Besides Hanford Mobley, Clarence Middleton and Roy Matthews, another person worked behind the scenes to execute the Bank of Stuart robbery, casing the bank in the weeks before with how-to instructions relayed by John Ashley from prison. Her name: Laura Upthegrove, John’s lover.
Instead of dressing for court and appearing in Tampa to face a charge of piracy on May 2, 1922, Hanford Mobley slipped on a woman’s black dress and white blouse, stockings and high heels and large-brimmed veiled hat.
With John Ashley in prison and three of his brothers dead from their criminal activities, leadership of the Ashley Gang in 1922 fell to John’s 17-year-old nephew, Hanford Mobley.
While the patch-eyed John Ashley is historically acclaimed as the leader of what became known as Florida’s notorious Ashley Gang, it was John’s suave father, Joe Ashley, who forged a path of criminality for John and his four brothers.
John Ashley spent much of his career as a criminal on the run, hiding out in the Everglades while in frequent communication with his family in Fruita
The city of Port St. Lucie sprang up in 1961, seemingly out of nowhere. From jungle-like riverbanks, swarms of giant mosquitos and no residents, its population zoomed from zero to 240,000 in 63 years.
In the vast circle of life, only humans display a fascination with the past. Quality 16th-century historian William Camden called it our “back-looking curiositie.”
The killing of Seminole DeSoto Tiger thrusts pioneering Ashley family on wrong side of law. Today, exactly a century after John Ashley, Hanford Mobley, Ray Lynn and Clarence Middleton were killed at the Sebastian River bridge, the shootout and the gang’s activities still stir the public imagination.
At the dawn of the 20th century, Fort Pierce boasted two watering holes within walking distance of each other.
We all have questions about our family history. In childhood, I only gathered bits and pieces about my father’s family from what I heard from my dad or my paternal grandfather, E.R. “Putz’’ Enns, who arrived on what we now call the Treasure Coast exactly a century ago.
