LaVilla Demographics

Topic: Origins - Early Versions
James Weldon Johnson’s parents moved to LaVilla, in 1869. [1]  Patricia Drozd Kenney searched census and military records to identify the other individuals who bought or rented land from Francis L’Engle and his wife, the former Charlotte Johnston Porcher, in the suburb of Jacksonville, Florida, during Reconstruction. [2]

She noted that Freedmen gravitated to the Jacksonville area because Union troops still were present. [3]  Claude Augusta Wilson remembered a Black soldier drove up to the plantation where his parents were living near Lake City and drove them to Jacksonville.  His father got a job with the Florida Central Railroad, and a year or so later “bought a piece of land in town and built a house of straight boards.” [4]

More than half the individuals who leased land from the L’Engles were born in Florida, “frequently from the outlying counties in northeast Florida.” The rest were from South Carolina or Georgia. [5]  Nine of the seventeen who were living in Jacksonville in the 1930s when they were interviewed by the WPA were from Florida, with six from Tallahassee.  More were from Georgia than South Carolina. [6]

All the ones Kenney happened to profile were from the Fernandina area, mentioned in the post for 19 February 2023.  Union troops had landed at the port in March 1862.  In December, Thomas Wentworth Higginson sent agents there to recruit men for the Black regiment he was organizing near Beaufort, South Carolina. [7]

Kenney mentioned Hamilton, who lived in Fernandina’s Nassau County.  He enlisted in 1862, and lived in Beaufort.  After the war, Hamilton leased land from Charlotte.  More important, four men he knew in the army also moved to LaVilla and “maintained contact through friendship, work, church, and leisure.” [8]

Another, Thomas Holzendorff, was born in Fernandina and escaped there with his wife when Union troops took control.  He enlisted, and was in Jacksonville at the end of the war.  He “leased a lot from L’Engle, began preaching, and remained in LaVilla with his family until 1872.” [9]

Hamilton and Holzendorf were not unique.  Kenney found:

“Of the fortynine black males who leased lots from L’Engle following the war, nine have been identified as having served in the U.S. Colored Troops.  In all, thirty-five LaVilla residents have
been identified as former soldiers.” [10]

Johnson’s family was wealthier than those of the veterans.  His father, James Johnson, had accumulated some capital during the Civil War when he was head waiter at the Royal Victoria Hotel in Nassau.  The Bahamas were then thriving on money from Confederate blockade runners. [11]  The end of the war, and an 1866 hurricane ended the good times. [12]

Guests at the Nassau hotel told him about possibilities that were developing in Jacksonville. [13]  The Saint James Hotel had opened in January 1869, [14] and he was hired as head waiter. [15]

LaVilla initially was a racially mixed neighborhood.  Johnson recalled his family lived near a man named McCleary who “was the foreman at Clark’s sawmill in the eastern end of the town, a large plant that employed a big force of Negroes.” [16]

William Alsop and Henry Clark bought land originally granted to the Florida Railroad in 1870 for a sawmill. [17]  Kenney noted seven men worked in the timber industry that year, and [18] the majority of Black lived near the hotels or sawmills. [19]  Barbara Richardson found most of the Blacks were working for mills or as porters. [20]

Alsop and Clark later bought nearby timberlands, [21] and the number of Blacks working in timber grew to 44 by 1880. [22]  Pay was poor and laborers unsuccessfully stuck for higher wages. [23]  There had been an earlier strike in 1873 that failed. [24]

The most important skilled trades in LaVilla were carpentry and brick making.  Jackson’s grandmother’s husband, John Barton, was a carpenter, [25] while Mack Mullen arrived in 1875 from Tampa to oversee construction of the Windsor Hotel.  He was born in Georgia. [26]

Kenney mentioned Smart Tillman who had been a fieldhand near Fernandina when he enlisted.  He began as a woodchopper and was working for a brick maker in 1880. [27]  Squires Jackson, who had lived in Jacksonville before the war, was a brick layer. [28]

Most of the men in LaVilla were day laborers, and most of the women were domestics. [29] Johnson’s grandmother, Mary, did laundry for the hotels. [30]  His mother was one of the few women to have a job with prestige.  She was the first Black teacher in Jacksonville [31] at the Stanton School built by the Freemen’s Bureau. [32]

The quality of life changed in LaVilla as people aged.  Kenney noted that in 1870, nuclear families were strong and no woman over the age of twenty-five worked.  In 1880, more than half the working women were older, and, by 1885, 73% of all of Black “working women were over twenty-five years of age.” [33]

One reason was women lived longer than their husbands.  John Barton died in 1878, [34] while Mary lived until 1901.  After Barton’s death, Johnson spent most of his time with his grandmother. [35]

A second problem was desertion, [36] probably because individuals had a difficult time adjusting to life away from plantations.

The third reason women were working more was that jobs for men were scarce and wages low.  Many were forced to work elsewhere part of the year. [37]  Hotel work was seasonal.  Johnson’s father spent the summers working “at some mountain or seaside hotel in the North.” [38]  Then, in 1881, Johnson became a preacher who commuted from Fernandina until 1886. [39]

Even when James Johnson was working in Jacksonville, he seldom was home.  His son recalled his father’s “work at the St. James took him from home early in the mornings to see breakfast served, and he remained at the hotel until dinner was finished, by which time I had been put away in the little bed in which I slept.” [40]

Hotel and resort workers were a special community bound by the status of their work.  Johnson remembered the Cuban Giants baseball team of New York city had been organized by the “waiters at the Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine.”  They played professionally in the summers, and worked in the hotel in winters. [41]

He also recalled that each hotel had at least two vocal quartets.  When he was fifteen, he was in one that competed with others. [42]  These rehearsals, concerts, and competitions were one way songs could move from one location, either through individuals in the same group from different areas or through competitions.

End Notes
1.  The creation of LaVilla by Francis L’Engle, and the elder James Johnson’s purchase of land there is discussed in the post for 19 March 2023.

2.  Patricia Drozd Kenney.  “LaVilla, Florida, 1866-1887: Reconstruction Dreams and the Formation of a Black Community.”  Masters thesis.  The University of Florida, 1990.  This land is mentioned in the post for 12 March 2023.

3.  Kenney.  10.  As mentioned in the post for 19 February 2023, troops were stationed in Jacksonville to protect the port and rail facilities, and support the government’s Freedmen’s Bureau.

4.  Claude Augusta Wilson.  Interviewed in Lake City, Florida, by James Johnson on 6 November 1936.  In George Rawick.  A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume 3, Florida Narratives.  Compiled by The Library of Congress from interviews by the Works Projects Administration, Federal Writers’ Project.  Washington: Library of Congress, 1941.  Wilson did not mention the location of the family’s land.  Jacksonville’s railroads are mentioned in the post for 19 March 2023.

5.  Kenney.  14.
6.  Rawick.
7.  Higginson is discussed in the post for 19 February 2023.
8.  Kenney.  20.
9.  Kenney.  18.

10.  Kenney.  7-18.  None of the WPA interviewees were soldiers; most were too young during the Civil War.  Most encountered Union troops when they raided plantations for food or, later, when they visited plantations to announce Emancipation.  The exceptions include Harriett Gresham, who married a soldier near Beaufort, [43] and Amanda McCray, who was commandeered as a cook. [44]

William Sherman remembered he had joined the party following Union troops in Robertsville, South Carolina.  When they headed for Savannah, Sherman opted to go to Beaufort. [45]  Many who planned to continue to Savannah were killed when a Union commander destroyed the bridge over a river, leaving the Blacks trapped between the river and advancing Confederate soldiers. [46]

Squires Jackson first went to a Confederate camp, and ran away when the commander there tried to enslave him.  He then went to a Union camp, and was appalled by the medical treatment given wounded Black soldiers in the 54th Massachusetts regiment.  “In the silent hours of the evening he stole away to Tallahassee, throughly convinced that War wasn’t the place for him.” [47]

11.  James Weldon Johnson.  Along This Way.  New York: The Viking Press, 1933.  129–604 in James Weldon Johnson, edited by William L. Andrews.  New York: Library Classics of the United States, 2004.  137.

12.  Johnson, 1933.  138.
13.  Johnson, 1933.  138.
14.  Kenney.  12.
15.  Johnson, 1933.  138.
16.  Johnson, 1933.  140.

17.  Joel McEachin.  “Designation Application and Report Planning and Development Department of the City of Jacksonville regarding: Proposed Designation of NAS Cecil Field Chapel.”  Jacksonville Historic Preservation Commission, 26 September 2018.  32.  The railroad sold the land to trustees of the railroad, James Soulter and John McRae.  They, in turn, sold land to a New York banker, Richard T. Wilson, who sold it to Alsop and Clark.  They had established a sawmill business in Jacksonville in 1849. [48]

18.  Kenney.  33.

19.  Kathleen Ann Francis Cohen.  “Immigrant Jacksonville: A Profile of Immigrant Groups in Jacksonville, Florida, 1890-1920.”  Master’s thesis.  University of Florida, 1986.  27.

20.  Barbara Richardson.  A History of Blacks in Jacksonville, Florida, 1860–1895.  PhD dissertation.  Carnegie Melon University, 1975.  68, 87.  Cited by Cohen.  31-32.

21.  McEachin.  32.
22.  Kenney.  33.

13.  Thomas Frederick Davis.  History of Early Jacksonville.  Jacksonville, Florida: The H. and W. B. Drew Company, 1911.  162.

24.  “History: Timbering in North Florida.”  Florida Natural Areas Inventory website, Tallahassee, Florida.

25.  Johnson, 1933.  139.

26.  Mack Mullen.  Interviewed in Jacksonville, Florida, by J. M. Johnson on 18 September 1936.  In Rawick.

27.  Kenney.  36.

28.  Rev. Squires Jackson.  Interviewed in Jacksonville, Florida, by Samuel Johnson on 11 September 1937.  In Rawick.

29.  Kenney.  31, 36.

30.  Johnson, 1933.  152.  The division of labor between Black men who held visible positions at resorts and Black women who did laundry for hotel guests is mentioned in the post for 21 October 2020.  Claire Lovejoy Lennon’s grandmother did laundry for visitors to a Georgia resort near what became Warm Springs.

31.  Johnson, 1933.  144.
32.  Johnson, 1933.  171.
33.  Kenney.  38.
34.  Johnson, 1933.  155.
35.  Johnson, 1933.  161.
36.  Kenney.  41.
37.  Kenney.  41.
38.  Johnson, 1933.  149.

39.  James Johnson’s life as a minister is discussed in the post for 12 February 2023.  Kenney suspected the change in occupation was not voluntary.  She noted that in Cleveland, Ohio, “whites began to replace black waiters in the better hotels and restaurants” in the 1880s. [49]

40.  Johnson, 1933.  149.
41.  Johnson, 1933.  175.

42.  James Weldon Johnson.  The Book of American Negro Spirituals.  New York: The Viking Press, 1925.  35.

43.  Harriett Gresham.  Interviewed in Jacksonville, Florida, by Pearl Randolph on 18 December 1936.  In Rawick.

44.  Amanda McCray.  Interviewed in Jacksonville, Florida, by Pearl Randolph on 13 November 1936.  In Rawick.

45.  William Sherman.  Interviewed in Chaseville, Florida, by J. M. Johnson on 28 August 1936.  In Rawick.

46.  “Betrayal at Ebenezer Creek.”  Civil War Times Magazine, October 1998.  Republished on History Net website, 12 June 2006.

47.  Jackson.

48.  M. T. Webb and Wanton S. Webb.  Webb’s Jacksonville Directory.  Jacksonville, Florida: Wanton S. Webb, 1890.

49.  Kenney.  42.  Her source is Kenneth L. Kusmer.  A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870–1930.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976.  75.