Another Camping Trip

[Houmes]

Like Lincoln, Hemingway loved cats, especially six-toed cats, after being first given such a cat by a ship's captain. Six-toed cats are sometimes referred to as "Hemingway Cats", and at the Hemingway house still live about fifty descendants of his cats (did you notice the one in the photo above?). On the counter of the museum shop sat the biggest, furriest cat I've ever seen (the Lincolns' would have loved it, I'm sure):


Beautiful house, incredible history, and the cats are fascinating, but if you go there--or even walk within a block of it--wear a nose plug, because I don't think they've picked up after the cats since Hemingway left the place.

[Eva Elisabeth]

In Ellenton, on the Manatee River near Sarasota, is another beautiful house that is hidden in a quiet, quaint park: the Gamble Plantation. The mansion of the former sugar plantation is the only surviving antebellum plantation house in South Florida.
   
   
At the close of the Seminole War in 1842, the United States opened the Florida frontier to settlement by European Americans. Virginian born Major Robert Gamble, Jr. (1813 - 1906), who had served in the war, received 160 acres for homesteading, and arrived at the Manatee River site in 1844. He developed the manison. Construction began in 1845, and took over five years. Its eighteen columns and two-foot-thick walls are build of red bricks and tabby, a regional material made of shells, sand, and oyster-shell lime. Tabby was developed as a substitute for brick because of the shortage of clay. The techniques were brought south by European-American planters and their African-American slaves.

Gamble likely held more than 600 slaves to work the property and process the sugar cane. His sugar mill housed the best sugar processing machinery then available in the south. During the 1840's and early 1850's, Gamble was the leading producer of sugar and molasses in Florida.
Sugar rollers:
   
Due to a declining sugar market and debts, Gamble had to sell the property in 1856. With the outbreak of the Civil War, most of the slaves and machinery was sold and the plantation was abandoned. The sugar mill was destroyed by Union raiders in 1864.

Next to the house is a covered, 40,000-gallon cistern with a wood-shake roof, which Gamble had built to supply the household's fresh water needs. Fish were kept in the cistern to eat insects and help keep the water clean.
   
Alledgedly, Judah P. Benjamin stayed at the plantation for two weeks in May 1865 while making his escape from Federal troops, disguised as a French journalist, "M. Bonfal", and as a "Mr. Howard".
During the Civil War, the mansion was occupied by Captain Archibald McNeill, a Confederate blockade runner, and at that time the Confederacy's Deputy Commissary for the Manatee District. When Federal offers of a reward of $ 40,000 brought searchers to the plantation, McNeill aided Benjamin in escaping to the Bahamas. From there, he sailed to England, and arrived in London on August 30, 1865.
This is the room where J.P. Benjamin might have slept:
   
There's a litte, but lovingly done exhibition, and the guided tour provides a lot of fascinating information. I like such little, less overcrowded and less "professionally polished" sites, IMO there you can imagine former times and life the best.

Finally for Betty - a Grimsley saddle:

   

BTW: Happy Easter!

[L Verge]

Thanks for the history tour of Gamble Plantation, Eva. I am putting that on my bucket list. I also appreciate the mention of the owner using his plantation for sugar production. We often get so caught up in the cotton story that we forget that much of the South's wealth overall was in diverse crops such as tobacco, indigo, and rice.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Laurie, it's more than worth it!!!

From the Gamble Plantation it's not far away to the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, where you can marvel at "Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters becomes a Portrait of Abraham". It wasn't allowed to take pictures there, so this is downloaded:
   
I once posted a trivia question on this painting: http://rogerjnorton.com/LincolnDiscussio...light=dali
The Dalí Museum hosts the worldwide second largest Dalí collection, including paintings dating from his impressionistic beginnings. (The only bigger exhibition is the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Spain, his birthplace.)

Since there are also some Beatles fans out there, please allow me one last (off course) recommendation: the Classic Car Museum in Sarasota. There you will see these two Mercedes cars, which once were owned by John Lennon:
   
Unfortunately, Paul McCartney's Mini Cooper and John Lennon's psychedelic Rolls Royce were sold some time ago. But a visit is also worth it as you can see cars like this:
   
Finally, I had never before seen this strange car:
   
A Ford Ghia Urban, later called the Ghia Manx. It was designed in the aftermath of the oil embargo crisis of 1973 as a solution to urban congestion and higher gas prices.

[Eva Elisabeth]

I just looked through my notes once again, and would like to add one very last aside on Fort Jefferson, which I find worth sharing. The cannon you can see in the one lighthouse photo is a 10 inch columbiad, which was a standard cannon for coast defense. It weights 15,400 pounds and can throw a 128 pound shot over 3 miles.
The fort had no guns when Major Arnold and his 66 artillery men arrived from Boston on January 19, 1861. As they worked on the first gun mount, a courier from an armed vessel came ashore and demanded surrender to the State of Florida. Arnold replied: "Tell your captain, I will blow his ship out of the water if he's not gone in ten minutes." The bluff worked. By the time the war began in April, 68 cannons were mounted.

[RJNorton]

(04-20-2014 05:32 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Laurie, it's more than worth it!!!

One of those most interesting (to Vicki and me) topics discussed during our nearly 3-hour lunch with Eva was the Gamble Plantation. I was very worried that after her trip to Washington and seeing the sights there that she would be disappointed (in comparison) in her visit to the Gamble Plantation. But she went into a wonderful description of how much she enjoyed her visit to that historic site, and Vicki and I were so happy and impressed by her feelings. Thank you, Eva!

[Eva Elisabeth]

Yes, I really loved it! ...and hadn't you once mentioned this site, I wouldn't have known of it's existence (so I thank you!), as I have often learned of similar things only through the forum. For this reason I wrote about all these sights, maybe someone will find some of this helpful, too (but not that I doubt all know of Fort Jefferson), or it will motivate someone for a visit.