the army was aiding one of its own.19
General Henry Clark Corbin
She rented her house near the British Embassy to her friend Carol Mitchell, obtained a
letter of credit from Riggs Bank, and was seen off on the train by Hoffman. General [William]
and Mrs. [Genevieve] Ludlow chaperoned her. He was to be Governor General of
Philippines, but, in May, 1901, fell sick and returned, and died August 30, 1901, but they did
an excellent job during the seven-day train trip to San Francisco and the two week voyage
to the Philippines. No doubt she only mixed with the officers of the 5th Cavalry on the train
and the ship. A woman of her station in life rarely mixed with the common folk.
Philip, Family Place, pp. 131-137.A short sketch of Whistler’s life is available at
http://www.jamesabbottmcneillwhistler.org/biography.html.
17 Leila Philip says this suggests that she really did study under James Whistler. See Family Place, p. 138. The
family was never quite sure.
18 Stark, Around, p. 11. She errs in saying that he was a member of President Theodore Roosevelt’s cabinet.
19 Most of what we know about her 1900-1903 adventures comes from her Around the World in Three Years
publication. Philip, Family Place, is another source. Overby, Acres Aweigh quotes her about some of her travels.
Where possible, I had added images of the people she mentions.
12
16
General William Ludlow
Van Ness did not meet her because the U. S. Army was engaged in the PhilippineAmerican war, 1899-1902. Filipinos didn’t want to be rid of the Spanish only to become a
colony of the Americans. Mark Twain sided with the Anti-Imperialists to no avail.20
She proceeded to Nagasaki and disembarked only to find that the ships passengers
and crew were being quarantined; she refused and she and Isabella hid at the home of
Prince and Princess Gagarin [Prince Nikolai Nikolaievitch Gagarin (1823-1902) and Princess
Alexandra Nicolaievna Gourieva (1825-1908) until she could make their way to Tokyo. She
had met them in Tangier. She then went to Yokohama by ship and, from there, by train to
Tokyo.
Nikolai Gargarin
She loved Tokyo. Foreigners were rare in Japan. As a redhead, she was unusual in
Tokyo and seemed to enjoy her distinctiveness. It was different for Isabella, however,
because people would stop her on the street to touch her curly hair. So Isabella returned to
the States with Elizabeth’s cousin, an army colonel. Elizabeth adjusted by renting a bigger
house and employing a Japanese couple (who brought their daughter) and a kurumaya, a
man to pull a rickshaw. She studied under Tano Tomonobu, a seventy year old master of the
“The Philippine-American War, 1899–1902, Office of the Historian, U. S. Department of State,
http://history.state.gov/milestones/1899-1913/war; Jim Zwick, “Images from the Philippine-United States War,
http://historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?action=read&artid=479.
20
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Kanö School, bicycled through Tokyo, and partied with the diplomatic corps. As a 1901
photo in Around the World shows, she dressed in Japanese clothing. She enjoyed being a
lady of leisure in her mid-twenties! Unfortunately, her face is not clear.
Although she says she went to Japan to study art, she writes almost exclusively about
her social life. She was a frequent guest at the parties of the small foreign community. She
did not speak Japanese which limited her access to Japanese society. She did speak French
and, probably, understood some German. She writes about her life among the diplomatic
corps, most of whom were European nobles. In Europe, one needed social standing and
money to be a diplomat. The United States Foreign Service also drew from the same class, a
class to which she belonged.
One couple she associated with was the Dutchman Prince Heinrich XXXIII Reuss of
Köstritz and his wife Princess Victoria Margaret of Prussia.
14
Photograph by Franz Langhammer
Her life was not dull. She survived the September, 1902 typhoon on Lake Chuzenji. She
had been staying in a cottage there with her butler and maid when the storm hit. They ran
uphill to safety, taking refuge in a Japanese home until Baron and Baroness Charles Pierre
René Victoire Corvisart came and got her. He was the Military Attaché of the French
embassy and a Lieutenant Coronel in the French Embassy. Her friends were among the in
the diplomats stationed in Tokyo; most were in the nobility of their respective countries.
Baron Corvisart Source: Le Pays de France, January 10, 1918
She tired of Japan and decided to go home by going around the world that is, to
continue westward. In November, 1902, she wrote Van Ness that we was coming home by
way of India, Tangier, Spain, and England. She left Japan the next month, heading westward
with stops along the way. The ship docked at Shanghai, Hong Kong, Colombo, and
15
Calcutta. She stayed in India for a time, even having a short visit with her old friend Daisy
Leiter who was there with her diplomat husband. It was at dinner at the Leiter’s house that
she had announced her desire to go to Japan. She made it to Tangier and her brother
Hoffman after passing through the Suez Canal and stopping in Italy. Hoffman had been
promoted and lived in a beautiful home. Here, too, she hobnobbed with the foreign elite.
She rode horses, a favorite pastime.21
Then she moved to England to Lady Frances Cecil of Stockton Hall in North Yorkshire.
She spent much of her time riding horses. Desiring to be on her own turf, she rented an
apartment in Melton Mowbray. She said she would ride up to ten hours a day.
21
Stark, Around the World, pp. 29-43; Philip, A Family Place, pp. 140-41.
16
1903 Melton Mowbray
And then she sailed home, returning when it suited her.
How could she afford all this? The four children had jointly-owned property in
Washington. D.C. that produced income, a trust fund from their mother, and income from
the farms at Talavera and, for the males, what each personally earned from his profession.
Elizabeth had no profession, only her “share” of the family money. Leila Philip notes that an
agency called Fishers handled the funds and bills.22
Van Ness, Elizabeth, and Gaston lived together at Talavera for a few months in 1903;
Hoffman was still in Tangier. Van Ness resigned his position in the War Department’s Bureau of
Insular Affairs that year so he could run Talavera. Gaston was broke but, on August 2nd, left to
take his job as an assistant engineer on the Panama Canal project; Elizabeth accompanied
her favorite brother to New York City to see him off.
The 1905 State of New York census shows all four living together in Claverack at
Talavera. Van Ness, a 39-year-old lawyer is listed as head of the household. Hoffman, 33, is
labeled a diplomat. Gaston, 30, is a civil engineer. Elizabeth, 29, has no occupation. None
are married. The ages were recorded as they were when the census was taken. Three
servants were listed. That same year, Gaston and Elizabeth relinquished title to Talavera for
the nominal sum of one dollar. Gaston and a woman named Bessie Pierce Place did
receive thirty acres north of Talavera. Leila Philip makes no mention of Elizabeth receiving
anything.23
We do not know what transpired among the siblings between 1905 and 1913, the year
that she left Talavera for Florida. Leila Philip says Bessie had a public auction of her share of
the family possessions—silver, crystal, furniture, and some family portraits—because she was
leaving Talavera and the “Hudson Valley Aristocracy.” Van Ness and Hoffman bought as
Philip, Family Place, p. 141.
Philip, A Family Place, pp. 141, 145, 147; Numeration of Inhabitants living in the First Election District, Town of
Claverack, County of Columbia, State of New York, June 1, 1905.
22
23
17
much as they could to keep it in the family. How much she received has not been revealed.
Gaston was broke again and suffering from the effects of alcoholism. He would die in
October, 1913. Elizabeth wanted her freedom, something she would never get under Van
Ness’ roof. She had to be bored. She had lived abroad much of her life and experienced
autonomy since adolescence. A thirty-seven year old unmarried attractive woman would
not fare well around married women. Her only hope of power or land in this agricultural
society was to marry a man, but she was opposed to men telling her what to do. Overby
quotes her as saying that she had been a suffragette and gone to jail for marching, that her
women’s suffrage efforts caused a family rift, and that the family started talking about
buying her out if she would leave the area. When and where? Was it the Suffrage Parade in
New York City, May 6, 1912? 24
The women here are smoking, playing poker, and eating chocolate while the man cleans and tends to the baby.
Palczewski, Catherine H. Postcard Archive. University of Northern Iowa. Cedar Falls, IA.25
Van Ness probably did not like her political activities, her feminism; more than likely, he
saw her as economic dead weight, a consumer not a producer. He was probably more
concerned about how difficult it was to support Talavera than her occasional political
activities. He loved her but she had been spoiled all her life; he was her older brother not an
indulgent parent. He also had had to support Gaston. Further, he must have been
contemplating marriage and having a family of his own. Talavera could only support a
limited number of people. As it turned out, it wasn’t until May, 1921 that he married Helen
Stott.
Philip, A Family Place, p. 149; Overby, Acres Aweigh, pp. 65-67. “Feminist Pioneer,” Florida Times-Union, May
31, 1975.
24
25
Lisa Hix, “War on Women, Waged in Postcards: Memes From the Suffragist Era.” (http://tinyurl.com/bj2u2wd).
18
Regardless, she took control of her own life in 1913. After receiving the money from the
sale of her Talavera possessions, she prepared for her long journey south to Florida.
According to Leila Philip, who used the family papers as her source, she “hired a young
German couple to help her and she planned to drive to Florida to buy land” on September
7, 1913. Jacob P. Stark, her male friend and stable hand, remained in Claverack. She had a
caravan composed of a school bus she had remodeled into living quarters (a forerunner of
contemporary motor homes!), a covered wagon, servants, seven horses, and three
sheepdogs. She said she was headed to Florida to buy land on which she could raise horses
and figs.26
The one thousand mile journey took two months. She stopped to see friends; roads
were often terrible; and people, horses, and dogs needed the basic necessities of life,
including rest. They traveled while it was light. She headed east to Lenox, Massachusetts to
see her old friends, Carol & Anson Phelps Stokes. Carol, when was a Mitchell, had rented
Elizabeth’s house when she went traipsing off to Japan. Anson was the son of a multimillionaire by the same name. He was an officer of Yale University, an Episcopal priest,
canon at the National Cathedral in Washington, a philanthropist, and a civil rights activist. As
had been the case for most of her life, she hobnobbed with the rich and famous. One wishes
there was a trip diary!
Anson Phelps Stokes
1874-1958
Then the caravan headed south to Richmond, Virginia, bypassing New
York, Baltimore, and her native city, Washington, D. C. The Thomas
Jefferson Hotel in Richmond hosted her. She must have found a place
for her vehicles, servants, and animals. The next stop was Pinehurst,
North Carolina, about 225 miles from Richmond. There, they camped
on Mr. Ritter’s farm and she hired two African Americans, Bud and Oppie, to handle the
covered wagon. What happened to the young couple that Leila Phillip mentions? On to
Columbia, South Carolina where they camped on another farm. Although she was stopping
near or in cities, most of the trip was in rural areas. She wrote that she found the people
interesting. They finally arrived in South Jacksonville, Florida just across the river from
Jacksonville; movement between the two cities was by ferry. She set up camp near Atlantic
Boulevard, the paved road to the beaches.27 Moving a caravan with seven riding, not draft,
horses, and the other vehicles was arduous, especially on roads like this one between
Washington and Richmond, Virginia.
Stark, Mayport, p. 24; Philip, A Family Place, p. 151; Overby, Acres Aweigh, p. 66-567.
Stark, Mayport, pp. 24-25; Guide to the Anson Phelps Stokes Family Papers, Yale University,
http://tinyurl.com/pkszfxs.
26
27
19
Washington. D.C. to Richmond, VA road, 1919
Source: Smithsonian Institution
The route is long even today but was many times more difficult in 1913. She was on a
mission, not to be thwarted by difficulties. She was spunky. She was seeking a place she
could dominate just as her father, her mother, and, then, Van Ness had dominated Talavera.
20
1913 Map showing the approximate route in red
After her arrival, she searched Florida looking for her special place. Seeing whitehaired people in hotels was a turn-off, but a piece of land on the south bank of the mouth of
the St. Johns River enthralled her. The land was in East Mayport just east of the village of
Mayport, itself a fishing village and railroad terminus. She turned to an agent of the Atlantic
Beach Corporation, E. R. Brackett. In the year that she arrived in the Jacksonville area, the
Atlantic Beach Corporation bought the luxury Continental Hotel and 4,000 acres in Atlantic
Beach from one of Henry M. Flagler’s corporation. They renamed it the Atlantic Beach Hotel.
They were selling lots to people who could afford a second home distant from Jacksonville,
for few people in Duval County could afford a lot and then build a house. That suited the
Atlantic Beach Corporation in 1913 because it wanted an upscale community developing
around the Atlantic Beach Hotel She bought two 25 foot lots, one on the oceanfront and
one at the corner of Tenth Street in Atlantic Beach., a few blocks north of the Hotel.28
Donald J. Mabry, “A Man and Three Hotels,” HTA Press, 2006.
http://historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?action=read&artid=756; Donald J. Mabry, “Harcourt Bull's
28
21
Courtesy of the Beaches Museum
She continued to search for suitable acreage from her campsite north of the hotel
where she and her entourage were staying. Those small lots were suitable for beach houses
but not horses and fig trees. On February 14, 1914 (Valentine’s Day) she fell in love with the
“Keeler Place” in East Mayport. Fifteen-year old Eddie Mier unlocked the gate and showed
her around. The property had a two story house, a tenant house, and stables. Better yet, it
was for sale! After finding out the real estate agent from the owners of a store, she returned
to her camp a few miles south in Atlantic Beach. The next morning, she rode her horse,
“Bud,” on Atlantic Boulevard to South Jacksonville, and they took ferry across the river to
Jacksonville, about twenty miles. She rode to 323-325 East Bay Street to George E. Chase &
Company, ship chandlers. As she said, she bought the property for a lower price than the
Atlantic Beach Corporation had bid. Why the Chase Company preferred her to the
Corporation is unknown but it may have been a desire to keep the Corporation out of all of
East Mayport. She stabled “Bud” and went to the law firm of Harwick & Jennings in the West
Building at 52 West Bay Street to make out the deed. She stayed in Jacksonville overnight
and caught the Florida East Coast Railway train from South Jacksonville to the Atlantic
Beach Hotel train station, not the Jacksonville, Mayport, and Pablo she wrote in Story.
Presumably, “Bud” rode as well.29
Atlantic Beach, Florida,” HTA Press, 2007. http://historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?action=read&artid=761.
Harcourt Bull, whom Elizabeth Philip met in the Atlantic Beach Hotel, became the principal developer of
Atlantic Beach. Stark, Mayport, pp. 25-27.
29 Stark, Mayport, pp. 27-28. The lawyers were William H. Harwick and Frank E. Jennings. She mistakenly wrote
that she took the Jacksonville, Mayport, and Pablo railroad, the JMP as it was called. It had been defunct for
years and Henry Flagler had bought its assets in 1899 and used part of its roadbed between East Mayport and
Mayport, approximately where Wonderwood Drive exists. See Donald J. Mabry, I've Been Working on the
Railroad (HTA Press, 2012). http://historicaltextarchive.com/books.php?action=nextpre&bid=74. "United States
World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918", index and images, FamilySearch
(https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/K35H-43F : accessed 10 December 2014), Jacob Peter Stark, 1917-1918;
"United States Census, 1920," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MNYN236 : accessed 10 December 2014), Jacob P Stark, Mayport, Duval, Florida, United States; citing sheet 5A, family
22
State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/142060
She bought approximately 375 acres in East Mayport, some of which had been known
as Burnside Beach, an erstwhile resort. She named her proposed resort Wonderwood by the
Sea. The H. H. Williams map below shows Wonderwood before the U.S. Navy took it to build a
naval base.30 She had her own “Talavera,” a place which she dominated, a place where an
independent woman could hold sway, something unusual in 1914. Then, on October 1st, she
bought land from J. C, Mattox including two tracts containing six and one-half acres.31
91, NARA microfilm publication T625, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington D.C.; FHL
microfilm 1,820,219. Philip, A Family Place, p. 151. Stark, Mayport, p. 28. Neil McGuiness, The Beaches: A History
and Tour (Atlantic Beach, Florida: McGuiness Financial Corporation, 2010), p. 122 erroneously asserts that she
stayed at the Continental Hotel in Atlantic Beach in 1916. It was 1914, and the name was the Atlantic Beach
Hotel, the name the Continental assumed when sold in 1913.
Helen Cooper Floyd. "Burnside Beach, Developer's Dream that Never Came True," Sun-Times, p.A-7. August 5,
1981.
31 Deed 64739, J. C. Mattox to Elizabeth Philip, October 1, 1914, recorded in the Public Records of Duval
County, Florida, October 8, 1914.
23
30
The followings maps help place the Mayport-East Mayport communities in relationship
to Jacksonville, to the beach towns further,
and to Naval Station Mayport.
Outline map of Duval County, Florida
1918 USGS Map of Duval County east
coast
24
USGS Map, 1918 showing FEC tracks going through East Mayport and Mayport
H. H. Williams Map Source: Story of Mayport, p. 51
25
She was not impressed with the village of Mayport which was west of the land she had
purchased. She wrote: “When I arrived, it seemed to me that every other house was a
tavern. But not withstanding its rather lurid reputation at least a dozen good families had
their roots in Mayport.”32 As she employed the local people, she came to respect and like
them.
Long before she left Claverack with her caravan, she knew her stable hand, a
sometime prize fighter, Jacob P. Stark. She had read George Bernard Shaw, Cashel Byron's
Profession (1886), a novel about a world famous prizefighter who woos an aristocratic lady.
Jack, as he was known, reminded her of the hero in that novel, and, besides, she thought
him very handsome. He was tall with brown eyes and brown hair. In addition, he was big and
strong. Since she calls him her fiancé when she says she sent for him, the two were probably
lovers before she left. He responded to her call. We do not know the precise date she
beckoned or when he arrived. We do know that they married in Waycross, Georgia on
November 12, 1914, almost nine months after she bought Wonderwood. She was thirty-eight;
he was thirty-seven although later documents often showed them as being of the same age.
She sent a letter to Van Ness from Waycross that to announce that she was “Mrs. J. Peter
Stark. Jacob Peter Stark.”
Jack Stark was not in her social class; marriage to him when they both lived in
Claverack would be unacceptable to her family and peers. In the1905 New York census, he
was a twenty-six year old day laborer living with his German-born parents and a brother and
32
Stark, Mayport, p. 22.
26
a sister. In the 1910 U. S. Census, he is still living with parents. She said he was her stable hand.
Marrying her raised his status an indicated by his draft registration in 1918 and the 1920
United States Census.33
"United States Census, 1910," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/M5M3TNK : accessed 10 December 2014), Jacob Stark in household of Valentine Stark, Claverack, Columbia, New
York, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 6, sheet 15B, family 385, NARA microfilm publication T624,
National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; FHL microfilm 1,374,946. Philip errs in both
editions by saying “Haycross” instead of Waycross. Bill Foley, “A wonderful Wonderwood once existed,”
Jacksonville.com, October 12, 1997, errs by saying that the two arrived together; there are other errors as well.
33
27
She loved him but did not see him as her equal according to Overby who quotes her
as saying:
Jake was one of my servants. He was my stable man. He took care of my horses and
did a wonderful job. I owned everything, and he owned nothing. So we made a deal.
As much as Jake and I loved each other, and we did, we made an agreement when
we got married that he would always sleep in the servant’s [sic] quarters and not in my
house. We would continue our life in the same way with the exception that we would
always have breakfast together in the morning, and we’d always have dinner
28
together at night. I always wanted to be in charge of my life, mind my own business,
and not have a man do it for me.
He also quotes her as saying that the aristocracy and the working class did not sleep in the
same quarters. This quote is problematic. It makes for a good story but there is no reason to
believe it. Why would this old widow tell a young sailor about the intimacies of her married
life? After all, she and others called her husband “Jack”, not “Jake”. She and Jake did own
property together eventually. The views expressed in the quote do reflect the attitudes she
showed in her Story of Mayport in that she was well aware of her high level of breeding and
education. Regardless, their marriage lasted forty-two years until Jake died at age seventynine in October, 1956. 34
They had to work hard to build Wonderwood by the Sea and her house, Miramar.
Overby, Acres Aweigh, p. 108. In her Story of Mayport she always refers to her husband Jacob as Jack.” It is
puzzling that Overby almost always quotes her as calling him “Jake.”
29
34
Miramar overlooking Ribault Bay
Courtesy of the Beaches Museum
30
Diagram of Miramar
Source: Beaches Museum
Miramar had no kitchen because she is not cook and had no intention of learning. It
was located elsewhere where there were dining facilities.
31
Lake at Wonderwood by the Sea
Wonderwood by the Sea gazebo
Courtesy of Marin Cooper
32
She built her resort, mostly using local people, with Jack supervising. They got a steady
supply of water via an artesian well, having drilled to a depth of 450 feet. The flow was
strong enough that it filled the swimming pool they built and then flowed into the
landscaped lake on the property. The Bay was seeded with oysters. They built a shelter
(gazebo) where people could sit and enjoy tea or light food. She stabled her horses next to
her 25-acre pasture, part of which doubled as a polo field. She ran a riding school for her
guests. Some stayed in one of the twenty substantial cottages she had built. They varied in
size between four and seven rooms with fireplaces. She was the designer. The couple also
built Ribault Inn which had a dining room and recreation rooms for bridge, billiards, ping
pong and other games. Rooms in the hotel portion rented for $5 a day. Wonderwood by the
Sea provided various kinds of boats and a 1,000 foot fishing pier thrusting into the river, one
erected by Captain John Tillotson, a Mayport fisherman. He ran the fishing business for half
the take and she considered him a very honest man.35
Doris Frances Gavagan at Wonderwood by the Sea Thanks to Suzanne Coffey Bland
Stark, Mayport, pp, 28-31; “Wonderwood by the Sea,” Mayport News, May 28, 1921. Untitled, undated
photocopied set of three pages of what appears to be an advertising pamphlet found in the archives of the
Beaches Museum.
35
33
Jack Stark in front of 1st guest cottage built. Source: Story of Mayport
Gazebo
Source: Beaches Museum
Except for the settled areas, most of the land was overgrown or marshes or drifting
sand dunes, a state of nature as it were. Mayport Road was unpaved. Automobiles could
drive to Wonderwood on the hard-packed beach when it was low tide. The 1916
photograph below shows Elizabeth Stark on horseback amidst cars, sunbathers, and people
playing in the surf. People also came by boat and train. There was a train station in East
Mayport and docks in Mayport. In 1925, the little station became Wonderwood Station.36
36
Beaches News, April 1, 1925.
34
East Mayport/Wonderwood Train Station
Mayport Road, 1925
Mayport Road, 1928
Source: Beaches Museum
Source: Beaches Museum
Source: Beaches Museum
35
Elizabeth P. Stark on horseback, ca. 1916
Source: Beaches Museum
Wonderwood was a destination in and of itself. Accidental tourists were unlikely to go
there for guests had to have the time and money to get there. It benefitted at first from the
Jacksonville winter tourist trade as people came to escape the cold in more northerly climes.
Some may have chosen to stay at beautiful Wonderwood with its river and ocean views,
fishing, riding, and charming company but the northeast Florida tourist industry for the
monied class changed in the early 20th century as Flagler extended his railroad to Miami and
Key West, building luxury hotels along the way and Henry B. Plant extended his railroad to
Tampa.
Tourists to Wonderwood by the Sea, 1930
There are no guest lists extant so we have to rely upon Stark’s writings. She said that
Baron and Baroness DeWitt of Denmark stayed as did Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, Colonel
William Gaspard de Coligny of France, and exiled White Russians (Byelorussia) Count
Zemliskoff and Captain Lemtiougov. Her brother Hoffman came; perhaps the nobility came
through his good offices. Silent movie starts came, for Jacksonville was full of studios shooting
36
movies in Jacksonville, Wonderwood, and the beaches. She said that the Gaumont Picture
Company, a French corporation, shot “Hawthorne’s Pipe Dream” starring Marie Courtot.
Cowboy stars came as well. After all, she had horses.
The Jacksonville movie industry was short-lived, however. Most studios left Jacksonville
after the 1917 election when John Martin was elected. He had campaigned on the promise
of ridding his city of the sin and corruption that the movie industry had brought. The 1918 flu
epidemic also hurt the industry. It was virtually gone by 1921.37
She organized the first Girl Scout troop in Florida, Cherokee Rose #1, in May, 1917,
winning her a degree of national fame. She and the thirty-two girls she recruited helped the
United States after it entered World War One in April, 1917 by patrolling the beach. She
bought them Scouts uniforms in New York. The girls carried firearms, drilled, camped on the
beach in a tent with a wood floor, and patrolled the beach. Coast Guardsmen taught them
semaphore and enjoyed communicating with them. They also taught them how to shoot.
She said that there were “unnaturalized” Germans in Pablo Beach (now Jacksonville Beach)
at the time; in fact, there were only eleven native-born Germans in Pablo Beach in 1910.
That number included the wife of the mayor, a town councilman, the town treasurer, the
parents of a WWI veteran, a fifteen year old girl, and a baker. She could not have known
their citizenship or political views. It was unlikely that she knew the nationality or political
views of other people in Duval County. She and her Girl Scouts were also on the lookout for
saboteurs. She tells charming stories of their adventures. The girls involved benefitted from
having a sense of purpose, from doing merit badges, and from the time she gave them. She
made them feel special. It was such a good story that the national media used it. In the
program of the 1975 dedication of her headstone, given by Girl Scouts, the following
members of the Cherokee Rose Troop were listed. 38
Stark, Mayport, pp. 32-33; Shawn C. Bean, The First Hollywood: Florida and the Golden Age of Silent
Filmmaking. Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 2008. One has to be careful not to overstate Wonderwood as
a movie location.
37
Stark, Mayport, pp. 33-37; "Leads Band of Girl Hun Hunters,” The Evening Independent, April 22. 1918; “A New
Coast Defense,” McCall’s Magazine, July 1918, p. 1; “Woman’s War Work,” Fsview and Florida Flambeau, April
6, 1918; True Republican [Sycamore, DeKalb County IL], May 22, 1918. A copy of “Lest We Forget: A
Bicentennial Tribute to Elizabeth Worthington Philip Stark, May 31. 1975” is in the archives of the Beaches
Museum. Ann Conner, “When Duval Girl Scouts Packed Rifles,” Jacksonville Journal, March 10, 1961 or after.
37
38
Source: The Evening Independent, April 22. 1918
38
"The few, the proud, the girlie scouts!"
39
She endeared herself to Mayport people in ways in addition to the Girl Scouts. She
installed a Christmas tree each year and gave presents to Mayport children. She
encouraged Jack to form and coach a baseball team. She also made sure that people
remembered Jean Ribault, the Frenchman credited with being the founder of Mayport. 39
She was fascinated with the French Huguenots settling the Mayport area (today there is a
debate about the location of Fort Caroline) and their encounter with the local population.
Perhaps her ability to speak French and having lived in Paris accounts for this interest. Her
interest in Ribault led to her to copy a painting by Jacques le Moyne de Morgues Lemoyne
who accompanied Ribault. She said it was a picture (shown below) of Jean Ribault when he
was ”looking for a suitable location to place the monument in order to claim this section for
a French Colony.” She desired to contribute to the preservation of local history so she
spearhead the effort to place a replica of the Ribault Monument. Money was raised, a site
designated, and land donated by her for the Monument and an access road. Eighty-two
women of the Daughters of the American Revolution and Senator Duncan U. Fletcher came
for the dedication of the cornerstone and the luncheon she served in the Ribault Inn.
Fletcher was suitably impressed, especially with so many constituents present. This was 1923
and women could vote. Besides, he was a long-time resident of Jacksonville and had served
as its mayor. The next year, 1924, when the monument was dedicated, she hosted 150
people in a reception at Miramar.40
Ribault Painting
Source: Beaches Museum
Stark, Mayport, pp, 2-17, 38-43.
Stark, Mayport, pp, 2-17, 38-43. The history of the Huguenots in Florida has been a popular subject. An early
study worth reading is Francis Parkman, Huguenots in Florida: The Pioneers of France in the New World originally
published in 1865 and revised in 1885. An electronic edition is available for free on the Historical Text Archive at
http://historicaltextarchive.com/books.php?action=nextpre&bid=65&pre=1.
39
40
40
Ribault Bay made Wonderwood by the Sea very attractive to guests; and Elizabeth
Stark understood this. It provided scenic beauty and made it easy to watch ships, especially
ocean going passenger liners, going to and from Jacksonville. The Starks provided fishing
and swimming facilities in the bay. The St. Johns River had to be dredged regularly by the
United States government to make it navigable by large ships.41 When the captain of the
dredge told Elizabeth in 1925 that he had been ordered to fill in the Bay, she hustled to stop
it. She first went to Colonel Youngberg, head of the Southern District U.S. Engineers, who
would not interfere. Then she went Washington to visit his boss, Major General Lansing Hoskins
Beach, Chief of Engineers. Armed with a letter from Senator Fletcher, she managed to get
past his aide and get to his office. Since General Beach retired in 1924, she must not have
remembered the correct date. Beach ordered the dredging stopped and she received a
letter a few weeks later saying the Bay would be deepened (she says that Beach’s map
showed its depth as being two feet whereas her map showed a twenty foot depth) and that
the Engineers would create a 200 foot opening reinforced with rock and shell at one end.
Major General Lansing Hopkins Beach
Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Implicitly, the Corps was saying that the Bay belonged to the U. S. taxpayer and not to
the Starks, but she had a different understanding. She wrote that Colonel Youngberg said
that the Bay belonged to the Starks and arranged for it to be named Ribault Bay, as she
requested. She said the War Department sent her a letter to that effect. She began treating
it as private property, building a rental house on the “arm” of the Bay and paying taxes on it.
She wrote that she went to Washington and to varying agencies, including the War
Department, to get the U. S. government to take ownership of it because it “was too
valuable to the U. S. to belong to a private citizen.“ She claimed to have talked to and left
an aerial photograph with “Secretary of War Deren.” Her memory played tricks for there
never was a Secretary Deren. Regardless, she had drawn attention to Ribault Bay at the
mouth of the St. John River.
Quinton White, Jr., “Jacksonville Harbor Deepening: A Never Ending Saga,” Marine Science Research
Institute, Jacksonville University, PowerPoint presentation; T. T. Leeser, J. T. Murphy, and B. C. Blake, “Why We
Dredge: The Jacksonville Harbor Project: Past, Present, and Future.” 20pp. https://westerndredging.org/
41
41
During the Florida Land Boom, she was approached about selling out. In 1926, a friend
and realtor asked her how much she would sell it for. Not wanting to sell, she said a million
dollars. No offer was made. He came back to next year, after the Army Corps of Engineers
had made improvements to the bank, and remarked that her place was worth twice as
much. She jokingly commented that it was now worth two million. After this exchange, she
said that someone in New York offered her two million dollars but she rejected it. She was
mortgaging Wonderwood and her property in Washington to make improvements to
Wonderwood. The New York offer encouraged her to believe she could pay off the
mortgages by selling Wonderwood. Offers come and go. No appraisal ever took place.
The 1930s started well even though the Great Depression slowed things. Their house
was worth $20,000, according to the 1930 U. S. Census. That year, the average salary of a
public school teacher was $1,455 a year and a dozen eggs sold for fifty-two cents. Nothing
to sneeze at! Jack’s splendid voice led to him singing with friends. That led to dinner parties
of friends at the Ribault Inn. The riding school, with its twenty-five horses, was flourishing. White
Russians such as Count Zemliskoff and Captain Lemtiougov went into exile when the
Bolsheviks took power in Russia. Some came to the United States with their titles (Americans
tend to be impressed with European title of nobility) and, sometimes, money. They liked the
riding school. She reported that “cowboys” started coming but she didn’t identify which kind
of cowboys. Were they Hollywood types or working men? The Starks and friends started
going to the dancing pier in Jacksonville Beach. She began having legal troubles
concerning the Bay, a subject discussed below. Jack was a diabetic and his lost his legs in
1940.
She must have known by 1935 that the United States government claimed ownership
because it began trying to eject her.
Attorney General Cary D. Landis presented letter from United States Attorney John S.
Holland of Jacksonville, Florida requesting permission to use the name of the Trustees in
bringing suit to eject Mrs. Elizabeth P. Stark from sovereignty lands sold to the United
States which land Mrs. Stark claims.
It was agreed that the United States be allowed to use the name of the Trustees in suit
to eject Mrs. Stark, provided no costs would be required of the Trustees. The Attorney
General was requested to so advise Mr. Holland.42
One would assume that this action was taken after the U. S. government notified her.
In dispute was the arm or peninsula which jutted out from the mainland as well as the bank
of the Ribault Bay. The suit was Trustees of Internal Improvement Fund of Florida, for Use
and Benefit of United States v. Stark, et al. (December, 1938), an effort “to recover an
artificially made strip of coastal lands separated from the shore line of defendant Starks’
upland by navigable water.” The United States District Court accepted the argument that
this land was made by the dumping of the “spoil” from the dredging of the river. Thus, the
Florida. Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund, Minutes of the Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund,
State of Florida. Tallahassee, 1935, p. 128. The Trustees included Governor David Sholtz, Comptroller J. M. Lee,
Treasurer, W. V. Knott, Attorney General Cary D. Landis, and Land Clerk F. E. Bayless.
42
42
peninsula belonged, not to the Starks who had no title, but to the U. S. government, as did
the bank. The Starks were squatters. The Starks had hired P. H. Odom, of Jacksonville to
defend them. When they lost, they did not appeal the decision.43
She was astute enough to understand that the loss of Ribault Bay meant that the
value of Wonderwood by the Sea dropped like a stone. No one would pay one million or
two millions dollars for the land without the bay. If she had sold the land with the bay in
1927, the new owner might discover, then or later, that Ribault Bay was public property.
After she lost in court, she could protect her tourist business for a bit longer by acting as if
nothing had changed. The tourists and her neighbors would not know the court decision.
Since she had a lawyer representing her and Jack, she had to know that they had to
leave. Bureaucracies can be slow but they eventually get the work done.
That same year, 1938, the U. S. Navy wanted to build a base on the southeastern
coast and chose Jacksonville after the city’s lobbying campaign was effective. At stake
were a naval air station on the west bank of the St Johns River south of Jacksonville and an
auxiliary field at the mouth of the St. Johns where ships could anchor. Naval installations
would add millions of dollars annually to the local economy. The effort was wellpublicized. On July 18, 1939, Duval County voters passed a bond issue of $1.1 million dollars
to acquire the necessary land. None of this was done in secret. 44
Buying the land meant eminent domain proceedings. A government would offer
what it considered a fair market price; if the seller thought the price too low, the seller
could appeal in court to get a better price but then had to accept the court’s decision.
Those people in the Mayport area affected by the forced land sale were invited to a
meeting where all this was explained. Stark was the largest single landowner; others
affected included Fabian A. Sallas, J. E. Kavanaugh, Pauline Ross, Frank Otto Mente,
William Floyd, Hanna Atkins, Aline Hirth, T. A. Marshburn, H. C. Hancock, John Drew, P. J.
Leeke, and the St. Johns Bar Pilot House. The issue was not whether the U. S. government
could take the land, only how much it would pay. She wrote that, at the eminent domain
hearing, she heard that she would receive $30,000. She had mortgages of $60,000. She
does not say how much she received. She was sixty-four years old with a husband who
needed help. She knew she was losing much of Wonderwood by the Sea whether she liked
it or not. She did not leave voluntarily. She, Jack, and her retainers were not evicted from
the Navy’s portion of Wonderwood by the Sea until 1941. The “Chronological History, U. S.
Naval Station, Mayport, Florida” says “in 1941 the Mayport land area surrounding Ribault
Bay was purchased and development started.” Joe Pickett, station librarian, also uses this
date. Helen Cooper Floyd, who was meticulous about facts, said 1941. In a 1964 interview,
shortly after Mayport Story appeared, she said that the Navy bought their property in
25 F. Supp. 730 District Court, S.D. Florida. TRUSTEES of INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT FUND OF FLORIDA, for Use and
Benefit of UNITED STATES, v. Stark et al, no.351—Civ. Dec. 12, 1938. See Appendix I.
44 Naval Station Mayport, “History.”
http://www.cnic.navy.mil/regions/cnrse/installations/ns_mayport/about/history.html; Naval Station Jacksonville,
“History,” http://www.cnic.navy.mil/regions/cnrse/installations/nas_jacksonville/about/history.html; Stark,
Mayport, pp. 52-55.
43
43
1941.45
The United State Navy sent sailors under the leadership of Master at Arms Joseph C.
Brown, Jr. to load the material goods of the Starks and prevent them from coming onto
government property. The mission was accomplished while she was elsewhere (some say
at the grocery store). Jack was in the hospital. The servants would not interfere. The entire
process took one hour.
Writing twenty-one years after the even when she was eighty-five, she told a different
story, one she probably had been telling for years. In Story of Mayport, she presents herself
as a martyr who stood her ground until overwhelmed by sailors and Marines. She had to do
it alone except for the help of a servant or two because Jack was in the hospital with one
or both legs amputated. Although she mentions that others in East Mayport also lost their
homes but left peacefully, the focus was on her as it had been her entire life.
She did not appeal the federal District Court decision that Ribault Bay did not belong
to her. Instead, she wrote that her title had no defects. Of course, the condition of her title
was irrelevant in an eminent domain proceeding. The military wanted the land and the U.
S. military gets what it wants. She said that when she arrived home to the Ribault Inn where
she was staying and to which she would bring Jack, Marines had taken over the building,
including the ground floor bedrooms where she and Jack would stay. She found a Smith
and Wesson and moved, with the aid of a servant, to an upstairs apartment and dared
them to come get her. Master of Arms Brown, tells a different story. He was in charge of the
sailors who loaded her goods onto trucks and armed guards were posted to keep her out.
He doubted that she had a gun.
When she brought Jack home a few weeks later, she stayed in a little house called
“Restwell” until she found a “shack” on the beach where they could live. Restwell must
have been on Navy property because she wrote that they were evicted and moved to a
“shack” with Jack, his trained nurse, and two servants. Whatever the “shack” was (the
word denotes a primitive building), it was nothing compared to Miramar or the Ribault Inn.
She had fallen quite far. The psychological blow must have been severe. She had been
mistress of 375 acres on which she had a beautiful home and a fine resort but now only
had 25 acres that she and Jack still owned.
The Navy converted Miramar into the Officers’ Club. The view of Ribault Bay changed
to one of instruments of war instead of the idyllic riverscape as these snapshots attest.
“Chronological History, U. S. Naval Station, Mayport, Florida,” manuscript in Beaches Museum archives; Joe
Pickett, “Mayport Goes to War,” Mayport Mirror, June 1, 1990; Floyd, Helen Cooper. "Wonder Woman' of
Wonderwood." Sun-Times: 8, April, 1981, A-7. Fran Mollnow, “Whatever Happened to Wonderwood?” The
Florida Times Union, July 26, 1964.
45
44
Photos Courtesy of Dan Turner
Undaunted, she and Jack platted a new development, Wonderwood Estates, on
January 28, 1946. The plat is shown below with the top being on the west not the north side.
Pioneer Drive was the northern boundary and Old Mayport Road was the eastern
boundary. Running through their land was Jacob Avenue. The plat delineated twentyseven lots. Not included was the land they reserved for their own use, including Lake
Elizabeth.
45
Duval County FL County Clerk
North is to the right Courtesy of Walter Bennett
Section of a Google map, 2014
Nor
46
Lake Elizabeth, 1950s
Courtesy of Martin Cooper
In spite of the forced sale of Wonderwood by the Sea, the Starks had money. She
hired two Italians to build their new home. It was important to her that people knew that
her home was not built by just anybody but by European craftsman! She also built a twostory building with a restaurant downstairs and a second story with bedrooms and two
bathrooms built. Additional income was to come from two rental homes. She was back in
business but on a much smaller scale. She would never recover from the loss of income of
Wonderwood by the Sea. Her husband Jack was now listed as a co-owner of the property.
She and Jack were determined to maintain control of Wonderwood Estates even
after they sold the land. When they owned the entire resort, Wonderwood by the Sea, they
could control what people did on their property or ask them to leave. Since they fully
intended to sell lots in Wonderwood Estates, they created a covenant in 1945 to govern
what could be done with a lot and any building erected on it. They prevented African
Americans, except for servants, from living there. No more than two families could live on a
lot. They did not want the development cluttered with signs or trash or businesses. The
covenant was to expire at the end of 1970. The three-page covenant is attached as
Appendix II
They had a pleasant life in Wonderwood Estate with a nice house and Lake Elizabeth,
as she called the little body of water. A small pier jutted into it.
47
A Stark house in Wonderwood Estates
Courtesy of Martin Cooper
She still had a Christmas tree and still gave presents to Mayport children. She drove a
car. She maintained at least one servant. Their four parcels of land were appraised at
approximately $3,800, a very low amount, and they paid $14.12 in real estate. 46
The U. S. Navy determined, for the most part, what happened to Wonderwood
Estates and, thus, the Starks. Originally 935 acres, the base expanded both in acreage and
the number of personnel it employed. Congress and the President made sure that the
Navy prospered. Lobbyists for Jacksonville worked hard to see that Mayport won the tug of
war with other possible locales and, forever after, grew. Thousands of civilian jobs were
created when Mayport expanded in addition to the thousands of military personnel.
Millions of dollars were at stake in the 1940s; eventually it was billions of dollars. It absorbed
more land and blocked access to the ocean north of Hanna Park. The village of Mayport
was squeezed until it was a sliver of its former self. Wonderwood Estates became an
unofficial appendage of the base, a place where enlisted men with their families lived. It
did not become the stylish development she must have wanted. Living next to a military
base is usually not considered stylish.
The last twenty years of her life are not well documented. We rely upon those who
knew her. There are “quotes” in the book Acres Aweigh! They are suspect because no one
can remember exact quotes forty-three or more years after an event. Overby had not
even talked with her since he left for Spain in 1961. At best, the quotes are reconstructions
of what he had read and what he remembered.47
Duval County, Florida Tax Receipts 63097-63100 for 1945. Archives of the Beaches Museum.
On February 17, 2015, I received a handwritten letter from Mr. Overby wherein he wrote: “I bought my lot
from Mrs. Stark in April 1957, and the last time I saw her was in 1967.” He also says that he suffered a light stroke
48
46
47
The Starks planned Wonderwood Estates to be a development with houses. They sold
lots. In the late Fifties, tug boat captain Joe Abb Overby bought one. According to Millard
Cooper, she sold a lot to Overby with the expectation that he would build a house and
that he promised not to put a trailer on it. He did and would eventually buy more, creating
a mini-trailer park, something she abhorred. Stark had some of her land platted in August,
1963, an act necessary to sell lots on that particular section of her property.
When Jack died in 1956, she was a childless widow at the age of eighty. They had
been married for forty-four years and she had known him for longer. Instead of burying him
locally where she could visit his grave, she shipped his body to his family in Claverack, New
York. She would live another eleven years. She was not particularly gregarious. Soon, she
rented the house she and Jack shared and moved into a much smaller cottage. She
needed the money. 48
Her family was far away in New York State. She said that few visited, but Nelle
Pritchard, a Mayport resident, said family used to visit in the winter months. Her brothers
were gone; Van Ness died in 1949 and Hoffman in 1951. Leila Philip said that “her oldest
brother and oldest cousin met her in Florida. Her red hair had turned white.”49 She
complained about the lack of family interest in her. Her friend, Sandra Tuttle, says that Stark
had a nephew who sent her white gloves each year. Tuttle knew Stark well. She and her
two children at the time rented Stark’s home from 1957 to 1959; Stark lived in one room in
the back. Stark would have been 81 or 83 years old. She was getting desperate for money.
Mayport people would look in on her and sometimes bring her supplies. Dyle Johnson
talked to her often. He was a local businessman and the unofficial historian of Mayport. On
one visit to her house, he saw a rattlesnake coiled behind her chair and told her but she
thought it was the rug. Dyle killed it, of course. The story, told by his son Jim, tells us that her
eyesight was failing and probably other faculties as well. Dyle and his wife Nell had bought
six and one-half acres from her on July 26, 1955 so she knew the Johnson.50
Around this time, Overby says he drove up in his 1954 Ford Fairlane looking to buy a lot
for his house trailer; the scuttlebutt was she was selling. Overby said Mayport was a rough
place, but Wonderwood Estates, so near the Navy base, seemed different. Besides, he
needed a home for his family, including his dog. He says she made him wait a few days
before she made the deal. As noted earlier, selling a trailer lot was inconsistent with her
character.
According to Overby, Stark came to rely upon this friendly sailor for conversation and
which delayed his responding to me. The letter was dated January 29, 2015 and postmarked February 12,
2015. The letter and his book are inconsistent.
48 Overby, Acres Aweigh, p. 93.
49 Philip, A Family Place, pp. 153-54. Nelle W. Pritchard, “I Remember: Mrs. Elizabeth (John) Stark.” Newspaper
clipping in the Stark biographical folder, Beaches Museum.
Sandra Tuttle, telephone conversations with the author, November 17, 2014 and December, 2014. Sandra
Tuttle and Janice Strickland give the Elizabeth P. Stark Award to someone who has done a service to Mayport.
James Johnson, telephone conversation with the author, October 31, 2014. Document 88-29-1 T in the archives
of the Beaches Museum describes the property she sold. The warranty deed is recorded in Deed Book 1752,
page 578 of the current public records of Duval County, Florida.
49
50
help. He found her this sophisticated, independent woman with an unusual accent
fascinating. She was 80 in 1956; he was in his early twenties having been born in 1931. He
says he saw her in grandmotherly terms. Perhaps his horrid childhood in Mississippi as
related in his autobiography, Just a Dumb Kid from Nowhere, encouraged him to describe
her thusly. Regardless, he had done work for her before he bought a lot and she always
had people working on her property, including cleaning the lake and stocking it with fish.51
Some were teenagers. She still had enough money to hire help and drive her own small
car. She had goats and she fed the ducks who swam on the lake. As she aged, she
became more reclusive and more afraid. She disliked trespassers, even young ones who
wanted to fish in her lake. She yelled at them as she ran them off. She was losing her
physical strength as well as her financial stability. Perhaps she lost some of her mental
acumen as well.
Martin Cooper and Lake Elizabeth
Courtesy of Martin Cooper
Overby. Acres Aweigh, pp. 95, 100. Joe Abb Overby, Just a Dumb Kid from Nowhere (Global Authors
Publications, 2010). Lynn Maria Thompson was the ghostwriter. Overby wrote that he received orders to go to
the US Naval base in Rota, Spain, dating the year by key events of that year. John F. Kennedy had become
President on January 20, 1961; in April, the United States would launch an ill-fated invasion of Cuba led by the
Central Intelligence Agency, Cuban exiles, and off-duty National Guardsmen. Overby left in the autumn. He
says he never saw her again, but in a letter received after this essay was originally published, he said that he
saw her in 1967. That was the year of her death. Time seems to have affected his memory. She never mentions
him in her account of her life in Mayport.
50
51
Boys fishing at Lake Elizabeth
Courtesy of Martin Cooper
Stark self-published Story of Mayport: Site of the Great Modern Naval Station,
preserving her memory in Duval County. Stark was eighty-five years old when she
published this little work, a phenomenal feat. Few people publish anything; a tiny number
publish at such an advanced age. The most striking aspect of the booklet is that she used
the name Elizabeth Worthington Philip (Mrs. J. P. Stark). She had reasserted herself as an
independent woman, as a Philip, and then, parenthetically, as the wife of J. P. Stark. Her
memory was failing, of course. Fran Mollnow, who interviewed her in July, 1964 when The
Story of Mayport appeared, wrote that “her recollections dart in irregular sequence.” By
then, she was not living in the main house of Wonderwood Estates, having moved to a four
room cottage in order to collect rent from the main house.
51
Courtesy of Florida Times-Union
Elizabeth P. Stark, 1964
Courtesy Florida Times-Union
Elizabeth P. Stark, 1964
She still walked around Lake Elizabeth using poles for balance.
In 2015, Lake Elizabeth had been so neglected that it was a fetid pond. At least two
52
of the lot owners had used whatever they could find as fill so they could have more land.
The artesian well that fed it was gone. No one took care of it. The marble entry posts to her
driveway exist still.52
Lake Elizabeth and unused trailer
Entry posts to Stark Home
Photo by Don Mabry
Photo by Don Mabry
Then, three years later in 1964, she paid Vantage Press to publish her Around the
World in Three Years; she reverted to the name Elizabeth P. Stark. Who knows why? She was
88 years old.
52
Fran Mollnow, “Whatever Happened to Wonderwood?” The Florida Times Union, July 26, 1964.
53
In May, 1967, Elizabeth Worthington Philip Stark died. Her body was not shipped to her
family in Claverack, New York but buried in the East Mayport cemetery in an unmarked
grave. Her independence from her family came with a price. Dyle Johnson made the
funeral arrangements for Stark at request of the family. Johnson was a successful local
businessman who knew her well.
Thankfully, Girl Scouts placed a headstone on her grave in 1975; she was, after all, the
founder of the Beaches Girl Scouts and they had not forgotten what she had done.53
Mayport village existed long before she showed up in 1914. She and Jacob Stark were not among the
original founders of Mayport. “Girl Scouts Remember Local Founder,” May 31. 1975. See also “Scouts Honor
Founder; Grave is Marked,” May 31, 1975.
53
54
55
Photo Courtesy of Alec Newell
She became a local legend, especially in the Mayport area where she lived for fifththree years. She was different from the local residents. She was not part of the fishing
industry like so many nor part of the Florida East Coast Railway, another employer. Her
ancestry was Dutch and Protestant not Minorcan and Catholic like so many villagers. Her
accent was different from the locals―Northern or English or some combination based on
the many places she had lived. Although a married woman, she, not her husband, was in
charge. She prided herself on her independence. After all, her desire for independence was
why she left her extended family in Claverack, New York to travel over a thousand miles in
1913 to Jacksonville and Mayport, Florida. Few men would have made the trip with a bus
made into a camper, a covered wagon, seven horses, and three dogs. She was exotic and
charming and worldly-wise and wealthy by local standards. She hired locals and treated
them with respect. She cared about them. Jack revived the local baseball team. She
nurtured the girls in the Girl Scout Troop she organized. That act alone was legendary. She
managed to get recognition for Jean Ribault, the French explorer of Mayport, donating the
land on which a fine monument stood. She got international recognition for his deeds. Her
losses of Ribault Bay and Wonderwood by the Sea were epic events in local history and are
still remembered.
Mayport people who remember her mostly remember the Elizabeth Stark after 1940,
the woman who created Wonderwood Estates in what is now Atlantic Beach, the woman
who lost her husband to diabetes, and the woman who persevered for another twentyseven years. She grew poorer but undaunted. She drove a car to buy necessities. She eked
out a living by selling pieces of her land on occasion. She enjoyed her land and life. She
walked around her lake and through the woods. She climbed trees to get a better view.
56
She squeezed her nanny goat’s teat to squirt milk into her mouth. She was a character but
one smart enough to insure the survival of her memory by writing the two booklets in the
1960s, booklets that insured that she and her feats would be remembered.
Mrs. Natalie Taylor wearing Mrs. Stark’s Girl Scout uniform. May 19, 1984.
Legends get muddled over time. Jack A. Pate, in 1996, accepted Helen Cooper
Floyd’s description of Stark as “the young New England socialite and world traveler [who]
came to the Mayport area by covered wagon from New York State in 1913, married her
handsome husband, John.” She was not a New England socialite but a Washington, D.C.
native with deep ties to the Hudson Valley of New York and she used the nickname Jack for
her husband, Jacob. Bill Foley, that wonderful Florida Times-Union columnist, mistakenly
wrote in 1997 that she arrived at Ribault Bay with her new husband from “Claberack, N.Y.
[sic]” but Jake didn’t arrive until months later from Claverack, N. Y. Gene Barber gave a
good speech in 2006 wherein he said “the little village of Mayport was changed forever
when that strong-willed English lady on horseback happened on the scene.” She was
American. He spoke of “a horse drawn caravan,” but it was led by a motor vehicle, a
modified bus, followed by a covered wagon. One author said Stark, from Rhinebeck, New
York, first saw the Mayport area when the steamer she was on passed the Mayport area as
it headed upstream to Jacksonville! Some writers say Stark was a pioneer of Mayport but
Mayport existed long before she arrived in 1914. She wasn’t even a pioneer in building a
57
resort; others had tried and failed on Burnside Beach.54
Elizabeth Worthington Philip Stark made her family proud even though few of them
knew it. She was a leader as were so many of her male ancestors and siblings who were
military officers. She ventured to an unknown land not with an army behind her but a few
retainers. She was courageous; she persevered in the face of adversity. She was kind and
generous. She, too, had had a landed estate, larger than 294 acres the family had in 1732.
When adversity struck, she persevered. She was undaunted. In her eighties, she wrote about
her beloved Mayport and her life. What more could one ask of a Philip from Talavera,
Claverack, New York?
Elizabeth Stark paved the way for her grandniece, Leila Philip, and other women.
They should be thankful. The people of the Mayport understood the greatness in her.
Jack A. Pate, “Wondering about Wonderwood,” The Beaches Leader, November 13, 1996; Bill Foley, “A
Wonderful Wonderwood Once Existed,”Jacksonville.com, October 12, 1997; Gene Barber, A Brief Narrative of
Mayport Before The Naval Base. A Presentation To The Fleet Landing Forum For The Humanities, Atlanctic [sic]
Beach, Florida, 20 March 2003; and JoAnne Young, “Three women who helped develop the
54
Jacksonville beaches,” JacksonvilleandNE Florida.
“http://www.jacksonvilleandneflorida.com/beacheswomen.html. ca. 2004. Even the journalist writing about
her gravestone dedication calls her a Mayport pioneer. “Girl Scouts Remember Local Founder,” May, 1975.
“Pioneer Dies at 91,” Florida Times-Union, May, 1967.
58
Acknowledgements
This work could not have been done without the resources available at the Beaches
Museum & History Park, both the archives and its personnel. Sarah Jackson and Robert
Sanders helped me locate and obtain materials. Sanders, a computer specialist as well as
an excellent stylist, gave me much needed technical advice. Christine Hoffman, Director,
facilitated my work.
Mayport residents, past and present, who knew Elizabeth P. Stark were willing to talk and
correspond with me. I especially want to thank Sandra Tuttle, John Tuttle, Buster Brown, Alec
Newell, Jim Johnson, Matt Cooper, Millard Cooper, John Gavagan, and Suzanne Coffey
Bland. Newell walked me around Mayport Village, the Wonderwood Estates area, and
Naval Station Mayport to help me understand the Stark locales better. He loaned me a
photograph to use in this study. Dan Turner provided the two snapshots of Miramar under
Navy control.
Various people helped me on specific questions raised by this research. Janet MacDonell
helped with the legal issues surrounding the ejectment suit. Walter L. Bennett helped with
property records. Edwin Ellis found family records for me. Lyn Corley, who has done oral
interviews in Mayport, talked with me about the comments made by the late Joseph C.
Brown, Jr. Brown was in charge of the sailors who evicted the Starks. Captain Matthew
Schellhorn (USN, Retired) escorted me on a site visit of Naval Station Mayport. Jamie Rogers,
Assistant Director of Digital Collections, Florida International University, helped me access a
database at his university. Nath Doughtie provided me with a place to stay while I did
research at the Beaches. Craig Richardson of the Times-Union Media Group helped with
images. Paula Crockett Mabry, my very talented and loving wife, shared my interest in
Elizabeth Philip Stark, and was very patient with the time I devoted to research, writing, and
talking about her. A Mississippian, she found fellow Mississippian Joe Abb Overby’s
autobiographical Just a Dumb Kid from Nowhere very interesting. She read his Acres
Aweigh! Thus, she began to learn about Elizabeth Worthington Philip Stark. She then read
Elizabeth Stark’s two works. She, like I, found Leila Philip, A Family Place: A Hudson Valley
Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family an excellent book. We shared this adventure
into the life of Elizabeth Stark and I am grateful.
59
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Archives, Beaches Museum & History Park
Circuit Clerk records, Duval County, Florida.
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ORAL HISTORY
Mayport Residents, Past and Present, Telephone interviews.
OH 32―Memories Elizabeth Stark, Nelle Pritchard, Pat Pritchard Finley), and Elizabeth Towers.
Beaches Museum & History Park archives.
Margerum, Geraldine and John Gavagan, Jr. Interview. Florida Memory, July 26, 1986.
http://fpc.dos.state.fl.us/memory/collections/folklife/folklife-mp3/s1592/s1592_fmp86adt006.mp3. Beginning at 12:38.
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62
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APPENDICES
APPENDIX I.
Trustees of Internal Imp. Fund of Florida, for Use and Benefit of U.S. v. Stark
25 F. Supp. 730
25 F.Supp. 730
District Court, S.D. Florida.
TRUSTEES of INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT FUND OF FLORIDA, for Use and Benefit of UNITED
STATES,
v.
STARK et al.
No. 351— Civ. | Dec. 12, 1938.
Action of ejectment by the Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund of Florida, for the Use
and Benefit of the United States of America, against Elizabeth P. Stark, her husband, and
others to recover an artificially made strip of coastal lands separated from the shore line of
defendant Starks’ upland by navigable water.
Judgment for plaintiffs.
*731 Herbert S. Phillips, U.S. Dist. Atty., of Tampa, Fla., and William A. Paisley, Asst. U.S. Dist.
Atty., of Jacksonville, Fla., for plaintiffs.
P. H. Odom, of Jacksonville, Fla., for defendants.
Opinion
STRUM, District Judge.
In an action in ejectment, the plaintiff Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund of the State
of Florida, for the use and benefit of the United States, seek to recover a small strip of land
near the mouth of the St. Johns River, Florida, now occupied by the defendants Stark,
through their tenants the MacDowells.
The land in question is a narrow bank running in an easterly and westerly direction,
approximately parallel to the shore line of the upland owned by defendants Stark, and
separated therefrom by navigable water of varying depths up to 31.3 feet at low water, the
mean depth in front of defendants’ upland being 8.5 feet. This bank is connected to the
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mainland at the westerly end by a narrow neck, so as to make the bank a narrow peninsula,
not an island. The peninsula is bounded on the north by the channel of the St. Johns River,
and on the south by a small body of water called Ribault Bay. Defendants’ upland is to the
south of the Bay, the peninsula in question to the north. At the westward end of defendants’
upland property, the distance from the upland shore line across Ribault Bay to the south or
nearest side of the peninsula is 1250 feet, and at the eastward end 2500 feet. The average
distance is 1600 feet. The Starks have never bulkheaded or filled in from their property on the
mainland, so as to give them any rights under Chapter 8537, Acts of 1921, Sec. 1774, C.G.L.
Fla. 1927, known as the Riparian Rights Act of 1921, and there has never existed any physical
connection between the mainland property between the mainland property owned by the
Starks and the small peninsula opposite their property. The peninsula joins the mainland to
the west of defendants’ upland property and connects with upland property owned by
others than defendants, but a portion of the peninsula runs approximately parallel to and
opposite defendants’ upland, separated therefrom by Ribault Bay. If the easterly and
westerly boundary lines of defendants’ upland are projected northerly at right angles to the
shore, across and beyond the intervening water of Ribault Bay, they would pass transversely
across the small peninsula lying to the north of the Bay and thus inclose a portion thereof. It is
this portion which the defendants claim.
The land in question is ‘made‘ land. It was formed by dredging the channel of the St. Johns
River to improve navigation near that point and depositing the ‘spoil‘ material in the shallow
portion of the river, thus raising the natural bottom several feet above high water and
forming what is known as Wards’s Bank Training Wall for the projection of the dredged
channel. The dredging was done by the United States, and the ‘made‘ land was in existence
at the time of the conveyance from the Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund
hereinafter mentioned. Prior to this conveyance, however, the defendants had gone into
possession of the parcel in dispute, so that it was necessary to bring this action in the name
of the grantor Trustees for the benefit of the grantee United States. Before the dredged
material was deposited, the depth of water over the natural bottom at the point in question
was 6 to 12 feet.
[1] Defendants have no conventional or record title to the peninsula or bank, either before or
after the dredging. They claim solely as owners, with riparian rights, of the neighboring
upland fronting on and to the south of Ribault Bay. They rely wholly upon the doctrine of
riparian rights to sustain their title and occupancy. That this gives them no title is settled by
the Supreme Court of Florida in Brickell v. Trammel, 77 Fla. 544, 82 So. 221. Defendants’
possession is therefore that of mere squatters.
But have the plaintiffs a title upon the strength of which they can oust the defendants *732
from their possession for the benefit of the United States, for in ejectment of the plaintiff must
recover upon the strength of his own title, not upon the weakness of his adversary’s.
[2]
By fee simple deed, dated September 15, 1935, the Trustees of the Internal Improvement
Fund of Florida conveyed said lands to the United States outright, with a mineral reservation
not material here. Prior to this conveyance the Trustees claimed title by virtue of Sec. 1391,
C.G.L. Fla. 1927, Chap. 7304, Acts of 1917 created not title in the Trustees because the depth
of water over the original bottom at this point, before the dredged material was deposited
[3]
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thereon, was more than 3 feet at high tide, so that these lands were excluded from
operation of the statute.
Sec. 1391, supra, vests in the Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund, with power of
disposition, three classes of coastal lands: (1) All islands, sand bars, shallow banks, or small
islands made by the process of dredging the channel by the United States Government,
located in the tidal waters of Florida; or (2) ‘similar, of1 other‘ islands, sand bars and shallow
banks upon which the water is not more than 3 feet deep at high tide and which are
separated from the shore by a channel or channels not less than 5 feet deep at high tide; or
(3) sand bars and shallow banks along the shores of the mainland title to which was not then
vested in prior parties. The depth requirement applied only to the second class of lands, not
to the first and third. The lands in question clearly fall within the first class, unaffected by the
depth requirement, from which it follows that title thereto was vested in the Trustees, and
passed to the United States by said deed, notwithstanding the depth of water over the
original river bottom at said point before the dredged material was deposited thereon was
more than 3 feet. A sand bar or a shallow bank is still a sand bar or shallow bank even thou it
may touch the mainland at one of its extremities. As stated, the peninsula-shaped sand bank
or bar does not touch the touch the defendants’ upland, but is separated therefrom by
several hundred feet of navigable water.
[4] In Florida, these Trustee’s deeds are prima facie evidence of title in the grantee. Morgan v.
Dunwoody, 66 Fla. 522, 63 So. 905. The Trustees acquired title by the statute, and no title is
shown in the defendants which would overcome the title established by plaintiffs.
Even if the lands in question, by reason of the depth over the original bottom, were
sovereignty lands and not Internal Improvement Fund lands, the Trustees would still be able
to maintain this action against these defendants under Chap. 15642, Acts of 1931, Ex. Sess.,
Sec. 1446(13), C.G.L. Perm. Supp., and would be entitled to prevail therein.
[5]
Judgment for plaintiffs.
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APPENDIX II.
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Courtesy of Beaches Museum
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