Lostmans Heritage: Pioneers in the Everglades by Karen Yvonne Hamilton.
Silver medal winner in the the Annual 2021 Florida Authors and Publishers Association President’s Book Awards. Lostmans Heritage: Pioneers in the Florida Everglades follows the author’s journey as she searches for her ancestors from the slave country of Savannah to the wilds of Ocala and Arcadia, Florida, and deep into the Florida Keys and Everglades. This true story begins with Hamilton’s ancestor, Richard Hamilton, who was first introduced to the world in Peter Matthiessen’s novel, Killing Mr. Watson. Hamilton’s research follows Richard, a former slave, and other Everglades residents to the ending of an era when the National Park Service took over the islands. Along the way Hamilton uncovers secrets and stories, polygamy, bootlegging, fist fights, murders, gangsters, killers, and tales of tomahawks and missing schoolteachers. The Everglades was not a place for the average man at that time. You did what you had to do to feed your family.
“…outstanding and a much needed address to Florida’s history…”
“…deeply researched and a fascinating read.”
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Across the Everglades: a canoe journey of exploration by Hugh L. Willoughby. 1898.
Monroe County, Florida Genealogy, History & Facts
Vital Records, County Census Records, Courthouse and Government Records, and more
“The following pages are a verbatim transcript of a penciled memorandum of events made by me from day to day while on an expedition across the Everglades, around Lake Okeechobee, and up and down the connecting rivers and lakes, in 1842.” 22 pages PDF
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Bootlegging, Low-Bush Lightning and the Murder of Deputy Sheriff J. H. Cox & Family.
Church, A., A Dash Through the Everglades
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Hamilton, Ernest Sr. Shark Point. 2013. A fictional story based on historical facts.
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McBride, Tim and Ralph Berrier, Jr. Saltwater Cowboy: The Rise and Fall of a Marijuana Empire. St. Martin’s Press, 2015.
McKeen, William. Mile Marker Zero: The Moveable Feast of Key West. Crown, 2011.
Moses, W.R., Record of the Everglade Exploration Expedition.
National Park Service. Pioneer Settlement – Everglades National Park. 2015. National Park Service. Historic Roads.
Robinson, Tim. A Tropical Frontier: The Gladesman. Independent Publishing, 2013
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Spessard Stone, edited by. From Storter, G. W. “Early Pioneers of Collier County.” Naples News Tribune, August 18, 1927
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Truesdell, William G. A Guide to the Wilderness Waterway – Everglades, Florida
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.“You Just Can’t Live Without It”: Ethnographic Study and Evaluation of Traditional Cultural Properties of the Modern Gladesmen Culture, Jacksonville, Florida, July 17, 2011 • Revised Draft
Watson, Ch. “History of the 10,000 Islands etc.” 1927. Retrieved from The Copeland Papers, p. 1085.
Watson, James G. “Man Writing: The Watson Trilogy: Peter Matthiessen in Archive.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 46, no. 2 (2004): 245-70.
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