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PRINCESS TO PAUPER: THE ELIZABETH P. STARK LEGEND

(revised August 13, 2015)

By Donald J. Mabry

©2015 Donald J. Mabry

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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 twenty-

three, 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

1 Elizabeth Worthington Philip (Mrs. J. P. Stark), Story of Mayport: Site of the Great Modern Naval Station. Self-

published, 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.

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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 4 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.

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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

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Lafayette Square north of the White House

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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.

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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,

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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 thirty-

acres 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.

7 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.

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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

12 "United States Census, 1880," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MZZN-

WXC : 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.

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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

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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 ill-

tempered.

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

14 “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 19th 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

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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.

16 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.

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General William Ludlow

Van Ness did not meet her because the U. S. Army was engaged in the Philippine-

American 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

20 “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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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 22 Philip, Family Place, p. 141. 23 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.

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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.

24 Philip, A Family Place, p. 149; Overby, Acres Aweigh, pp. 65-67. “Feminist Pioneer,” Florida Times-Union, May

31, 1975.

25 Lisa Hix, “War on Women, Waged in Postcards: Memes From the Suffragist Era.” (http://tinyurl.com/bj2u2wd).

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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 multi-

millionaire 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.

26 Stark, Mayport, p. 24; Philip, A Family Place, p. 151; Overby, Acres Aweigh, p. 66-567. 27 Stark, Mayport, pp. 24-25; Guide to the Anson Phelps Stokes Family Papers, Yale University,

http://tinyurl.com/pkszfxs.

20

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.

21

1913 Map showing the approximate route in red

After her arrival, she searched Florida looking for her special place. Seeing white-

haired 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

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

22

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/MNYN-

236 : accessed 10 December 2014), Jacob P Stark, Mayport, Duval, Florida, United States; citing sheet 5A, family

23

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.

30 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.

24

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

25

USGS Map, 1918 showing FEC tracks going through East Mayport and Mayport

H. H. Williams Map Source: Story of Mayport, p. 51

26

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.

27

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

33 "United States Census, 1910," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/M5M3-

TNK : 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.

28

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

29

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 seventy-

nine in October, 1956. 34

They had to work hard to build Wonderwood by the Sea and her house, Miramar.

34 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.”

30

Miramar overlooking Ribault Bay Courtesy of the Beaches Museum

31

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.

32

Lake at Wonderwood by the Sea

Wonderwood by the Sea gazebo Courtesy of Marin Cooper

33

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

35 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.

34

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.

35

East Mayport/Wonderwood Train Station Source: Beaches Museum

Mayport Road, 1925 Source: Beaches Museum

Mayport Road, 1928 Source: Beaches Museum

36

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

37

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

37 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.

38 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.

38

Source: The Evening Independent, April 22. 1918

39

"The few, the proud, the girlie scouts!"

40

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

39 Stark, Mayport, pp, 2-17, 38-43. 40 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.

41

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.

41 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/

42

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

42 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.

43

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 well-

publicized. 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

43 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.

44

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.

45 “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

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 twenty-

seven lots. Not included was the land they reserved for their own use, including Lake

Elizabeth.

46

Duval County FL County Clerk North is to the right Courtesy of Walter Bennett

Section of a Google map, 2014 Nor

47

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 two-

story 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.

48

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

46 Duval County, Florida Tax Receipts 63097-63100 for 1945. Archives of the Beaches Museum. 47 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

49

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.

50 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.

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

51 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.

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.

52

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

53

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 Photo by Don Mabry

Entry posts to Stark Home 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.

54

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

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.

55

56

Photo Courtesy of Alec Newell

She became a local legend, especially in the Mayport area where she lived for fifth-

three 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 twenty-

seven 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.

57

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

58

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.

54 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

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.

59

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.

60

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64

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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.

[2] 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.

[3] 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

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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.

[5] 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.

Judgment for plaintiffs.

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APPENDIX II.

70

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Courtesy of Beaches Museum