This Week Newsletter - April 1, 2009
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This Week
 This week, we got rained-out and Saturday's high winds also put the kibash on us shooting the video we had planned to produce. Mother Nature rules, when it comes to outdoor video history production! So, we have chosen an encore performance of The John Early House, for your viewing pleasure. Click here to view it.
Tales of Sarasota
This week, Diane tell us about when the 'Creek Rises' and how you better head for higher ground. Her and Pete's experiences made them do just that! Our sympathy goes out to the people along the Red River, but don't be so sure a similar thing cannot happen in sunny Sarasota. Click here to read all about it. Ringling Relics Retrospective - A Grand Success
There was a tremendous turnout for this once in a lifetime opportunity to acquire a piece of the glamours 1926 El Vernona Hotel (a.k.a. The John Ringling Towers). This fundraiser brought a great deal of awareness to guests looking to learn of the Ringling landmark and to bid on beautiful tiles, colorful beams, and a vast array of interesting relics. Proceeds from the event will go to local nonprofits that spealize in historic preservation, and educational programs that include, The Sarasota Alliance for Historic Preservation, the Friends of the History Center, and the Historical Society of Sarasota County. Congratulations to all who made this special event possible, and their continuing efforts to promote Sarasota's legacy. Pictured above, Jesse White congradulates Denise Kowal for her purchase of the 'lion's share' of the elaborate wooden beam that once graced the El Vernona Hotel.
Steinmetz Captured Sarasota's Past
This was the advice that decided Joe Steinmetz's career. He easily could have been successful in the insurance business or in his father's industrial furnace firm. He could have followed the path he set when he obtained a degree in English from Princeton University. But Steinmetz's heart wasn't in any of those vocations; it was in photography. Beginning in pre-World War II Pennsylvania, Steinmetz created a visual record of the United States' social history. His early work exhibits the comfortable side of life of the affluent Northeast. Society weddings, debutante parties and Princeton reunions made Steinmetz popular among the upper crust. He soon became a professional studio photographer, well known for the invention of the candid wedding album. As demand for his work grew, the Saturday Evening Post approached Steinmetz for his first magazine assignment. Throughout his career, Steinmetz also provided photographs for Life, Time, Holiday, Colliers, and Town and Country. Read more... (photo credit: Sarasota County History Center)
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Clamming in Sarasota Bay
The hats and long sleeves, skirts, pants and stockings were not only the fashion of the day but also protected the skin from sun and the ubiquitous mosquitoes. Not all newcomers knew how to cook the harvest from the bay. Nellie Lawrie, daughter of one of the Scottish families who arrived in 1885, later recounted their first experience with clams. Read more... (photo credit: Sarasota County History Center)
Yesterday's Sarasota Calendar
Also, be sure and check out Whit's website at: www.ChickenHillNC.com. This upcoming Monday in 1911, plans were drawn up and accepted for B.L. Honore's $17,000 home on Yellow Bluffs. Known as the Acacias, the completed structure had nearly 7,000 square feet of living space, not counting porches and balconies. It was constructed by contractor J.S. Maus. (photo credit: Sarasota County History Center)
History Locator
This week we are honoring the Rosemary Cemetery marker. It reads: Rosemary Cemetery is burial place for many early Sarasota citizens, civic leaders, and entrepreneurs including Scotsman John Hamilton Gillespie, first mayor and local manager for Florida Mortgage & Investment Co., British land developers of the municipality. The cemetery was set aside in plat "Town of Sarasota", filed on July 27, 1886 by the promoters of the ill-fated "Ormiston Colony" and was deeded to the incorporated city seventeen years later. Early families with members interred here include Abbe, Browning, Burns, Grantham, Cunliff, Halton, Higel, Pelot, and Whitaker, among others. Owen Burns purchased the founding corporation's holdings in 1910. His influence has been credited with guiding the "true flowering" of the city laid out by the Scots. Dedicated in 1986 by the Sarasota County Historical Commission. For more information on Rosemary Cemetery, Click Here...
Where Am I?Each week we offer a "Where Am I?" type of question to test your recall of places you have seen, but might take for granted as part of the general landscape. Next week we are planning to take this popular brain teaser a step further. We are requesting local merchants to donate a nice prize to the person who is first to guess the correct location, event, historical person's name, and so on. Please join us on April 8th to join in the fun. Instead of 'clicking through' right away for the answer, you will have to wait a week for the answer, when the winner of the weekly contest is also announced.
(photo credit: Sarasota County History Center)
Hey There, Birthday Boy!
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The Ringling Relics Exhibition, Sale, Auction and Celebration took place this past Saturday evening at Sarasota Architectural Salvage on Central Avenue. 
"In this life of ours, with its limited time, we should do what we like to do, not be compelled to do something because of economic necessity. Your hearts should be in your work, and if you like what you're doing you'll be successful at it and happy. You many not become a millionaire, but you'll undoubtedly make a nice living" - Dr. Max Thorex as quoted in the Pelican Press, April 7, 1983, by Sally Baxter.
For millennia the waters off the southwest coast of Florida have provided food for coastal inhabitants. The settlers of early Sarasota shared that bounty. Clamming, as shown in this photo at Anton Kleinoscheg's home on Sarasota Bay off Cunliff Lane around 1890, was, with harvesting oysters and catching fish and sea turtles, a common activity for putting food on the table. Since there were no area stores for the purchase of fresh seafood no refrigerators or source of ice to preserve it once acquired, the catch had to be consumed the same day.
Every day of the year we highlight what took place in Sarasota's history, thanks to Whit Rylee and Tom Payne's extensive research and sense of humor. Frequently check our website's 
Sarasota History Alive! is spotlighting our county's historical markers for you in our weekly e-Newsletters. No sense in trying to read them as you drive by at 40 miles per hour any longer.
This week's clues: My oh my, I have been around since October the 4th, 1925. In all that time so much graced the news throughout the history of our county, which began in 1921. I am part of the orginal entrance of this one-story historic structure, and face westerly to be warmed by the afternoon sun. Give up? 
Today may be April Fool's Day, but it is also local history author, and Sarasota County's best known historian's birthday. None other than Jeff LaHurd celebrates his 59 years in Sarasota today. We will not share his age, but he moved here when he was a younster. If you would like to wish him a happy day, and ask him how old he really is, feel free to call him at the Sarasota County History Center where he is their top-notch History Specialist. How does he find the time to perform his full-time job and write all his books? We'll never know, but low and behold another one is due out soon. Whew..."Sarasota History Alive!" is a part of the "Florida History Alive!" network
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