LIVING HISTORY
11
but the nearest places with something close to culture were Savannah,
Key West and Havana. St. Lucie Sound might as well have been a million
miles away from civilization. The only way to get there was to paddle, or
wait for a favorable wind to sail.
SETTLERS MOVE IN
America was in the grip of an economic depression that began in 1837.
Hard times made some folks desperate enough to think free land in
the middle of nowhere sounded like a golden opportunity. People like
former banker Samuel H. Peck (permit holder #63). He helped talk a lot
of folks from Augusta, Georgia, into joining him on a bold new venture
in Mosquito County. Peck made it easy for his friends by providing
transportation.
With the last scraps of his dwindling fortune, Peck invested in a schooner
called the William Washington. He hired mariners and laborers and
carpenters to start the new colony off with a bang. Some settlers brought
slaves to do the heavy lifting. Unfortunately, there was only one inlet
into St. Lucie Sound, and it wasn’t deep enough for a big schooner to
safely get in and out. Colonists took their shovels and dug open a second
inlet at Gilbert’s Bar in present-day Martin County, closer to Peck’s designated
homestead. But that didn’t do the trick either.
Sometime early on, the William Washington got hopelessly wedged into
a sandbar. Wreckers from Key West had to be hired to get the vessel unstuck.
They towed it away until Peck could pay. When he couldn’t come
up with the wrecking fee to get his schooner back, he folded his hand
and moved to New Orleans where he signed up to fight in the Mexican
War. Local boaters will recognize that he left his name behind on a small
pocket of the Indian River, which is still called Peck’s Lake today. It lies
south of the mouth of the St. Lucie River.
One of Peck’s carpenters was John Hutchinson (permit holder #157),
whose grandfather James had acquired a 2,000-acre Spanish land grant >>
FLORIDA MEMORY
Seminoles who followed Chief Billy Bowlegs refused to be
removed from South Florida.
RICK CRARY
In the 1840s, the Old Indian River Inlet was reached through a winding
water pathway through mangroves, part of which remains in St. Lucie
County’s Pepper Park today.
The sites of some early settlers with permits have never been discovered because
of vague wording on the permits. For example, the permit for Moses
Holbrook, who some believe resided for a year or so in present-day Ankona,
describes his claim as being on the west side of St. Lucie Sound: “Beginning
at a dry tree marked 06 on the shore by the point of rocks or stoney point
and running south sixty chains to a stake near a blazed palmetto.”