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Eleanor McWilliams Chamberlain (c. 1845-1934)

 

Prepared by the Historical Monument Trail Selection Committee

Friends of the Tampa Riverwalk

For further information, contact doris@dweatherford.com

 

Eleanor Collier McWilliams, called Ella, was born in Iowa in 1858. In this progressive atmosphere, she was in the first generation of college women called “co-eds.”

 

In 1870, she married Fielding P. Chamberlain. They came to Florida in 1881 and settled in Tampa in 1883.

 

Just a year after moving to Tampa, she was speaking on women’s rights. In 1893, she argued so strongly for her right to vote that one of the men present suggested she organize a society. She took up the challenge, and just days later, 20 people joined; eight were men. Not surprisingly, Chamberlain was elected president.

 

Affiliating themselves with the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the members distributed literature advocating the vote.

 

Tampa women led the state, and they hosted the organizational meeting of Florida’s first suffrage organization in January 1895, which also elected Chamberlain as president. In this position, she spoke as far away as DeFuniak Springs in the Panhandle. She also went to Washington for the national convention in 1893 and wrote about that in the Tampa Tribune.

 

As younger women began to lead the later effort for the vote, Chamberlain worked for what the era called “Mother’s Pensions” – an early form of Social Security for widows with children to support.

 

In the 1920s, after the vote was won, she concentrated on charity, especially for African Americans.

 

Chamberlain died in 1934.

 

Clara C. Frye ( c. 1872-1936)

 

Prepared by the Historical Monument Trail Selection Committee,

Friends of the Riverwalk

For further information, contact Fred Hearns, fhearns@netzero.com

 

Clara C. Frye, the mullato daughter of Joseph Draughn, a southern African-American man, and Fannie Fordam, a teacher from London, England, was born April 17, 1872. Clara trained and gained nursing experience in Chicago, Illinois and Montgomery, Alabama before moving to Tampa in 1901. She married Sherman Frye, a Tampa barber, and they had two sons.

 

In 1908, when a white physician, Dr. M.R. Winton, asked Frye to care for an ill black patient while he prepared to perform a surgical operation, she offered her modest, three-room house at 1615 Lamar Avenue in Tampa Heights. Her dining room table served as the operating table and her bedroom as the recovery room.

 

Frye’s home continued to serve as a hospital for another fifteen years, and she never refused services for patients because of their inability to pay.

 

In 1923, using borrowed money, Frye purchased and renovated a two-story building on the same street, converted it into a larger hospital and named it the Clara Frye Hospital.

 

Because she would not press patients for payment, Frye found it increasingly difficult to make ends meet.

 

In 1928, the city of Tampa purchased the hospital from Frye and took over its operations. She continued to work there until crippling arthritis and other health challenges forced her retirement. The hospital had been renamed the Tampa Negro Hospital.

 

Clara C. Frye died on April 8, 1936. She was 63 years old, and reportedly impoverished. She was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Tampa Heights.

 

In 1937, with Works Progress Administration funds, a new, 62-bed hospital for blacks was built on Union Street at the Hillsborough River. Fittingly, the structure was dedicated as the Clara Frye Memorial Hospital. Today, the ninth Floor wing at Tampa General Hospital is named in her honor.

 

Henry Bradley Plant ( c. 1819 - 1899)

 

Prepared by the Historical Monument Trail Selection Committee,

Friends of the Riverwalk

For further information, contact Andy Huse mailto:ahuse@usf.edu

 

Henry Plant was born in Connecticut in 1819. After refusing his grandmother’s offer to send him to Yale to become a minister, in 1837 he worked as a cabin boy and deck hand on the steamer of Adams Parcel Express Company. In 1842, he married Ellen Elizabeth Blackstone.

 

In 1852, Plant became general superintendant for Adams Express Company. By the end of the Civil War, northern armies had destroyed most of the south’s railroad infrastructure. Plant helped to rebuild the Southern railroad system, making him well-placed to enter the railroad business.

 

In 1879 and 1880, he snapped up foreclosed and troubled railroad firms, soon building a transportation empire along the southeastern seaboard. In 1882, he joined forces with J.E. Ingraham to build a railroad in Florida from Sanford to Tampa.

 

On January 4, 1884, the South Florida Railroad reached its southern terminus of Tampa. Plant extended the railroad to Port Tampa, and made Tampa the hub of his steamship line, which ran to Havana and New Orleans, among other places.

 

He built two huge hotels, the Tampa Bay Hotel in Tampa and the Belleview Biltmore, across Tampa Bay in Belleair, partly because of a fierce rivalry with Henry Flagler, a rail magnate who similarly developed Florida’s east coast. He broke ground on the Tampa Bay Hotel in 1888, and the hotel opened three years later. Dignitaries from all over the world thronged to the hotel for the grand opening.

 

Plant’s railroad made it easier for Florida’s crops and products to make their way to northern markets. It also made Tampa the most important terminus for passengers and cargo on Florida’s west coast.

 

James McKay, Sr. (c. 1808- 1876)

 

Prepared by the Historical Monument Trail Selection Committee,Friends of the Riverwalk. For further information, contact Robert Kerstein BKERSTEIN@ut.edu

 

James McKay was born in northern Scotland 1808. As a young man, he took a liking to the sea and became a master mariner. McKay moved to the United States where he married Matilda Cail, who was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1846, James and Matilda, along with her mother, Sarah, moved to Tampa.

 

McKay purchased property downtown as well as in the Ballast Point vicinity and elsewhere in Hillsborough County. He built a downtown courthouse in 1847, the First Baptist Church, the Florida House Hotel, and in 1851, a large steam sawmill on the banks of the Hillsborough River north of town that provided lumber to build many of Tampa’s homes.

 

Shortly after the severe 1848 hurricane, McKay began a shipping enterprise connecting Tampa to Mobile, New Orleans, Fort Myers and ultimately Cuba, where he sold the cattle of Hillsborough County’s ranchers.

 

Although he was a slave owner, McKay initially argued against those who called for Florida to join the Confederate secession from the United States. Ultimately, however, McKay supported the Confederate cause. He successfully evaded the Union blockade to provide supplies to southern troops and civilians, until his ship was destroyed by Union forces in October 1863.

 

After the war, McKay’s cattle shipping enterprise expanded dramatically. He also briefly served on the county commission in 1870, adding to his earlier periods in public office as mayor of Tampa in 1859-60, and as the treasurer of Hillsborough County in 1850.

 

McKay died November 11, 1876, and his widow, Matilda Cail McKay, died September 21, 1894.

 

Vicente Martinez-Ybor ( C. 1818-1896)

 

Prepared by the Historical Monument Trail Selection Committee,

Friends of the Riverwalk

For further information, contact Andy Huse mailto:ahuse@usf.edu

 

Born in Valencia, Spain to a prosperous family, Vicente Martinez-Ybor was sent to Cuba at age fourteen. In 1848, he married Bernarda Pamela Learas. The couple had five children together before she died in 1862.

 

He formed his own cigar company, and by 1853 it expanded into a full-sized factory. Martinez-Ybor married Mercedes de las Revillas Salmonte in 1866, and they had seven children together.

 

When the Ten Years War broke out in Cuba in 1868, Martinez-Ybor supported the insurgents, and as a result, he fled to Key West, relocating his factories there. The island did not completely suit his needs, but Tampa which boasted an ideal climate, a fine port, a new railroad line, and a lower cost of living, certainly did.

 

In 1886, Martinez-Ybor led the way to Tampa for the embattled cigar industry, and Cuban and Spanish workers followed. Tampa’s cigar-producing Latin Quarter soon became known as Ybor City.

 

Martinez-Ybor also invested in the town’s infrastructure, founding a gas company, a paving company, a fire insurance company, and other enterprises.

 

He built houses and sold them to his workers at reasonable prices. Martinez-Ybor brought in doctors to ensure safe living conditions. He paved the streets and sidewalks. He turned over his old wooden factory to his workers to be used as a theater and meeting place. Martinez-Ybor invested in the streetcar system when it connected Ybor City to Tampa. His successful cigar city also prompted the improvement of Tampa’s port facilities.

 

Martinez-Ybor died on December 14, 1896. The following day, all businesses in Tampa closed in honor of his funeral.

 

Florida's First People (c. 10,000 BC-1700 AD) The Mound Builders

 

Prepared by the Historical Monument Trail Selection Committee,

Friends of the Riverwalk

For further information, contact Rodney Kite-Powell RKP@tampabayhistorycenter.org

 

Twelve thousand years ago, Paleoindians, continuing their southern migration through the North American continent, entered the peninsula of Florida.

 

One interesting feature of these early inhabitants was their construction of large earthen or shell mounds, some for ceremonial or spiritual purposes. Others were simply large collections of shells and other debris. Numerous mounds dotted the landscape around the Tampa Bay area, including one exceptionally tall one that stood on what would become the southern edge of Fort Brooke, located near today’s hockey arena.

 

With the passage of centuries, these "First Floridians" formed separate groups or tribes. The two largest were the Timucua, living in the northern parts of Florida, and the Calusa, covering the southern parts. A smaller group, the Mocoso, lived on Hillsborough Bay between the Hillsborough River and the Alafia River. Their territory included what is now downtown Tampa.

 

Other small groups, including the Tocobaga and the Pohoy, lived along Old Tampa Bay.

 

Florida's first people lived in a natural paradise. They utilized the Gulf of Mexico for their supply of food and were accomplished seamen.

 

The Timucua and the Calusa frequently fought over territory, and it is likely that the area between the northern coast of Tampa Bay and Manatee County was disputed land.

 

During the late 1600s and early 1700s, the tribes of north Florida, including the natives of Tampa Bay were decimated by European diseases such as measles, smallpox, and influenza, as well as by warfare and slaving raids.