LIVING HISTORY
Harry E. Hill was editor of The American Bee Keeper
from February 1898 until its last issue in June 1908.
Beginning in 1904 the magazine was printed in Florida
and mailed from Fort Pierce. Captions on the Hill photographs
historical information.
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tomobiles, trains, boats. He photographed rivers and streams before civilization
“improved” them, and he recorded the abundance being harvested from
Treasure Coast land and water.
Hill’s photography provided him and his family with a living, but he was
not simply a craftsman for hire. He was also an artist who loved to capture
the beauty of Florida’s plants and flowers, its fruits and its undersea corals.
He specialized in photographing cloud formations and nature scenes. He was
a jokester whose trick photography “captured” ghostly visitors and spaceships.
So who was this remarkable man? What brought him to the Treasure
Coast from way up north in Canada?
THE EARLY YEARS
Hill was born on August 9, 1869, in Port Burwell, Ontario, on the shore of
Lake Erie. In 1884, when he was 19, he became a U.S. citizen and settled in a
Pennsylvania town called Titusville — no relation to the Florida city of the
same name — just a short boat ride across Lake Erie.
Five years later, he married an American named Kate Nelson. They moved
to Florida in 1897 and established an apiary on the North Fork of the St. Lucie
River in the sparsely settled community of Spruce Bluff. There, the bees made
honey and Harry edited The American Bee Keeper and took pictures. Photos
were not standard fare in the magazines of the time, so when Harry added
lots of them to The Bee Keeper, he was breaking ground. Readers liked them,
and Hill appeared on his way to prosperity. By 1904, Hill had purchased the
home and studio on North Second Street in the Edgartown section of Fort
Pierce. The home and studio, which still stand, are across the street from the
historic Platts-Backus house.
IMPORTANCE OF PHOTOS
Already an amateur photographer, Editor Hill realized that the appeal
of The American Bee Keeper would be greatly enhanced with the addition of
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