Meadowsweet Pastures

Miakk'a Grazing Lands Attracted Cattle Ranchers

Photo credits: Sarasota County History Center

Bertha Palmer at Picnic in Meadowsweet Pastures

The 1897 General Directory for Manatee County devoted one page to the community of Miakka (now spelled Myakka), and gave the following brief description in addition to the listing of 44 resident household: "Located twenty-five miles southeast of Braidentown (now called Bradenton). Land, pine, and most suitable for arrange culture. The town is surrounded by the finest grazing lands in the state, known as the Miakka bottoms. Mail tri-weekly from Sara Sota. Postmaster, A.M. Wilson." Only Englewood, with 52 listings, and Sara Sota, with 93, were larger communities among the seven in the portion of Manatee County that later became Sarasota County.

The "finest grazing lands in the state" drew some of Miakka's earliest residents. During the Civil War, Shadrick "Shade" Hancock looked after the cattle of his father-in-law, Jesse Knight, who had moved them to the Miakka River region. Hancock's family, according to grandson Bill, built a spacious log house with an overhead loft, reached by ladder and used by the boys and any travelers who stopped for the night. With Miakka on the road between Pine Level (county seat of Manatee County from 1867 to 1887) and Manatee, family members carried the mail between those two settlements.

The round trip took three days and was repeated twice a week. Bill Hancock described Hancock as a "shouting Methodist" who served the community as an un-ordained Methodist minister.

After the Knights moved from the Tampa region to Horse and Chaise (later Nokomis), and moved their cattle farther south, the Hancocks remained in the Miakka community and raised their own cattle.

Garret "Dink" Murphy brought his cattle to the Miakka region soon after the war. After gaining the reputation as owner of one of the largest herds in the state and some of the best pasture land, Murphy sold his ranch and cattle to Mrs. Potter Palmer in December, 1910.

Bertha Palmer Oversees Her Hogs

The December 15th issue of the Sarasota Times quoted Murphy as saying, "My work of forty years all gone." The following week, the paper reported that Palmer had paid $70,000 for the land that would become a major portion of her experimental Meadowsweet Pastures.

Another cattleman, Augustus M. Wilson, moved into the Miakka area from Ft. Myers in the late 1870s. In addition to cattle and citrus, Wilson opened a general store and became Miakka's firs postmaster in 1879. Perhaps reflecting an interest in being involved with people beyond the bounds of his community, Wilson extended Sarasota's first telephone line to his Miakka home in 1900. He served terms in both houses of the state legislature and became one of the "progressives" who lobbied for better roads and, ultimately, the formation of Sarasota County. He was the first tax collector for the new county.

One non-cattle family that moved to Miakka was that of John and Sylvia Crowley. While Sylvia taught school, John was a blacksmith and served the cattlemen of the region. Horseshoes, wagon parts and branding irons, as well as general hardware, came out of his shop. He took a small portable forge to outlying homesteads for work that could not be "brought in." The Crowleys' grandson, Jasper, also a teacher, left some of the family property as an educational site for county student to experience the flora and fauna of old Florida along with some of its rural history. The resulting Crowley Museum and Nature Center helps keep the essence of pioneer Miakka alive.

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