LIVING HISTORY
13
Dr. Weedon’s boarding house experiment
was short-lived. The kitchen
at Fort Pierce caught fire on the
night of December 12, 1843. Wind
whipping in from the northwest
spread the flames from roof to roof,
and the whole place flared like a
book of matches. Unfortunately, Ossian
Hart and his brand-new bride,
Kate, were storing a year’s worth
of provisions in the fort when it
burned down, not to mention their
wedding gifts. The unhappy couple
retreated to seek solace from friends
in Key West. But Hart wasn’t about
to let one major disaster chase his
dreams away, so the heroic newlyweds
returned to slug it out.
ESTABLISHING A COLONY
A customs house was set up at Indian River Inlet, which
was located where Pepper Park is today. Shifting sandbars
made the entrance especially treacherous. William F. Russell
from North Carolina, referred to by some as Major and others
as Colonel, became the inspector at the post. Russell never
filed for a land permit himself. He seems to have resided on
property claimed by his brother-in-law, John Barker (permit
holder #69), a justice of the peace.
In spite of early troubles, by February 1844 there were
enough new residents for Dr. Moses Holbrook (permit holder
#56) to summon a convention. At 62, Holbrook was by far the
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
In the 1840s, the official military map for the Florida War identified the
>> lower half of the Indian River as “St. Lucie Sound.”
FLORIDA MEMORY
In 1842, Frederick Weedon,
a retired army surgeon, set
up his homestead in the recently
abandoned stockade
known as Fort Pierce.
/www.dependablemitsubishi.com