Frederick Sidney Dewey was born on October 10, 1837, in Bloomfield, Indiana, the son of Lonson Dewey (from Massachusetts) and Nancy Jones (from Connecticut). It was always noted in Birdie’s biography that Fred was a “cousin” of Admiral George Dewey, who won fame for his victory in the Battle of Manila Bay on May 1, 1898. Thomas Dewey was the original Dewey in America, often called “Thomas the Settler.” Thomas had come to New England in 1633 from Sandwich in Kent, England, and had settled in Windsor, Connecticut. He was granted the status of “freeman” in 1634, which gave him rights to receive land grants and to vote.
Fred and Admiral Dewey were distant cousins, descended from different sons of Thomas Dewey—Admiral Dewey was descended from Josiah, while Fred was descended from Jedediah. Fred’s connection to Thomas the Settler goes back seven generations, where each man was a farmer, primarily in Westfield and Great Barrington, Massachusetts. So much is known about the Dewey line because of the 1898 book Life of George Dewey, written by Adelbert M. Dewey, which recorded the ancestry of more than fifteen thousand Deweys in the United States, all descended from Thomas the Settler.
Over time, the Deweys had spread out across America from the many sons of Thomas, into learned and common professions. Among those most well known are Melvil Dewey, who developed the Dewey Decimal System of library classification; John Dewey, philosopher and educator; and Thomas Dewey, politician. Fred had one sister, Hattie, and three brothers, Galusha, Berny and Frank. The family appeared in the 1860 census living in Scott, Illinois.
Fred next emerges in the historical record for his Civil War service. He enlisted in the Union army on August 15, 1862, at Carondelet, Missouri, near St. Louis, serving in the Thirty-first Missouri Infantry. It is not known if Fred moved to Missouri from Indiana or if other family had relocated to the town. He was assigned as company clerk and by September had been promoted to sergeant major.
Illness soon found Fred as the result of the deplorable conditions under which most soldiers served in the Civil War. Poor food, little or no sanitation and exposure to the elements left many soldiers open to illnesses prevalent at that time. After only two months of active duty, Fred fell ill with a respiratory disease, or what was called “phthisis,” the Greek name for the disease commonly known today as tuberculosis. He was reduced in rank to private, by his wish, in November 1862. He was first in the military hospital at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, where he remained until July 1863. Fred was then transferred to Camp Sherman in Bovina, Mississippi, near Vicksburg and discharged due to his disability on September 6, 1863, by General Ulysses S. Grant. As his discharge papers noted, “He acted as clerk for the Outfit for the first two months since which time he has done no duty of any consequence in the last twelve months he has done hard to exceed two months duty and certainly has consumption or other pulmonary disease as to unfit him for service, signed Captain John Reed.”
Adjutant Surgeon Horace Nunell also wrote on Fred’s discharge papers, “I certify that I have carefully examined the said Fred S. Dewey of Captain John Reed’s Company, and find him incapable of performing the duties of a soldier because of Phthisis. I declare my belief that he will never be able to resume the duties of a soldier. I further declare my opinion that if he remains in the service it will result in his death. He is unfit for the Invalid Corps.” The Invalid Corps was composed of two battalions of disabled or invalided men who could do light duty as sentinels, complete paperwork or perform hospital duty. Fred was deemed in too dire a shape for even those duties. The discharge papers indicated that Fred was returning to Pevely, Missouri, southwest of St. Louis.
The years between 1863 and 1874 did not provide any documentation on Fred’s activities or whereabouts. Given his tuberculosis, which proved fatal for many, it is not known if he recuperated with family or somewhere else. In an 1874 Illinois Senate record, Fred was appointed as a notary public for the town of Salem, Illinois. In 1876 or 1877, Birdie Spilman met Fred Dewey, and they were married on September 25, 1877. “Birdie” was the name that appeared in the Salem marriage registry book. The matrimonial ceremony was, of course, performed by Reverend Jonathan E. Spilman, one of two ceremonies he conducted that day.
And so began the wedded life of Fred S. Dewey and Birdie Spilman. Fred was eighteen years older than Birdie and thirty-nine years old when they married. It was unusual at that time for a man to remain unmarried for so long; record searches in several states, however, failed to find any previous marriages.
It is at this point that much of the Dewey story can be based on what appears in the book Bruno, the story of their beloved dog. Birdie’s writings at first glance appear to be fictional stories based mostly on human-pet interactions. In these stories, Birdie becomes the character of Judith and Fred the character of Julius. Why she picked these particular names is unknown. Speculation could be as simple as the fact that she liked the way the names sounded together or that they were perhaps favorite characters from books she read. For clarity’s sake, when quoting from Bruno, their actual names will be used instead of Judith and Julius.
A first reading of Bruno did not reveal many details or clues, as it occurred at the beginning of the research for this book. However, as more facts about the Deweys emerged, a sort of “Bruno code” came to light, where documents such as land transactions, newspaper articles and historical accounts from reference books perfectly matched the story being told in Bruno. The object then became to crack the Bruno code to reveal the actual names of the persons and places about which she wrote. That effort was largely successful, and it added additional depth to the story of Bruno, especially in relation to the move to Florida and their first stint at pioneering. Part of the reason she may have changed the names of places and people was to not offend actual persons or to disparage the places in which they lived. As the story will tell, their initial experiences in Florida were challenging.
Bruno opens with the Deweys living in Salem. Birdie wrote: “We do not count the first half-year of our married life, because, during that time we did not live, we boarded. Then we found we had developed a strong appetite for housekeeping, so we began to look about for a house.” In Bruno, she said that Fred “does office work” but did not reveal where he worked. He listed “Clerk in Bank” as his occupation on the 1880 census, and he appeared in an advertisement for The Book-Keeper, a nineteenth-century journal, on September 28, 1880: “From Fred S. Dewey, Book-keeper, Salem National Bank, Salem, Ill: You have succeeded far beyond my expectations in making your paper interesting and valuable.” Birdie listed her profession on the 1880 census as “keeping house.” Their life in Salem was undoubtedly a time of wedded bliss: “While we were furnishing and embellishing this our first home was, I think, the most entirely happy times of our lives.” She quoted Fred: “I know why the birds always sing so joyously when they are building their nests.”
One of the first issues to be settled in the Dewey household was that of pets. Birdie quoted Fred: “Well, I’ll tell you one thing, Birdie: We never want to own any cats.” Growing up, Birdie had always had cats at home, so the thought of having a “cat-less hearth,” as she puts it, did not please her. After several months, Fred wondered if Birdie was lonely during his long workdays at the bank. He asked her about it, and yes, she was lonely. A cat offered company, but she knew that he hated cats. He wanted to please her and said that as long as the cat kept out of his way while home, it was all right.
The following day, a bank customer mentioned to Fred that his Blue Maltese cat had kittens, and Fred asked if he could have one. Fred was excited to come home early and tell Birdie that a kitten was headed her way. The kitten was christened “Rebecca,” named for Tom Sawyer’s girlfriend, as the neighbor’s Maltese cat was named “Tom”; he paraded in front of Birdie’s cat as she sat in the window, reminiscent of a scene from the book Tom Sawyer. This pet was the first of many that the Deweys had over their marriage, and their pets were the subjects of Birdie’s most remembered and popular writings.
The n
ext pet in the Dewey household was one that stole not only Birdie’s heart but the nation’s as well. Fred’s sister, Hattie Elder, was living in an apartment in Chicago. They had been given a puppy that soon outgrew their small living quarters with two sons and husband. She wrote to Fred, “Would you like a nice dog? The children have a valuable puppy, seven months old, given to them, and we cannot keep him here, in a flat. He is half setter and half water-spaniel; pure on both sides. We call him ‘Bruno.’” And so started a relationship with a dog that was to so inspire Birdie that the dog became the subject of her bestselling 1899 book, which remained in print for more than twenty years. She wrote of Bruno, “There was something about the sympathy of that dumb creature which touched a chord not to be reached by anything human. It was so unlooked for and so sincere.”
As Bruno grew, it was time for him and Rebecca the cat to meet. At that time, Rebecca had kittens in the stable, and Birdie carefully brought Bruno in to meet the kittens when Rebecca returned from a hunt: “Rebecca received him with a flash of her paw which left a long deep scratch on his nose. He retreated whining and growling. Fred comforted him, while I took Rebecca in hand. For some time we reasoned and experimented with them, until finally we had the satisfaction of seeing Rebecca let down her bristles and begin to purr while Fred smoothed her head and back with Bruno’s paw.”
With kittens, Rebecca and Bruno in the household, the Deweys had their first family of sorts. Birdie often referred to the pets as “the livestock”: “For greater convenience we always spoke collectively of Bruno, Rebecca and her kits, as ‘the cattle.’” Keeping a big dog did prove difficult, and he ran several miles from home to chase sheep. At one point, the Deweys had given Bruno away to a local hunter, but Bruno refused to eat for him and the dog ran home each chance he saw: “We were just starting for home, when on the sidewalk there was a sudden flurry and dash, I fell on my knees to hug him; and Bruno, stomach to earth, was crawling about us, uttering yelps and whines that voiced a joy so great it could not be told from mortal agony. We had given him away without his consent, and he refused to be given; so the trade was off. He stayed closely at home now, seeming to think we might disappear again if he did not watch us.”
Things were clicking along in the Dewey household. No doubt it was about this time that Birdie had started sending in literary pieces such as short stories to the popular periodicals of the time. Fred was still at the bank, but his health was suffering from the long-term effects of tuberculosis: “Fred had always dreaded the bleak northern winters, having some chronic troubles, a legacy of the Civil War. It is only in literature that a delicate man is interesting; practically, it subjects him to endless trials and humiliations, so we never gave his state of health as a reason for the proposed change. Instead, we flourished my tender throat. A woman may be an invalid without loss of prestige, so not one of our friends suspected that our proposed change of climate was not solely on my account.”
It was at this point that the word “Florida” entered the Dewey lexicon. A neighbor had visited Florida with a glowing report: “We were greatly interested, and at once sent off for various Florida papers, pamphlets, and books.” So the house in Salem was put up for sale, and the Deweys would soon be off to start their sixty-year adventure in the faraway land of Florida.
“Begin to Talk Florida”
Today’s Florida is seen by the average visitor or resident as a series of broad urban metropolises with only occasional patches of green space and forest. The state has been drained of much of its waters and swamps, and the drainage and reclamation efforts have made Florida livable, arable and prosperous. The 1881 version of Florida that the Deweys encountered would have been quite unrecognizable in comparison to today’s modern urban communities. Florida’s northern part, bordering Georgia, had vast pine woodlands, dotted with cabbage palms. Small rolling hills and dark red clay soils abounded in the inland areas. The coastal areas had palmetto and oak scrub lands along the uninhabited oceanfront. This land above Orlando was where Florida’s first population boom occurred after the Civil War. Reconstruction had left the state of Florida broke and desperate for new settlers to tame the land as farmers and storekeepers and to serve as the hosts of northern visitors seeking a warm winter in a mysterious and new frontier land. Key West was an entirely different place than the rest of Florida, being more akin to the Caribbean and having little in common with the peninsula’s topography, lifestyle and climate.
The early Northern Florida settlers tried to make the area a much more tropical place than it actually is. Visitors in the 1870s and 1880s saw numerous orange groves and other semitropical vegetation as far north as Jacksonville, something unheard of today even in current times of rising temperatures. Even then, the oppressive summer heat was recognized; from Daniel G. Brinton’s 1869 book A Guide-book of Florida and the South: For Tourists, Invalids and Emigrants: “The season for Southern travel commences in October and ends in May. After the latter month the periodical rains commence in Florida, and the mid-day heat is relaxing and oppressive. About mid-summer the swamp miasma begins to pervade the low grounds, and spreads around them an invisible poisonous exhalation, into which the traveler ventures at his peril.”
Growing cities were found on the west coast as well, such as Pensacola, where timber, cotton and brickmaking prevailed. Many businesses supported by the land along the Pensacola, Tallahassee and Jacksonville line were involved with lumber mills, both for longleaf and slash pine, and for felling the ancient massive oak and cypress trees found in the area. These businesses were involved with what was called “naval stores,” or the production of masts, planking, turpentine, rosin and other supplies to support shipbuilding and maintenance.
Much of the rest of Florida, south of Lake Okeechobee, was the great unknown area of the Everglades, the wilderness and swamp region that could only be tolerated by a few hunters, squatters and others who truly wanted to live in an uninhabited land. In all of Dade County, which at that time spanned from the Middle Keys all the way to the St. Lucie River, lived only 257 people, not counting the Seminole Indians tucked away in the vast Everglades hinterlands.
Then there was Key West, that rowdy town at the United State’s southernmost point that had flourished in the Civil War because of its strategic location. The town’s main industries were wrecking, sponge diving and salt production for food preservation. Any mail destined for Dade County far to the north was always taken first to Key West. It was not until 1900 that Jacksonville surpassed Key West as the most populated city in the state.
In 1880, about 270,000 people called Florida home. Although the population was small in comparison to the 2010 population of 19 million, it had grown by 43 percent from just ten years earlier. Key West was the largest city in the state, with about 10,000 residents, and Jacksonville was growing rapidly and was an important industrial city, with train connections, lumber mills, shipping interests and water access to the middle of the state via the St. Johns River. Other cities prospered as well, including Tallahassee, St. Augustine and Pensacola. Orlando had also started to emerge as the center of what was then called “South Florida.” The Orlando area, located in Orange County, had high rolling hills, was dotted with many large lakes and was readily accessible by steamer from Jacksonville by going up the St. Johns River through the chain of lakes to various settlements along the way.
The information that Fred and Birdie might have used to make that brave decision to move to Florida was firsthand travel accounts by friends and relatives and the books and promotional materials that were widely distributed at the time. As Birdie alluded to, health was a major reason why they were considering relocating to a warmer environment, as many people sought warmth to alleviate the common respiratory ailments of the time, asthma and tuberculosis. Many northern cities were choked with poor air, especially during the winter months, when hundreds of chimneys and smokestacks billowed with wood and coal fires to keep residents warm.
Some of the publications the Deweys mi
ght have read at the time spoke of Florida in glowing terms, providing a utopian picture of a land filled with flowers and sunshine. In Bruno, Birdie does not list any specific books or materials they read, but a search through several archives provided a good representation of what those publications would have been. Other publications provided a more accurate picture of what would be encountered in Florida, including exposure to some diseases that were not present or common in northern climates, such as yellow fever and malaria. No one understood at that time how such diseases were spread, namely through infected mosquitoes. Mosquitoes were thought of as merely a nuisance, not as harbingers of disease. As Daniel Brinton recommended, “A strong, silk mosquito net, with fine meshes, will be highly prized in the autumn nights. A teaspoonful of carbolic acid or camphor, sprinkled in the room, or an ointment of cold cream scented with turpentine, will be found very disagreeable to these insects, and often equally so to the traveler.”
Sidney Lanier’s 1876 book Florida: Its Scenery, Climate and History no doubt served as a primer for the Deweys on their soon-to-be adopted home. Lanier stated, “Florida is the name as well of a climate as of a country…the gayest blossoms of metropolitan midwinter life, at the same time spreads immediately around these a vast green leafage of rests and balms and salutary influences.” These words were certainly alluring to the northern reader tired of the seven-month winters and yearning for a new land of adventure, where inexpensive or free property could be easily acquired.
Pioneering Palm Beach Page 3