Pioneering Palm Beach

by Ginger L Pedersen

  National acclaim for Bruno was immediate, and several publications featured glowing reviews. The Boston Herald noted, “One is not obliged to be a lover of animals to appreciate Bruno’s friendship and the honesty of purpose and delightful comradeship which this little book disposes.” The Art Exchange reported, “In Bruno there is shown the mind of an artist with keen sympathy for and understanding of animal nature.” Joseph Leopold Borgerhoff, critic and author, wrote of Bruno in the Library of Southern Literature: “In Bruno Mrs. Dewey gives a delightful picture of her first dog. It is skillfully interwoven with record of her early struggles, joys, adventures in her adopted state. Mrs. Dewey’s English is plain and direct; she knows the secret of saying things in a quaint and picturesque way; hers is a style with a merry twinkle.”

  BYRD SPILMAN DEWEY’S BOOKS AND LETTERS. In addition to her 1899 bestseller Bruno, Byrd Spilman Dewey published many of her short stories in pamphlet form, including “Flying Blossom,” “Peter the Tramp” and “Who Seeks, Finds.” Private collection.

  The Florida Times-Union noted, “The world is not crowded with books by authors who make their home in Florida. The book is one which will touch deeply readers of all classes, whether lovers of animals or not, and one that will interest young and old.” Finally, the New York Times wrote, “It is a story of a dog’s life and deeds, and of the faithfulness which made him a genuine companion to his mistress. Not a learned dog like Diomed, not an elegant morsel of refinement like Loveliness, Bruno is a dog whose owners do not think that heaven will be quite complete for them until they can go over to the ‘Happy Hunting Grounds’ and get Bruno to live with them again.”

  The book sold well, and by 1900, it was already in its second printing, with more than 100,000 copies in print. The Lake Worth News reported on November 1, 1900, “Mrs. Fred S. Dewey has received a letter from Messrs. Little, Brown and Co. of Boston, saying that the orders for her book Bruno continue to increase and that it is now being introduced for supplementary reading in some of the Eastern schools.” Bruno was important in another way in that it was certainly one of the first novels ever to be written in West Palm Beach, and it was also set in Florida, making it a milestone event in Palm Beach County’s literary history. The year 1901 also marked Birdie’s entry into Marquis’s Who’s Who, which was founded in 1899 and contains concise biographies of influential Americans; inclusion in the book was by invitation only, and Birdie was listed until her passing in 1942.

  In a March 6, 1900 letter to Nathan Haskell Dole, a prominent writer and critic, Birdie wrote, “My little book has brought many delightful letters. I have the largest drawer in the new desk Santa Claus brought me nearly full of them. My husband is so proud of me and it makes me very happy.” Certainly the fame from Bruno opened the doors to more opportunities. In 1901, Vogue magazine commissioned Birdie to write a series of articles about the cats at the Blessed Isle. The four Vogue stories were the beginning of her second book, The Blessed Isle and Its Happy Families, published in 1907, which chronicled life at Ben Trovato with Fred, Birdie and their many pets. The cats and their misadventures were the main characters. J.L. Borgerhoff commented, “These stories of Catsie, Roi, Deedie, the Robber Cat, the Twins, Peterkin and others are told with much detail both interesting and amusing, and a great deal of cat lore and cat psychology is to be found in them.”

  As West Palm Beach was ever encroaching on the Blessed Isle, and Palm Beach was booming with new hotels and luxury homes, Fred was interviewed in the Tropical Sun on October 6, 1906, as to what he envisioned for the growth of the area: “Mr. Dewey also spoke encouragingly of the proposed drainage scheme which is to be carried out by the various land companies interested so extensively west of this city, and he believes that the lands will, when drained and reclaimed, prove all that has been claimed for them, producing a variety of crops that will find ready market and demand good prices.” At that time, any land typically more than one mile inland was considered to be the Everglades. Now, much of the land has been drained, as Fred predicted. It served first as agricultural lands until being developed for luxury housing and equestrian communities known as the village of Wellington and Royal Palm Beach.

  The Deweys were gaining new friends and entry into elite circles. Among their friends were Henry Phipps and his wife, Anne Childs Shaffer Phipps. Henry Phipps was an entrepreneur and partner to Andrew Carnegie, whose Carnegie Steel Company had made them both very rich men. Phipps subsequently became one of America’s greatest philanthropists. Birdie revealed this friendship in a letter to Hugh Fullerton, who had enquired as to whom she thought was the most interesting woman in the world. She replied, “The most interesting thing in the world is LIFE itself, and therefore I’d say the most interesting woman IN THE WORLD is a successful mother. By successful I mean a mother who has given the world strong, useful, happy pure-blooded men and women. Such a woman is the most charming and alluring of companions, the most dependable of friends, and most worthy of the highest honor.” Mrs. Phipps, in Birdie’s opinion, was such a woman. Birdie also had an active correspondence with Ellen Axson Wilson, first wife of President Woodrow Wilson. Mrs. Wilson wrote a letter in 1905 to Birdie when Woodrow Wilson was president of Princeton University: “I am sending the photographs including one of myself since you wished it.”

  FRED AND BIRDIE DEWEY IN JACKSONVILLE. Pasted inside the cover of a copy of the book Bruno, this 1907 image shows Fred and Birdie Dewey at a Jacksonville photography studio. Private collection.

  Ben Trovato was truly a place of culture, music, literature and good company. In an undated article from the Florida Times-Union, the home was described as follows: “Their home, Ben Trovato, is the center of a most delightful circle, and many of the prominent hotel guests and cottagers find their happiest moments there surrounded by the art treasures Mr. and Mrs. Dewey have collected.” That charm and friendliness was not just lost on their adult friends. Many children were welcomed at Ben Trovato, as well as at all homes in which the Deweys resided. In Judge Hoover’s research on Birdie, he interviewed several people who knew her when they were children in the fledging West Palm Beach. Mrs. Sara Dean recalled, “Mrs. Dewey was small, fluttery and vivacious with dark hair and dark eyes, was very much interested in cats and used to entertain me in her front room.” Living nearby in an area called Crane’s Nest was Frieda Crane Prior, who gave this wonderful insight: “I was in and out of Mrs. Dewey’s home almost every day. She loved children although she did not have any of her own. She was crazy about cats, and her doors had little doors in them so they could go in and out. She had difficulty with alligators trying to catch her cats. She was small with black wavy hair. “

  This description of the “doors with little doors” matches what Birdie describes in her book The Blessed Isle and Its Happy Families, where Fred had cut out squares at the bottom of the doors and Birdie had made little sailcloth covers. All the cats except one quickly mastered the idea that they could freely scamper from inside the house to outside. She wrote of the one cat that just didn’t get it: “Peterkin found it to be an unsolvable puzzle. She was almost always to be found sitting on one side or the other of it, waiting for someone to come and open the door.”

  Cats were numerous at the Blessed Isle, and finally a new dog found its way to their hearts, so long after the passing of Bruno. In Palm Beach, a litter of puppies, half bulldog and half pointer, had arrived. Fred picked out a little puppy for Birdie; because of his clumsiness, the little pup was christened “Foozle.” Foozle was soon joined by a second dog, Van, a beautiful collie from the Biltmore estate in North Carolina. The two were referred to by Birdie as “Comedy and Tragedy” for their antics at the Blessed Isle.

  Birdie hints in several places that Fred’s health was in decline. They began spending more time in Jacksonville, where hospitals were available. At that time, West Palm Beach had few physicians and no real hospital until 1914, when the six-bed “Emergency Hospital” opened. She knew that their days at the Blessed Isle might be coming t
o an end; handling such a large house and property would be too much for her: “Then we realized that our Blessed Isle must be left for a longer period; and perhaps for always.”

  She speaks of an “accident” that occurred with Fred but does not provide any detail on what it might have been—perhaps a serious fall. He convalesced at Ben Trovato until well enough to travel to Jacksonville. In 1906, they leased Ben Trovato and relocated in Jacksonville. They returned for the season in 1908. The New York Herald reported on January 12, 1908, “They have leased their place and will occupy the Brelsford villa The Banyans. Ben Trovato was formerly the rendezvous for men and woman of the literary and social world.”

  Certainly leaving the Blessed Isle and Ben Trovato, their home since 1890, was difficult. They had watched Palm Beach and West Palm Beach grow from a small collection of cottages, palmetto shacks and tents to a world-class resort. She wrote of leaving her rose garden at the Blessed Isle, “The roses, my especial friends, seemed to feel a premonition of separation. They reached out clinging arms to wrap their branches around me and to hook thorn-fingers so securely in my garments…this garden ever haunts my dreams, and I hope to find, somewhere in Paradise, a corner just like it.”

  SCHOOLCHILDREN IN WEST PALM BEACH. Children were always welcome at Ben Trovato, where Birdie Dewey would entertain them with her stories of her cats and dogs. Courtesy Florida Archives.

  FOOZLE IN HIS CHAIR. This image, from Birdie Dewey’s book The Blessed Isle and Its Happy Families, portrays Foozle, a half-bulldog/half-pointer pup, the first dog to join the Dewey household after Bruno. Private collection.

  The Deweys sold the Blessed Isle and Ben Trovato in 1909 and moved to their home in Boynton. Fred also retired from his land agent position with the Florida East Coast Railway. Bertha Daugharty Chadwell remembered the second Ben Trovato in a 1966 interview with Judge Earl Hoover: “They called their Boynton home ‘Ben Trovato’ and over their front door stood a big sign Ben Trovato. It was a big two story house facing east. The house was destroyed by fire about 1920. I drove them to Palm Beach to see Mr. Flagler; Flagler was always anxious to talk business with Mr. Dewey. Dewey and Flagler would always go into Mr. Flagler’s office and talk; Mr. Dewey was jolly and somewhat older than his wife.”

  BRELSFORD HOUSE, THE BANYANS. Edmund M. Brelsford began construction on the mansion known as the Banyans in 1888, and the house was completed in 1903. The Brelsford family operated the first general store in Palm Beach. The Deweys rented the Brelsford home during the 1908 Palm Beach season. Courtesy Library of Congress.

  BEN TROVATO, 1906. This last known photograph of Ben Trovato taken when the Deweys owned the house shows the addition of shutters. Courtesy Historical Society of Palm Beach County.

  There was one unfulfilled dream that the Deweys had from their earliest Florida pioneer days that was now realized in Boynton: a successful orange grove. Fred had been told that oranges could not be grown in the muck land along the coastal canal. He persisted, and his grove was the first successful orange grove on the west side along the canal in Boynton. Its success was chronicled in several publications, including the Florida East Coast Homeseeker and the Florida Agriculturalist. From the former: “In January 1902, Mr. Fred S. Dewey planted a seven-acre grove of citrus trees on the muck lands at Boynton as an experiment which has resulted in great success.” Fred’s grove had many citrus varieties, as reported in the Maysville Public Ledger: “Mr. F.S. Dewey of Boynton finished shipping oranges Tuesday with a shipment of 256 boxes. This makes a total including mail orders and individual shipments of 800 boxes of tangerines, grapefruit and oranges.”

  The Deweys did much to support the town of Boynton. To help pave streets, the Deweys donated the proceeds from the sale of downtown lots. The Deweys also initiated an important step in any town’s development: starting a library. Boynton’s history had previously recorded that the library was started in 1911 by the Boynton Woman’s Club. But a June 10, 1910 article that appeared in the Miami Metropolis shed new light on how what probably was the first library in Boynton began: “Before leaving they [the Deweys] made a gift to the citizens of Boynton and the surrounding territory of a ‘Free Reading Library,’ which is located in the Post Office building in charge of Mrs. Chas. W. Pierce. It was their desire to help those who remained at home to enjoy the summer—by always having good company—good books. We have no one who shows more public interest in the welfare of the town than Mr. and Mrs. Dewey.” The Boynton Woman’s Club also started a library in 1911, and at some point the collections were probably merged. That is the most logical conclusion in that today’s city library clearly traces its roots to the Woman’s Club Library.

  But the happy times in Boynton were short-lived. They had intended to retire in the town they had so carefully nurtured, but circumstances did not allow this happy ending to occur. They sold the house in Boynton and ventured northward once again, as Fred’s declining health steered their next moves.

  The Bird Whisperer and the Journey Home

  Fred and Birdie spent the summer of 1910 in Maysville, where Birdie had spent her childhood years. She wrote in the Maysville Public Ledger, “To come back, after an absence of more than thirty years, to a home town, hallowed by memories of early childhood and youth, is an experience to move the soul. All is more beautiful—more ‘happifying’ than fondest memories dream.” In August, the local newspaper reported that they were leaving for Johnson City, Tennessee, where Fred was admitted to the Mountain Home Branch Hospital, a home for Civil War veterans. He was seventy-three years old, and his hospital admission record listed the following conditions: “Some defective vision both eyes, cardiac hypertrophy, injury to head, paralysis agitans [Parkinson’s disease].” The head injury notation probably explains the “accident” mentioned in The Blessed Isle book. At that time, there was little or no treatment for such ailments as Parkinson’s disease, and it was probably becoming increasingly difficult for Birdie to care for him.

  At the military home, the government provided the men with surplus Civil War uniforms and simple meals and entertainment such as a library and card room. Fred received a pension of fifteen dollars per month. It is unclear at this point if Birdie took an apartment nearby or returned to Florida to live alone. In April 1915, Fred was transferred to another military hospital, the Southern Branch Hospital in Virginia. On this admission record, the diagnoses were more ominous: “Defective vision, old injury to the head, cardiac hypertrophy, and atherosclerosis, senility.” The senility diagnosis at age seventy-nine may be another reason why Birdie was not able to care for Fred. She is listed as wife, and her home is listed as West Palm Beach.

  Birdie republished a few of her short stories in pamphlet form, but she did not write another major work. She was sixty years old in 1916 and again yearned for the beauty and culture of the Lake Worth Country. She purchased a cottage on Seabreeze Avenue in the town of Palm Beach, just a few blocks from the Hotel Royal Poinciana. She was listed in the Palm Beach directory as “Authoress, Ben Trovato.” The Palm Beach cottage became the third and final house to bear the name of Ben Trovato. Most mail addressed to her was simply noted, “Mrs. Byrd Spilman Dewey, Ben Trovato, West Palm Beach,” and it always found her.

  Judge Earl Hoover contacted a subsequent cottage owner who reported that when he took possession of the cottage, a large sign over the door read “Ben Trovato.” The subsequent owner lived in the cottage for about ten years, but termites caused him to demolish it and build a new house, which stands to this day. He mentioned that the house was filled with built-in bookcases, a telltale sign of it being a Dewey residence. Birdie lived alone there in Palm Beach, visiting friends such as Amy Phipps Guest, daughter of Henry Phipps. She had her pets once again: a cat named Billie and a German Shepherd named Fritz. They certainly provided the comfort and protection she needed, living alone for the first time in her life. Fred lingered on at the military hospital in Virginia; he was discharged in December 1917, probably to spend one final Christmas with his bel
oved Birdie. On January 24, 1918, he reentered a military hospital, this time the Pacific Branch Hospital at Sawtelle, California, perhaps for the warmer climate. Whether Birdie stayed with him there is unknown, but California was quite a journey from Florida in those days.

  Finally, on January 5, 1919, death claimed Frederick Sidney Dewey at the age of eighty-two. His obituary from the Palm Beach Post read: “Frederick S. Dewey, for a number of years a resident of this county, both in this city and Boynton, died at the Old Soldier’s Home in Sawtelle, Santa Monica, California. His wife, Byrd Spilman Dewey, was with him at the time of his death.” Coincidently, that same week, another important Palm Beach pioneer passed away: Elisha “Cap” Dimick, who ran the Cocoanut Grove House, Palm Beach’s first hotel and served as the first mayor of Palm Beach. Few persons had seen more development and change in Palm Beach than these two brave pioneers of the Lake Worth Country.

  BYRD SPILMAN DEWEY AND CAT BILLIE. Found inside a copy of Bruno, this image of Birdie at age sixty was taken at the final Ben Trovato cottage in Palm Beach. Typical of Birdie, the cat Billie sits contentedly in her lap. Private collection.

  GRAVE OF FRED S. DEWEY. Fred Dewey passed away on January 5, 1919, and was buried at the Los Angeles National Cemetery. Courtesy Kim S. Jenkins.

  BYRD SPILMAN DEWEY AND DOG FRITZ. Taken at the home of Mrs. Frederick Guest, Birdie is shown in her early sixties. Amy Guest was the daughter of Birdie’s dear friend, Mrs. Henry Phipps. Courtesy Janis Lydie Hebert.

  Now, at the age of sixty-three, Birdie was a widow. She followed her own advice, as stated in From Pine Woods to Palm Groves: “When all else fails, Wisdom commands: Seek changed environment. Go somewhere and begin anew.” She sold the cottage in Palm Beach and moved to Winter Park, near Orlando. Property sales records for this time period once again show Birdie buying and selling real estate, this time lots that were platted in the subdivisions that were popping up all over Florida as the second Florida land boom was starting.