Historical Marker
Bee Ridge Community
The Bee Ridge Community area, bounded roughly by Clark and Bee Ridge roads, and Cow Pen Slough and Phillippi Creek, was a high inland area of sandy ridges separated by marshes. It was renowned for many bee swarms. Isaac Alderman Redd first settled the area following Florida's Seminole Wars and his discharge from the Army. Redd traded cattleman's skills with other pioneers such as William H. Whitaker. After Confederate service, Redd lived with his family at several sites before settling forty-one acres on Bliss Road in 1877.
[MAP] 1. Isaac Alderman Redd Home Site
2. Friendship Baptist Church Site
3. S.C. Rawls Home Site
4. William H. Tatum Home
5. Henry Hawkins's Barn Site
6. Bee Ridge Missionary Baptist Church/Gillespie School Site
7. Bee Ridge Post Office Site
8. Bee Ridge Hotel Site
9. Site of Dairy
10. Seaboard Air Line Rail Station Site
11. Area of Apartment House, Barber Shop and Store
12. Site of Mrs. Palmer's Sawmill
13. Bee Ridge Baptist Church
14. Bee Ridge Presbyterian Church
From 1877 to 1891 Isaac Alderman Redd was pastor of the Friendship Baptist Church chartered by ten area families. The growing Bee Ridge community included Redd's oldest daughter Laura FeDonia, who with her first husband S.C. Rawls first settled in an area now know as Albritton Groves. In 1896, Donie and her second husband William H. Tatum built a home that stands on Proctor Road near today's Lakeview School. The first school in Bee Ridge met in Henry Hawkins's barn on Hawkins Road. In 1890 the Florida Mortgage and Investment Company, developers of the town of Sarasota, deeded an acre of land on MacKintosh Road for a school briefly shared by the Bee Ridge Missionary Baptist Church.
Mrs. Potter Palmer's firm, the Sarasota-Venice Company platted the town of Bee Ridge. An official post office was granted in 1912. Mrs. Palmer's Bee Ridge Hotel opened in 1914 and by 1917 the town boasted a dairy at Proctor and Sawyer roads, a Seaboard Air Line rail station and an apartment house, barber shop, and store on Harris Street. Lumber from the booming town was supplied by Mrs. Palmer's sawmill, which was located on Gypsy Street and later housed a commercial cannery. In 1915 and 1917 the Bee Ridge Baptist Church and the Bee Ridge Presbyterian Church were added to the community.
Dedicated in 1991 by the Sarasota County Historical Commission
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