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Show Mrs. Stowe Helped Florida r, She Was the First Northern Person to Draw World-Wide Attention to That State's Magnificent Climate Cli-mate and Opportunities. In the mid-spring of 1883, I was a passenger upon a steamboat scheduled to run from Jacksonville, Fla., up the St. John's river to Stanford, located at the end of steamboat navigation on the river. To make the trip required a journey lasting from about seven o'clock in the evening until noon the next day. Among the passengers was E. K. Foster, Jr., Bon of a distinguished distin-guished lawyer of New Haven, Conn., who was in his early life a very prom inent Republican and a warm personal friend of Abraham Lincoln's. E. K. Foster, Jr., was one of the pioneers, so to speak, who went from the north to Florida soon after the close of the Civil war. He foresaw the possibilities possibili-ties of Florida as an orange producing produc-ing state and had made a venture In an orange plantation. Around Mr. Foster, on the steamer's deck, collected a number of the passengers, pas-sengers, who were much interested as he pointed out various orange groves that lined the banks of the river, told of their ownership and spoke of some of the difficulties which the early development de-velopment of the orange growing business busi-ness in Florida had met with. "But the most interesting by far of the orange groves upon the river," Mr. Foster said, "is one that is located locat-ed near Mandarin. I never see it without thinking of the extraordinary significance associated with its ownership. own-ership. It is the grove that was bought by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Within it stands her winter home, or did as long ago as her health and that of her husband, Professor Stowe, permitted per-mitted them to make the journey every ev-ery winter from New England to Florida. Flor-ida. "The special significance to which I refer lies in the fact that Mrs. Stowe was really the first person of the north to fix the attention of the north upon the magnificent winter climate of Florida and the opportunities that were opening to that state to engage in successful rivalry with the West Indies and with Italy for command of the market in the United States foi oranges. "Wrhen it became known that Mrs. Stowe had bought this orange grove, many persons in the north said that she would be likely to suffer a good deal In the way of social ostracism and by various other manifestations which would show that In the south she was looked upon as one of the fomenters of the Civil war through the publication of 'Uncle Tom's Cab-In.' Cab-In.' Mrs. Stowe, however, had not the slightest apprehension .on this score. She said she knew the people of the south, was conscious of the fact that they were warm-hearted, generous and broad-minded, and so felt no anxiety. "She met with exactly the reception she expected. She was welcomed by the people of Florida. She was treated treat-ed with respect, and after a while there was general acknowledgment of the fact that by coming to Florida, by thus calling attention to the possibilities possi-bilities of the state as an orange growing community, she turned the, tide in the state from the ebb of despair de-spair and demoralization towards th flood of prosperity which within a few: years came to it. Butitl8a little-singular, Isn't tt, that Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author au-thor of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' should have been the one person In all th United States to do that?" (Copyright, 1911, by E. J. Edwards. AU Rights Reserved.) |