The Stranahans of Fort Lauderdale: A Pioneer Family of New River (Florida History and Culture)

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Description

“This informative, fast-paced, interesting book on the Stranahans of Fort Lauderdale provides needed historical context to a dynamic, ever-growing population center. Harry Kersey, one of Florida’s leading historians, interweaves the story of the town’s founding and growth into the lives of two of its most significant pioneers and community builders.”–J. Michael Denham, director, Center for Florida History, Florida Southern College, Lakeland

When they married in 1900, Frank and Ivy Stranahan began a life together on the Florida frontier that would shape and define the development of one of the vital state’s most sophisticated urban centers. Pioneering spirit and economic enterprise linked them to Seminole Indians, venture capitalists, and colorful entrepreneurs along the New River settlement; today they are recognized as a founding circle of relatives of Fort Lauderdale and their riverfront home has been restored and designated a National Historic Landmark. 

 Frank Stranahan came south from Ohio in 1893 to run an overnight camp on the stagecoach line carrying passengers from Lake Worth to the Miami area. He soon opened a trading post that thrived on commerce in pelts, plumes, and hides with Seminole Indians, who in turn purchased goods and groceries to take back to their camps in the Everglades. Stranahan’s business interests expanded to include real estate and banking. An honest businessman, he became a respected political and civic leader, instrumental in the birth of Fort Lauderdale in 1911. When the Florida land boom collapsed and his bank closed, Stranahan’s mental and physical health failed, and he committed suicide in 1929.

 Ivy Cromartie, a native Floridian, used to be 18 when she arrived at the settlement as its first schoolteacher and met her future husband. Energetic and articulate, she focused her activities out of doors the home. But even so teaching, she used to be active in various reform movements ranging from Audubon Society efforts to save the plume birds to temperance and women’s suffrage, working mainly through the Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs. She is best remembered for her role as an advocate for Indian rights–especially education and child welfare–primarily with the Friends of the Seminoles, an organization she established in the 1930s. Before her death in 1971 she spoke steadily about her full life to reporters and historians and used to be interviewed extensively by Kersey.

Harry A. Kersey, Jr., professor of history at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, is the writer of several books, including The Florida Seminoles and the New Deal, 1933-1942 (UPF, 1989) and Pelts, Plumes, and Hides: White Traders a few of the Seminole Indians, 1870-1930 and the coauthor of Buffalo Tiger: A Life in the Everglades.

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